When Julia Glass’ first book, Three Junes, came out in 2002 and won the National Book Award, it became a book group trailblazer. Book groups everywhere rejoiced in a new author of contemporary fiction whose writing was fresh and confident and featured complex, memorable characters. You’d think that would be easy to do, but it isn’t. There is a reason that books like Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake become bestsellers—because readers hunger for the kind of books that sweep them in and give them something to think and talk about.
Julia Glass’s second novel, The Whole World Over, also became a book group staple. Set in New York, it features Greenie, a baker and chef who moves to New Mexico with her son, to cook for a Republican governor; Alan, the psychologist husband Greenie leaves behind; Walter, the gay owner of an upscale meat and potatoes restaurant; and Saga, a young woman recovering from a brain injury. Fenno, a bookstore owner from Scotland, who was a character in Three Junes, also appears. I wrote about my book group’s recent discussion for Booklist’s “Book Group Buzz” blog, where readers found much to enjoy and also critique in the book.
Glass is very good at creating multi-dimensional characters that you care about, who frustrate and confuse you, as real as your own family and friends. Glass’ new novel, I See You Everywhere, should prove to do the same (see this New York Times review). It is about two sisters, Louisa and Clem, whose relationship is fraught with jealousy and misunderstanding.
What do I like about Julia Glass? I enjoy her writing, her characters and her storytelling, but I also love that she is an author who loves to talk about books. In a 2002 interview, she talks extensively about the books she loves and why. I found out about some new authors, and saw books I had read in a new light. When Glass gave a reading at the Central Library on her tour promoting The Whole World Over, I asked her about including Fenno in her new book, and asked her what characters in literature she would have liked to have seen an author write about again. Her answer endeared her to me and made me a fan for life: she said Gwendolen Harleth from George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda and Larry Weller from Larry’s Party by Carol Shields. If those authors were alive today, I would be bombarding their e-mail inboxes, demanding sequels!
Julia Glass will be reading from her new novel, I See You Everywhere, at the Central Library on Tuesday, October 21 at 7 p.m. in the Microsoft Auditorium. Don’t miss your chance to hear Glass read from her new book, or ask her any question you have been dying to ask.
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