Who Other People Think Bathsheba Monk Is
Now You See It...Stories from Cokesville, PA
A CHICAGO TRIBUNE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
The main pleasure of reading the book resides in its steadily accruing portrait of a sensibility--how it feels to be from Cokesville, how being from Cokesville shapes thought and perception. Local mentality can be a greased pig of a literary objective, typically slathered as it is with layers of sentiment and convention, but Monk's relatively minimalist approach gets a grip on her subject with a certain businesslike lack of fuss that is itself exemplary of the regional style.
--Carlo Rotello, --The Chicago Tribune
A sublime and deadpan debut that cocks an eyebrow and reminds us that it is never a light thing, this leaving home, though we all must try.” ―--Esquire
Bathsheba Monk is a writer I'll be talking about when I talk about brilliant new writers. Now You See It . . . is the work of an imaginative, funny, and electrically gifted storyteller.” ―--Tim O'Brien
The stories use deadpan humor to combat a sense of hopelessness and economic futility.” ―--The New Yorker
A sassy, hard-boiled book of stories, some of which will break your heart . . . Monk's Cokesville stories convincingly span more than forty years of coal dust and hard living. . . . All of the stories are touching, some profoundly so.” ―The Buffalo News
Inventive, unsentimental, Monk is a grassroots artist who honed her craft at the school of hard knocks. Her sense of place resonates in tune with her feisty sense of self.” ―--The Boston Globe
Monk is a terrific writer. . . . Like the soot in Cokesville, there is blackness to Monk's writing, but she is so funny that her fierceness sneaks up and smacks us from behind. . . . An important new voice in American fiction.” ―--The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)
Nude Walker
Nude Walker
"A pitch-perfect portrayal of class warfare...Monk is a sure-footed storyteller who comically, affectionately, poignantly maps the emotional minefields of the northeastern heartland---and the heart."--
A precision-choreographed subversion of American myths….[Everyone] is looking to swap the cards they’ve been dealt."---The New York Times Book Review
A Romeo and Juliet tale...Instead of sixteenth-century Verona, Monk gives us a twenty-first-century American community whose face is changing to the accompaniment of fear and bigotry....A rewarding read."---The Philadelphia Inquirer
Bathsheba Monk’s refreshing, beautifully written new novel, Nude Walker, is a must-read book---filled with telling and memorable images of Arab Americans. Nude Walker reveals that we are not a monolithic community, that there exists much goodness about us, a goodness that is seldom reflected in popular culture."---Dr. Jack Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs
You know how writers are always cautioned not to have too many plates in the air? Well, Bathsheba Monk lets those plates fly and dance and whirl like dervishes and shiver like wronged lovers and spin like hilarious idiots. I found myself looking up, up, wondering how she would pull it off—and then I was reading without stopping, because I couldn’t tear myself away. Nude Walker has everything: war and conflict, sex and betrayal, old-money people and fresh-dollar newcomers, and always men and women looking for the purest kind of love, even if it burns too hot." --Susan Straight
Dead Wrong
Dead Silence
Nude Walker
On the one hand, I hate crime and call the cops at every suspicious car that drives by my house. On the other hand, I love crime stories. And sometimes I don't care whodunnit but I keep reading just to keep listening to the narrator tell her story. This is the case with the best cozy mysteries and especially with Bathsheba Monk's new sleuth, Swanson Herbinko, who is, let's say, Philip Marlowe's wise-cracking mouth alive and well in Kate Winslet's torso. Swanson's a chatterbox, but Ms. Monk, a born storyteller, knows how far Swanson can go with the sarcasm and the jokes and not let the voice magnetize itself and forget it's supposed to be telling a story. Excellent. Highly recommended. --Hawkins Zoave
Dead Silence
Dead Silence
Dead Silence
This is French society from a decidedly American perspective. Swanson Herbinko is ballsy in that ethnic Boston Southie style and the clash of her verve with the crustiness of the French makes this story a peg above the rest. On top of that Monk has given us a great character-driven story filled with fun and heartbreak! Swanson Herbinko is a pip and I'm sure we were friends in a former life. It is a great read. I only wish there was more of it ... Oh wait there are two other Herbinko mysteries waiting in the wings! -- Jacques Gagne
Dead Karma
Dead Silence
Dead Silence
Fast paced and a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this. It didn't matter that I started with this book first. I have another one on my Kindle and I'm going to read that now. Bathsheba Monk is a great writer. --Susie Q.
