The Shelf: Tayari Jones

“My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,” Tayari Jones begins her third novel, Silver Sparrow (Algonquin Books). That one line telegraphs all sorts of family dysfunction and tragedy, but the author reins in the melodrama nicely to produce a surprisingly subtle story about class, gender roles, and combustible secrets. The bigamist father does his best to ensure that his two wives and his two daughters—born four months apart—never meet. But of course, they do. The collision of the families is so clearly inevitable, the only mystery is when it will happen, not if.  Jones, who grew up in Atlanta and teaches now at Rutgers University, tells this story through the eyes of the teenage daughters: Chaurisse is the “legitimate” one, enjoying a fairly privileged life, while Dana, the “secret” one, watches from the shadows, strangely powerful in one sense: She and her mother at least know about the existence of the other family. “I feel like I live in both of their shoes,” Jones says of writing in the girls’ voices. “I was a daughter in a family of sons, so I know what it is not to be the chosen one, but at the same time feeling loved.” As with her previous novels, Leaving Atlanta and The Untelling, Jones sets this one in 1980s Atlanta. “The expression is, ‘You can never go home again,’” she says. “But I think it should be, ‘You can never leave home.’”*

Criminal Records rebounds with local live LP series

When you’re a co-founder of the now globally celebrated Record Store Day, you’re expected to step up your game for Saturday’s sixth annual nerd holiday. Criminal Records owner Eric Levin is doing just that via the first two vinyl releases on his new limited-run, boutique LP series, Live at Criminal Records. Accompanying the new live recordings of in-store sets by up-and-coming Atlanta acts Von Grey and Christ, Lord, fans who buy the LPs in advance will also get into an after-hours Saturday gig when the store closes at 8 p.m. for a VIP show with the two acts, along with Mood Rings. Of planning for his sixth annual Record Store Day, Levin reflects: “It’s astonishing, I didn’t think anyone would care and now it’s become this huge thing.”

Spotted! A “Dreamgirl” at South City Kitchen

Actress and singer Jennifer Holliday popped into South City Kitchen in Vinings this week for dinner. We're told the Tony-winning star of "Dreamgirls" dined on chicken livers and a mixed greens salad.

In Tune: Ticket Alternative

Long before Ticketmaster’s merger with Live Nation was proposed last February, Iain Bluett was a stocky, lilting Brit hawking Polo at Lenox in 1992. “The Buckhead women would come in for their boyfriends, and I’d end up taking them out. The accent, you know,” he laughs. Now in his “mid-to-late thirties,

Singer Kevin Rowe debuts benefit single, Saturday fundraiser to combat Atlanta’s sex trafficking trade

It's a conversation most people don't have over a pint with an Englishman at the bar in RiRa. But this summer, singer-songwriter Kevin Rowe was deep in thought, discussing his concerns with us about an issue the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau doesn't include in its "Welcome to Atlanta" pamphlets: the city's scourge of human trafficking.

Braves wives seeking Christmas spirit at Turner Field today, Thursday

Sure, the temps will be hovering in the 90s this afternoon when Turner Field opens for business with the Arizona Diamondbacks but the spouses of the Atlanta Braves will be in full-on holiday mode. The Braves wives, including Kim Hudson, Tim Hudson's missus, will be out in force taking up fan donations of new unwrapped toys (minimum value is $10) for the team's upcoming Christmas in July visit to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta next month.

Jonny Lang Botanical Garden concert canceled

Blues wonder boy Jonny Lang has canceled his Friday night concert at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens in Midtown, according to garden spokesman Danny Flanders.   Lang has a good reason. He and his wife welcomed a new baby into the world Thursday.   Ticket holders may request refunds at point of purchase.   Flanders says the garden hopes to work the guitarist and singer into their 2011 Concerts

The Braves offer Tom Glavine salute, classic cars at The Ted this weekend

Motorheads are gearing up for the 2nd annual "Octane in the Outfield" Saturday at Turner Field. Beginning at 2 p.m. Saturday prior to the Braves taking on the San Francisco Giants at 7 p.m., car enthusiasts will be congregating in the Green Lot at Turner Field where fans will be showing off their classic car rides. The event sponsored by the Atlanta Braves and AutoTrader Classics will also award prizes in five different categories. The winners and runners up will th

Atlanta hotel flower mix up no laughing matter for Bobcat Goldthwait

Since the hospitality industry is Atlanta's main economic engine and all, the following should serve as a cautionary tale for all hotel workers. In an interview with Dave FM's Jimmy Baron and Yvonne Monet, comic Bobcat Goldthwait revealed for the first time that his seven-year relationship with actress Nikki Cox ended after a phone call to a hotel here where she was staying. "I called to send her fl

Thomas Mullen

After two historical novels, Decatur author Thomas Mullen takes an extraordinary trip to the near future in a thriller called The Revisionists (Little, Brown/Mulholland Books). In Washington, D.C., after a game-changing disaster known only as the “Great Conflagration,” Agent Zed from the U.S. Department of Historical Integrity travels back in time to make sure nothing interferes with the unfolding of horrific events such as the Holocaust, the 9/11 attacks, and the mysterious conflagration. All are necessary evils, in the government’s wisdom, to bring about “the Perfect Present”—a time of no war, no poverty, and no disease. Zed and his fellow agents are pitted against time-traveling historical agitators (aka hags), who are hell-bent on stopping the big tragedies. Though this is not a historical novel, the plot concerns the nature of history itself. “There’s a saying that dates back even before this time: History is written by the winners,” Mullen writes. “But what happens when everyone has lost?” Questions of fate versus free will, utopia versus reality, and the implications of a world without obvious racial and ethnic lines add terrific human depth to the whiz-bang gadgetry of Mullen’s imagined world. Just as he played with genre elements of noir and magical realism in last year’s The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, Mullen now puts a very highbrow spin on the spy novel and science fiction.Also new THE CHESHIRE CHEESE CAT: A Dickens of a Tale (Peachtree Publishers) (For ages eight to twelve) Inspired by London’s Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a sixteenth-century inn with a rich literary history, authors Carmen Agra Deedy and Randall Wright concocted this howler of a tale about a well-educated mouse named Pip and his feline, cheese-loving ally, Skilley: “He was the best of toms. He was the worst of toms.” Adults and children alike will find something to love about this playful romp, featuring cameos by Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Queen Victoria—all beautifully illustrated by Barry Moser. Deedy, a native of Cuba who grew up in Decatur, is a national treasure and a world-class storyteller. She’ll read from her new book at Decatur’s Little Shop of Stories (littleshopofstories.com) on October 1.DRIFTING INTO DARIEN: A Personal and Natural History of the Altamaha River (University of Georgia Press) “Other rivers are as wide, and as dark, and as long, and as deep, and as bendy,” Janisse Ray writes. “Others are as well loved. Others are as wild. But the Altamaha is mine, its water my blood, its history my own.” The author of the critically acclaimed Ecology of a Cracker Childhood paddles the southeast Georgia river and creates a book that is part natural history, part earth-mother meditation.UNKNOWN FEMALE (Pill Hill Press) Marietta native Brian Ray’s second novel is a love story screaming to be made into a Tim Burton movie—brilliant and unsettling. Marx Thoreau, the deeply haunted son of a serial k

Follow Us

69,386FansLike
144,836FollowersFollow
493,480FollowersFollow

NEWSLETTERS