Author Archives: SJW

Henry, Reviewed from New Zealand

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Reviews don’t get much farther flung than New Zealand.

I seemed to have been lately reading novels with quirky introverted characters; The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Last Voyage of Mrs Henry Parker to name just two. They are the sort of stories to be read at leisure. So what better time, in the midst of the 2020 Covid 19 Lockdown, to read something in a similar vein.

Henry Maxwell is a retired gentleman once a soldier and an engineer, always a husband, father and grandfather. The year is 1998 and we share this with Henry in his 75th year. As each chapter captures a moment in the year, we experience the smaller details of Henry’s life.

These everyday minutiae are poignantly shared; from the humour of trying to stop Rufus the dog from killing patches of grass with his peeing, to the joy of receiving a perfect Father’s Day present from his children.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Local authors suggest books to read in strange, unsettling times

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Here are Stewart’s reading suggestions:

Stewart O’Nan is the author of “Emily Alone” and “Henry, Himself.” He loves “Pittsburgh” by Frank Santoro, calling it “a gorgeous moving graphic memoir of growing up in Swissvale.” He also likes “Shopping Mall” by Matthew Newton, describing it as “a more analytical book-length personal essay exploring the shopping mall as a shared American experience, focusing on the author’s personal relationship with our own Monroeville Mall. Both make present worlds we as Pittsburghers know that have since vanished.”

If you can’t obtain those titles, Mr. O’ Nan wrote, “I’d recommend reading the big book on your shelf that you’ve tried to read several times but just couldn’t get through. ‘Ulysses,’ ‘Moby Dick,’ ‘Invisible Man,’ ‘A Little Life.’ Now’s the time, now that you have time. Don’t let that book beat you!”

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13 Essential Pandemic Novels

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Check out Publishers Weekly’s 13 Essential Pandemic Novels.  Read on and please stay safe!

A Prayer for the Dying

The first thing to like about Stewart O’Nan’s slim, gruesome novel is that its hero wears three hats—he’s the local sheriff, undertaker and priest in the town of Friendship, Wisc. That combo becomes a particularly tough role when the outpost is consumed by a brutal epidemic that is killing the locals in shocking fashion. Part-Western, part horror story, this post-Civil War tale, like too much of O’Nan’s work, is an underrated gem.

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1/20/20 7PM: Writers in Paradise Reading

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Eckerd College’s Writers in Paradise presents a series of readings by conference faculty and guests. All readings are followed by book signings, with books available for sale. Readings are free and open to the public; they take place in Miller Auditorium on the Eckerd College campus, 4200 54th Ave. S, St. Petersburg. (727) 386-2264. writersinparadise.com.

    • 8 p.m. Saturday: Keynote speaker Dani Shapiro (Inheritance), Q&A with Les Standiford
    • 7 p.m. Sunday: Ann Hood (Kitchen Yarns) and Sterling Watson (The Committee)
    • 7 p.m. Monday: Ashley M. Jones (dark//thing), Michael Koryta (If She Wakes) and Stewart O’Nan (Henry, Himself)
    • 7 p.m. Tuesday: Andre Dubus III (Gone So Long) and Stephanie Elizondo Griest (All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands)

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