Roundup: Historical fiction

Watergate stretches fiction a bit too far, The Gods of Gotham exudes Manhattan fiction, The House I Loved opens a window on a fascinating era, and The Technologists collects calamities.

Watergate
By Thomas Mallon; Pantheon, 448 pp., $26.95; *** out of four

The women of Watergate — first lady Pat Nixon, loyal secretary Rose Mary Woods and, most of all, Alice Longworth, the viper-tongued 88-year-old daughter of Teddy Roosevelt— steal the show in Thomas Mallon's surprisingly entertaining and warm-hearted Watergate. Mallon presents the story of the bungled burglary and cover-up that destroyed Richard Nixon's presidency through a variety of narrators. In this retelling, Nixon becomes a far more sympathetic, complex, far-sighted character than the moniker "Tricky Dick" would suggest. And wife Pat — who is patient, perceptive, exhausted — is the opposite of plastic. (Mallon gives her a secret lover, stretching fiction too far.) — Deirdre Donahue

The Gods ofGotham
By Lyndsay Faye; Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, 414 pp., $25.95; *** out of four

If your concept of paradise is popping in a DVD of Gangs of New York while rereading Caleb Carr's The Alienist, then put Lyndsay Faye's The Gods of Gotham on your to-buy list. Set in 1845, it depicts the cultural cataclysm created in Manhattan by the Irish potato famine. At the center of the story stands Timothy Wilde, an American bartender who loses his life savings to fire. Forced by his politically savvy older brother to join the new police force, the just-minted copper ends up investigating why Irish immigrant children are being savagely murdered. Faye's language is appropriately florid, even flowery, dotted with slang and research. A treat for readers obsessed with Manhattan history. — Deirdre Donahue

The House I Loved
By Tatiana de Rosnay; St. Martin's Press, 222 pp., $25.99; ** out of four

The House I Loved sounds like it could slide right in to a 9 p.m. time slot on HGTV. But despite its homey title, the latest from Tatiana de Rosnay (the wonderful Sarah's Key) is anything but cozy. It's the rather dreary story of Rose Bazelet, determined to cling to the last brick when her house is set for demolition in Paris in the 1860s. The format — letters to her beloved, dead husband interspersed with first-person narrative — grates, as does a rather contrived "secret" that taunts the reader. As historical fiction, though, this old House does open a window onto a fascinating era: the tumultuous period when Emperor Napoleon III ordered up a new "modern" city, longtime residents be damned. — Jocelyn McClurg

The Technologists
By Matthew Pearl; Random House, 480 pp., $26; ** out of four

Readers will learn some interesting factoids about post-Civil War Boston, the founding of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and tensions between science and religion while reading The Technologists. Author Matthew Pearl also includes real-life figures such as Ellen Swallow, the first woman admitted to MIT. As a work of historical fiction, however, it's a long, hard slog dragged down by a cast of predictable characters and overwrought prose. The story opens in 1868 when a series of freak accidents imperils Boston: glass suddenly melts, burning eyeballs; compasses go wacky, causing ships to crash. Meanwhile, students at the fledging MIT battle contemptuous Harvard snobs. A group of plucky young engineers secretly investigates what is causing the calamities. — Deirdre Donahue

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'Hunger Games' fans switch arenas from page to screen

What is it about The Hunger Games that has made it the hottest teen fiction series since Harry Potter and Twilight? We went to the source and found three avid and articulate fans — ages 17 to 74 — to tell us. They love Suzanne Collins' best-selling dystopian trilogy about a future dictatorship in which teens, primped by stylists and costume designers, are forced to fight to the death on TV. And they're just as excited about the highly anticipated movie version of the first book, starring Jennifer Lawrence as heroine Katniss Everdeen. It opens Friday.

By Murray Close, Lionsgate

Jennifer Lawrence plays heroine Katniss Everdeen in 'The Hunger Games,' out Friday.

By Murray Close, Lionsgate

Jennifer Lawrence plays heroine Katniss Everdeen in 'The Hunger Games,' out Friday.

'It's not so far-fetched'

On a recent Friday night in Westport, Conn., Melanie Mignucci has joined 120 kids at the Westport Public Library's sold-out Hunger Games tribute, a combination costume party/rock concert/trivia quiz/simulated survival game.

