Two Michigan Novels

For the first time in I don't remember how long, yesterday's Sunday morning Tribune ritual did not start with the sports section. A quick glance at the books section revealed a photo of Stuart Dybek next to a short piece in which he talked about Michigan writers. (Dybek has lovingly adopted Michigan as his home state, as he teaches at WMU in Kalamazoo.) Given that I'm mesmerized by anything and everything Dybek, I just had to read the piece first.

"Michigan is essentially two states that have remained united," says Dybek. Its urban landscapes typify gritty, industrial America, while its forests and huge coastlines offer unparalleled solitude. Michigan's inhabitants are similarly divided, by class, race, profession and politics.

The Dybek piece accompanied reviews of two new novels from Michigan authors, The Mercy Killers by Lisa Reardon and All These Girls by Ellen Slezak. Even though Reardon's basic plot sounds a bit rote...

Each of Reardon's first two novels--Billy Dead (1998) and Blameless (2000)--begins with a murder and moves on to an unflinching look at domestic abuse, alcoholism, depression--the claustrophobic endgame of working-class America. The Mercy Killers follows this pattern, digging into Vietnam-era family violence.

...I'm rather intrigued by a protagonist who is trying to live a normal, decent life but can't completely fight the tempting lure of his old bad-influence friends and family. I'll be checking into this one further.

Incidentally, for some reason the Tribune stepped up its fiction coverage yesterday. In addition to the two Michigan novels, they also reviewed David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (okay, not exactly a bold move, since the book seems to be on everybody's buzz list this month), Jonathon Rosen's Joy Comes in the Morning, and Louis de Bernieres' Joy Without Wings.