Graphic Novel
Bathsheba Monk
A over-the-hill history professor is hired by Bill Gates and Michael Eisner to rewrite history. What could go wrong?
REVIEW FROM VINCENT FRANCONE
When Memories of the Year 2000 arrived in my hands, I was surprised by the size. As a sometimes ambitious reader, a tome is often a welcome thing, even if your average Miss Macintosh, My Darling is an exciting object that I’m slow to get through (assuming I’ll ever finish that book). But Bathsheba Monk’s novel (for lack of a better word) is an art-sized book just shy of 200 pages. In those pages are cut-and-paste text that formally imitates the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink narrative. Come to think of it, the metaphorical kitchen sink is in there as well, strewn somewhere along a collection of black and white sketches, ads, art, photos, quasi-propaganda posters, and hand-written asides assembled like a yearbook from the hilariously strange school you can’t forget attending, however much you wish you could.
This school has a teacher. A professor, actually, the narrator, a history prof conscribed (sorta— money is hard to refuse) by titans of industry Bill Gates and Michael Eisner to tell their story so that… you know what—it’s better you read the thing yourself. And the plot is tight despite a helluva lotta surrealist detours that make sense to anyone who’s ever read cyberpunk novels that only slightly distort reality in their funhouse mirrors. I could mention the shape-shifting characters that morph along with the bendy narrative, but, again, it’s better you read the thing. Suffice it to state that we have a Pegasus, an alligator (complete with Jonah-like plot turn), the before-mentioned Gates and Eisner as well as Jerry Goddamn Springer and (guess who!) God himself. Most of these figures are self-serving— apt as the 20th century had just ended and the brave dumb world was before us. I can’t think of a better time to look back toward to measure all we’ve done, all that’s been wrought, all that’s coming. This might be a mess without the damn fine writing that moors the reader, much needed in this casually madcap tale. Memories’ balance requires control. A lot of it. Comparisons to stylistically daring masters like Lucy Ellmann and Kathy Acker abound, though Monk asserts herself with caustic, smart prose skewering a not so long ago era—a mere 25 years ago!—the culture of which seems damn quaint in comparison to the absurdity of today. We see seeds in this book that have long sprouted and, sadly, have much life ahead of them.
Yet, there’s something like catharsis in this book. Maybe in the humor, which is sharp. Maybe in the play, which is invigorating. And if in the end there is a message from the Almighty, unlike Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s books wherein we see God’s final message to us in form of the ultimate dry joke, Monk’s divine missive is a paean to spontaneity, creativity— to humanity, really. In times as bleak as these, I’ll happily take it.
Books about Artists
Clarence H. Carter
Up close and personal essay about Bathsheba Monk's relationship with father-in-law Clarence H. Carter. Includes reproductions of art in the author's collection.
Fuad Hamdi
Fuad Hamdi is an Iraqi born artist who was caught up in the diaspora of 2006 to Syria, then fleeing that country for Turkey in 2011 when the Syrian civil war broke out, finally finding asylum in Canada. His art is an explosive mix of West and East, landing finally in an imaginary country where sensuality and peace are brought out from behind the veil What we are seeing in Fuad Hamdi’s work is an artistic sensibility formed in a specific culture, thrown headlong and mid-career into a world where every color is available to him. Every thought is celebrated. An artist who was jailed for daring to paint what he saw behind the veil is suddenly able to explode onto the canvas all his concealed ideas, longings, fears and ideas of beauty. It’s a rich feast that we are fortunate to be invited to. Includes reproductions of art throughout the artist's career.
Writing as Maddy Wells
have love
have mercy
have mercy
In the summer of love, 1967, two sisters leave their blue collar home in PA to make their way in NYC. The beautiful sister, Alex, quickly finds her stride, but the homely sister fights to keep her place in Alex's charmed orbit. They both struggle to adapt to changing social mores--the pill, the draft, abortion--and the decisions they make reverberate through the next generations. Highly recommended.
have mercy
have mercy
have mercy
A fifteen-year old girl runs away from home when her mother sleeps with a high school student on prom night.
New Book, Unsuitable for Every Age
Lighten up, have some fun with your kids or grandkids and read them a book. The way to get them to read is to read to them. Make them subversive!