Dressed up as a "gamemaker," Mignucci, who works part time at the library, sternly dispatches bands of kids off to the book stacks, armed with cardboard shields and Nerf-ball weapons.

"It is amazing to see all these kids not only reading but spending their Friday night at a library, totally immersed in this fictional world," she says. "It shows how a book has the power to transport its reader into another world."

26 million: Copies in print of the trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay) and movie tie-in books.

200,000: First printing of the first book in 2008.

191: Ranking on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list for The Hunger Games a week after its release in September 2008. It didn’t crack the top 50 until Catching Fire, the second book, was published a year later.

12: Consecutive weeks, starting Dec. 29, 2011, that The Hunger Games has been No. 1 on USA TODAY’s list.

9: Weeks in 2012 that the three books in the trilogy have swept the top three spots on USA TODAY’s list, including this week’s.

Mignucci, 18, confesses she discovered The Hunger Games belatedly this winter, more than three years after the first book was published.

She loves to read. She started Harry Potter when she was only 6 ("It's really not that complicated," she says) but thought the love story in Twilight was "infantile." As a high school senior and fan of writers like Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita), she figured she had outgrown popular young-adult novels.

Then Mignucci met Katniss Everdeen, Collins' teen narrator and heroine who volunteers to take her younger sister's place in the kill-or-be-killed games.

"I'm so happy there's a female character getting stuff done in mainstream fiction," Mignucci says. "The plot revolves around her and her family's survival and sticking it to the Capitol," the seat of power in the dictatorship.

Mignucci was hooked by the dystopian world Collins creates.

"It's world that really could happen," she says. "Not that I see it happening, but you can imagine what if it did happen, especially how entertainment became a source of pacification for society."

To which she adds, "Brave New World, anyone?" a reference to Aldous Huxley's 1932 classic, which happens to be one of the 16 titles on the Westport Library's list of dystopian fiction. (Teen services librarian Jaina Lewis says kids are constantly asking, "What else is there like The Hunger Games?")

Mignucci, who hopes to join the Peace Corps and become a writer after college (she has been accepted at Bard and is waiting to hear from Barnard and Brown), sees the story as a blend of "gritty realism with a twist of the unthinkable. But in reality, it's not so far-fetched, considering today's oppressive regimes. The only real hint of fantasy is that the violence is gladiatorial in nature, and not a fact of life."

She acknowledges that the premise of the games — kids killing kids — could trouble younger readers, "but I'm 18. I've played video games more violent than The Hunger Games. I've seen a lot of war coverage on TV."

Her one fear about the movie: "I hope it doesn't facilitate a Team Peeta/Team Gale split," referring to the two boys (Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth in the movie) who are rivals for Kastniss' attention and loyalty. "That would be so annoying. In the book, the romance is secondary. I love that. It's not just about finding the right boy."

A guy who can 'relate'

Rafe Singer, 17, a high school senior in Scottsdale, Ariz., discovered The Hunger Games a few months after the first book was published in 2008 when a friend told him, "You've got to read this killer story."

He fell for what he calls its "exciting pace," a "break from the slow books I read for school," such as Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and Flaubert's Madame Bovary. (Scores of high schools have added The Hunger Games to their reading lists.)

"It's a well-known fact among my friends," Singer says, "that if you want to go to bed while reading The Hunger Games, you have to stop in the middle of a chapter, because if you finish one chapter, you have to start the next."

After reading the entire series, he says the evil President Snow (Donald Sutherland in the movie) is "someone I love to hate." But his favorite character is Katniss, "of course."

She's "incredibly brave," says Singer, who's considering a military career in aeronautics and has been accepted to the University of Arizona and Arizona State and is waiting to hear from West Point and the Air Force Academy. "I think her drive to be the father figure and be strong for everyone around her makes her one of the few female characters I can relate to at all. Plus, any girl who knows how to use a bow and arrow is attractive." (No, he adds, he hasn't met anyone like that in Scottsdale.)

As a "guy," he says, "the violence is pretty exciting," but on a "deeper note, the implications of controlling governments and reality TV are more interesting than other themes in popular novels lately."

Such as? "Sparkly vampires," he says and laughs.

Singer and friends already have tickets for the midnight movie release. He's eager to see how the film, rated PG-13, handles the violence, as well as Katniss' "inner struggles. She's an extremely introverted girl, so portraying all her emotions and thoughts and planning will be hard."

