The Mumpsimus

Niall Harrison has posted links to reviews of the novels shortlisted for the Clarke Award this year, and I looked at it and thought, "Didn't I review Oh Pure and Radiant Heart somewhere other than in the best-of-the-year article for Locus Online?" And then I realized that, indeed, I had, but that the review was not available online, having been published in the print edition of Locus. Here, then, for the sake of completism (or something) is that review:


Lydia Millet builds her fourth novel from a simple extrapolation: What would happen if J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Leo Szilard, three of the designers and developers of the atomic bomb, were to find themselves transported from 1945 to the beginning of the twenty-first century?

Millet fully explores this premise while balancing humor and horror, fantasy and reality, history and imagination in a book that is compulsively readable, but also thought-provoking and even disturbing. While the central plot of Oh P…

Galleycat reports that five writers have been nominated by the New York Public Library for the Young Lions Fiction Award, and I was thrilled to see that three of the writers are people whose work will be appearing in our inaugural volume of Best American Fantasy: Chris Adrian, Kevin Brockmeier, and Tony D'Souza. I'm still reading Chris Adrian's amazing novel The Children's Hospital (and likely will be for a while), I reviewed Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead for SF Site, and I just bought a copy of Tony D'Souza's Whiteman, which was edited by the great and glorious Tina Pohlman.

In my copious free time, I hope eventually to start chronicling the awards and accomplishments of all of our BAF contributors at the blog, but for now little blips of congratulations are going to have to suffice. So congratulations to Tony, Kevin, and Chris -- and may you all win!

Jeff VanderMeer has reported that Tamar Yellin is the first recipient of the $100,000 Jewish Book Council Award for her first novel, The Genizah at the House Of Shepher. This is excellent news, indeed, and I thought I would take the opportunity to reprint here a review of the book that I wrote for the Summer 2005 print edition of Rain Taxi:


Now that we live in an age when all codes decipher to Da Vinci, it is difficult to approach a novel like The Genizah at the House of Shepher on its own terms, because here we have a story of religious scholars and lost Bibles and intrigues of mysticism, the bare plot of which might suggest the author was gunning for bestseller lists and Hollywood. But Tamar Yellin's first novel is not a thriller, nor will it appeal to anyone looking for grand conspiracy theories. It is, instead, a family memoir wrought in fiction, a contemplation of history and fate, a mishmash amalgam of memories and myths.

"Genizah" is the Yiddish word for a place …

What phenomenal news: Julie Phillips's biography of James Tiptree/Alice Sheldon has won the National Book Critics Circle Award for biography!

Awards frustrate me for lots of different reasons, but this news just made my day.

M.T. Anderson has won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his novel Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation; vol. 1: The Pox Party.

I don't usually note award results around here, but in this case I am thrilled to see such an odd and extraordinary book honored, and it also gives me a chance to note that Jenny Davidson (of Light Reading) recently wrote a fine review of the book for the NYTBR.

Update:Here's a great interview with Anderson about the book.

Last year I inaugurated the Mumpsimus "Cup of Coffee for a Genius" Award, bestowing it upon the great and glorious Rudi Dornemann. It is time now, once again, to send a hand-made mug and $5 to a writer of exceptional talent who has not received nearly enough attention.

Before announcing this year's winner, let's review the guidelines and process:

The Award
Winners of the award are chosen by a top-secret selection committee composed entirely of myself. The committee utilizes a specific set of vague criteria to determine a recipient. The recipient mustbe an exceptionally creative individual, preferably a writer, preferably one whose work I've read
show significant promise for interesting future work, preferably writingThe award provides a qualified individual selected by the committee with the following prize:One $5 bill and
A coffee mug made by Rick Elkin of Rising Moon Studios, a member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen (who these days mostly makes jewelry, bu…