Summer Book Roundup
The Ugly History of Beautiful Things
by Katy Kelleher
Simon & Schuster
MH+D’s longtime writer Katy Kelleher’s debut collection of essays examines the darkness behind beauty. Humans are drawn to things that shimmer in the light, feel smooth to the touch, intoxicate us with their smell, and make us more beautiful. Kelleher gives us all the gory details about the objects we interact with daily. Her extensive research and magical prose make the book almost impossible to put down. The author reveals how her deep love of flowers has led her to even devour their petals and how the mercury and lead in glasses and mirrors have driven their makers to madness and death. She also details how the musky scents we dab on our body to attract others were once siphoned from the glands of slain deer. Nevertheless, the author declares, “The hope for beauty makes me leave my bed each morning rather than moldering in the sheets until I develop bedsores.” Kelleher knows our lust for beauty will never go away and offers us alternatives to satisfy it in a less cruel way.
The Mythmakers
by Keziah Weir
Marysue Rucci Books
A debut novel from Vanity Fair’s Vanities section editor, Maine-based Keziah Weir—who, if you’re paying attention, also writes the magazine’s Books column—hit shelves last month to rightful critical acclaim. The charged story follows Sal Cannon—a journalist whose career (and life in general) has hit an all-time low—as she reassembles the history of an older author-acquaintance whose posthumous short story, she finds, is about her. Or is it? Dani Shapiro calls The Mythmakers “a twisty literary mystery full of surprise and delight.” The book, which was on every most-anticipated list imaginable (Elle, Bustle, Lit Hub, just to name a few), asks the precarious question, “Who owns a story?”
Be Mine
by Richard Ford
Ecco
Southern-born, Pulitzer Prize–winning Richard Ford, who has lived in East Boothbay since 2000, released the final novel in his Frank Bascombe series last month. Be Mine follows the unforgettable character, who first appeared in Ford’s The Sportswriter in 1986, as he plays caregiver to his son, Paul, who has been diagnosed with ALS. The novel follows the two on a winter journey to Mount Rushmore and, with the witty and insightful prose Ford is known for, confronts the mortality that each of us will be forced to face.