Singer loved Hugo, Martin Scorsese's film adaptation of Brian Selznick's illustrated book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. But after reading The Iliad, he was disappointed by Troy, starring Brad Pitt. "If they actually just followed Homer's writing, especially with all the gods flying down midbattle, the movie would have been 10 times more intense."

Strong female character

Rosemary Shearer, 74, has always been an adventurous reader. In the summer before ninth grade in Ames, Iowa, she read and enjoyed Herman Wouk's 1951 military drama, The Caine Mutiny, to the dismay of her teacher.

"She was shocked I would read something with swear words in it," Shearer recalls. "I had to find another book …something dull."

So when her daughter, 49, an education professor; her daughter-in-law, 50, a former school librarian; and her 11-year-old grandson all raved about The Hunger Games, she decided to try it a few months ago. "I raced through all three books in one weekend," she says. "My husband and son-in-law experienced the same thing, to their surprise."

She loves the series' "strong female characterization." In fiction, she says, "women are usually a sidebar to a muscle-bound hero. Katniss did it all. She was willing to lay down her life for a loved one."

Shearer, the retired manager of a land trust for the Superstition Mountains in Pinal County, Ariz., writes book reviews, under the pen name Roz Shea, for Bookreporter.com, a website for book discussions.

As a critic, she thought some of the violence in the second book, Catching Fire, was "a bit gratuitous." As a grandmother, "I kept thinking that this was a bit too graphic for young readers." But she also notes that the "fictionalized violence is close to the reality during the Roman Empire." After all, "Hunger Games is a post-apocalyptic version of gladiator games."

(Collins, in a 2009 interview with USA TODAY, said the idea for the series came to her one night when she was channel-surfing between reality shows and news coverage of the war in Iraq: "On one channel, young people were competing for money. On the next channel, young people were fighting for their lives. I was tired, and the ideas merged.")

Shearer has high hopes for the movie. "It seems to have a great cast, especially the adult actors. I'm counting on it to be a big-budget blockbuster entertainment — if they stick to the plot."

But "if they take liberties with the story line," she warns, "all the kids who've read the books will hate it."

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This ‘Achilles’ is not the same old song

It takes a truly gifted writer to make a song this old feel this beautifully new.

That The Song of Achilles offers a different take on the epic story of Achilles and the Trojan War is not, in itself, anything particularly out of the ordinary. People have been putting their own spins on The Iliad from the instant Homer finished reciting it. What's startling about this sharply written, cleverly re-imagined, enormously promising debut novel from Madeline Miller is how fresh and moving her take on the tale is — how she has managed to bring Achilles and his companion Patroclus to life in our time without removing them from their own.

While this remarkable achievement makes Miller the latest heir to the legacy of the greatest of all historical novelists, Mary Renault, she has approached her epic tale from a completely different direction. Where Renault sought plausible explanations for such Greek myths as the Minotaur, Miller takes them at face value: The gods exist in her Song, and Achilles is the son of one of them, the sea goddess Thetis — Miller's most startling creation. Rather than explain away the gods, she uses spare language to convey the awe and, mostly, terror that humans might have felt in their presence.

Yet what's most impressive, perhaps, is her realistic treatment of those humans. She uses Achilles' demi-god "otherness" to explain his flaws and behavior — and in the process makes him far more sympathetic than he has ever been.

That empathetic effect is essential, because at heart Miller is writing a love story, wrapping adventure and tragedy around the discreetly portrayed affair between Achilles and story narrator Patroclus. To do so while keeping characters in period, she adroitly walks a fine line: They are not gay in our sense, but they're more than "companions" as the ancients might have understood the term.

As with any story where you know the ending, what matters is the journey — this one is fast, true and incredibly rewarding. A new song is born, and with it, an author we'll want to hear sing again, and soon.

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'Another Piece of My Heart': A satisfying read

By Jane Green Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Here is a warm bath of a novel that draws you in over any objections you might have.

At the advanced age of 37, Andi, an interior decorator, has met her dream mate in Ethan, a landscape designer. All that stands in the way of happily ever after are two nagging issues. Andi has long dreamed of having a child of her own with Ethan, but four years have gone by with no pregnancy. And Ethan has two daughters, the adoring and adorable Sophia and troubled teen Emily, who sees Andi as cramming a wedge between her and her father.

Because their mother is an alcoholic, the girls are frequently with Andi and Ethan. Stepdaughter Emily sulks, stews and lashes out, mostly at Andi. Guilt-tripped Ethan is unable to stick to his punishments for Emily, despite her repeated episodes of boozing, pot-smoking and liaisons with sketchy boys. When Emily is arrested in a drunken-driving incident, Andi has an eye on the exit ramp of marriage until she realizes that Emily's thickening figure is actually baby fat — the kind that only goes away after nine months and a trip to the maternity ward.

A teen's unwanted baby and a woman desperate for a child make for a potent combination, and this plot goes pretty much where you'd expect it to go.

But Green's sympathetic portrayals of Andi and Emily resonate, and so put this novel several notches above a Lifetime movie script. Supporting characters are just as engaging, especially Andi's gay neighbors, Drew and Topher, with an impeccably designed home and always-ready mojitos, cappuccinos and wise advice.

Another Piece of My Heart is a zippy read that satisfies, as tempting as a just-opened box of Girl Scout Thin Mints. Go ahead and indulge.

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Jonah Lehrer takes intellectual look at creativity

You've been there: In the middle of a hot shower, the solution to a problem that had been particularly vexing suddenly becomes clear, like a light bulb going off overhead.

But what quirk of your subconscious is responsible for that? What happens in our brains during that "ah-ha" moment — that shower-induced epiphany — and how does it differ from the type of creativity involved in writing a poem or inventing a new mathematical equation?

Jonah Lehrer (How We Decide, Proust Was a Neuroscientist) explores those questions in his new book, Imagine: How Creativity Works (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26, on sale Monday). Lehrer, 30, shared a few tips on how to boost creativity, even if you're no Picasso.

Q: What is happening in our brains when we create?

A: It's complicated. John Coltrane improvising a sax solo is not thinking in the same way as a graphic artist tinkering with a logo.

Q: So, start with that ah-ha moment — that epiphany. What happens there?

A: There is a sharp spike in activity in the part of the brain called the anterior superior temporal gyrus, in the right hemisphere right behind the ear. It's closely associated with things like inventing metaphors, hearing the punchline of the joke. It kind of confirms in an ironic way the cliché of the right hemisphere is central for creativity. Lots of neuroscientists have looked down at that truism as an oversimplification.

Q: Why does it help to be relaxed?

A: When we're not relaxed — when we're really vigilant — our attention is focused on the problem. That means we can't hear the quiet voice in the back of our head trying to tell us what the answer is.

Q: Some of the most creative minds are altered through either drugs or illness. Are they better at unlocking that answer?

A: A study came out last month that people actually solve about 30% more insight puzzles when they're slightly drunk. A couple of beers is relaxing. In terms of mental illness, that's complicated. No one would prescribe being bipolar in order to become more creative, but longitudinal study after study has found that there seems to be this correlation between some forms of mental illness — especially bipolar depression — and creative production.

Q: You argue that brainstorming, as we typically define it, doesn't work.

A: That surprised me. Brainstorming has become the most widely implemented creativity technique of all time. The first rule of brainstorming is "Thou shall not criticize." It feels good — we can all come into a room together and free-associate, fill up the white board. But people are much more productive when they work in groups following a very different set of instructions.

Q: By being critical?

A: This is a legacy of Steve Jobs, who advocated the practice of brutal honesty: He was president and CEO of Pixar during their formative years. They have a meeting every morning where they review the most recent footage of the film they're working on, and then they engage in what they call the "shredding process." They tear it apart. Over the course of four to five years of shredding, you end up with a really, really good animated movie. Criticism is built into their process at every step.

Q: Has reporting this helped your own creativity?

A: When I was stuck on a paragraph or figuring out how to structure a chapter, I used to chain myself to the desk. I'd stay up late. And I'd get up in the morning, and my fixes would not be fixes at all. Now I'm willing to take a walk or go play tennis to find some way to relax myself. When I'm stuck, I need to stop looking for the answer because the answer will only arrive once I stop trying to find it.

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'Mad Men' and women write real-life books about that era

It's been a mad, mad, mad, mad, maddeningly long wait for new episodes of AMC's Mad Men.

And as we count down to the premiere of Season 5 on March 25, fans of Don Draper, Roger Sterling and Peggy Olson can immerse themselves in Madison Avenue and the '60s lifestyle by dipping into a groaning cocktail cart of new books.

Among them: Mad Women: The Other Side of Life on Madison Avenue in the '60s and Beyond (Thomas Dunne Books, $24.99), written by Jane Maas, dubbed the "real-life Peggy Olson" by Ad Age magazine.

Like the fictional Olson, Maas, 80, began working as a copywriter on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. Her memoir and her workplace recollections indicate "there's a lot of stuff Mad Men gets absolutely right," Maas tells USA TODAY, including:

The three-martini lunch. "Absolutely true, although women did not in fact go out for three-martini lunches as often as men did. Women tended to brown-bag it a lot more. It was more work ethic and calorie control."

The sex. "Part of it was because of all the drinking. If you happened upon someone in the stairwell kissing an account executive, and you knew both of them were married to other people, you just averted your eyes and walked on."

The fashion. "There were no pantyhose then — it hadn't been invented yet — so we had stockings with seams you had to keep checking on. We had little garter belts, and over that, we wore little panties and these bras that turned your breasts into javelins."

Real-life Don Drapers. "The creative director who sexually harassed me for two years and pursued me relentlessly was incredibly handsome, very dashing and he knew it. Like Don Draper, he considered himself a great Lothario."

For a more straightforward history, there's The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising (Running Press, $28) by British adman Andrew Cracknell, who says Mad Men is "spot on."

"I've viewed some episodes of Mad Men three times, and believe me, that's not a chore. It's extraordinarily good, and I think, from all the research I did, it's pretty accurate."

From the cocktail cart

If your interest is purely gustatory:

•How to Drink Like a Mad Man by Ralph Maloney (Dover, $9.95, April 19). Retitled reprint of the 1962 humor book The 24-Hour Drink Book: A Guide to Executive Survival.

•The Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Sixties Cookbook: More Than 100 Retro Recipes for the Modern Cook by Rick Rodgers and Heather Maclean (Running Press, $20, April 24). Betty Draper would approve of recipes for Waldorf Salad and Onion Dip.

•The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook: Inside the Kitchens, Bars, and Restaurants of Mad Men by Judy Gelman and Peter Zheutlin (Smart Pop Books, $16.95). Prepare Oysters Rockefeller and a martini good enough for Roger Sterling.

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‘Arcadia:’ A Novel That Grows On Readers

The main character in Lauren Groff's engaging novel, Arcadia, grows up to become a photography professor who knows that for most of his students, his classes are way stations into a hobby.

"But his job, as he understands it," Groff writes, "is to help his students see: to make them pay attention, slow down and appreciate what they're doing. This is something they can use in life."

In a way, that's what Groff does by way of lovely writing and memorable characters who are haunted by the past. She makes us slow down and pay attention to a story that at first doesn't seem promising.

Ridley "Bit" Stone, the generous and gentle professor, is the child of hippies. He grew up on a commune, which like most hippie communes, rose and fell on its own excesses

The premise seems predictable: how dreams of living "with the land, not on it" crash into economic reality and human foibles that are complicated by drugs and sex. And won't the children of childish hippies end up rebelling against their rebellious parents?

But Groff's novel grew on me from its opening, in 1968, and as it stretches, with periodic interruptions, into the future that is 2018.

The commune, Arcadia, in upstate New York, was once home to hundreds. Decades later, its demise is summed up by a neighbor, an Amish woman who knows the tensions between community and freedom.

"Too much freedom, it rots things in communities, quick," she says. "That was the problem with your Arcadia."

The story is told mostly from the perspective of Bit, who weighs three pounds when he's born in a hippie caravan.

At 6, he struggles to teach himself to read (which he does) and to understand the world that's Arcadia (that would take a lifetime). At 14, he sees the commune collapse. Internal struggles are more to blame than a violent police drug bust.

Decades later, he's teaching in New York, with a 3-year-old daughter. His wife, another child of Arcadia, has disappeared. And finally, in 2018, in a world threatened by an epidemic and global warming, Bit returns to Arcadia with his mother, who's dying, and his daughter, who's now 14.

But it's not so much the story as the storytelling that grabbed me. It builds on the talents Groff displayed in her 2008 debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton, which re-imagined the myths of the author's hometown, Cooperstown, N.Y.

In Arcadia, Bit thinks, his parents were once happy and he was happy as a child. Or was he?, he wonders and concludes, "Best to distrust this retrospective radiance: gold dust settles over memory and makes it shine."

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