VIV Says: Blog

In Katharine Weber's latest novel, she tells the history of fictional Zip's Candies.

As snow softly blankets the trees outside or when a cold winter rain beats against our windows, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as a cozy chair, a great book and the promise of a lazy Saturday or Sunday. Good reads help us through our winter doldrums, transporting us to other places and times, as we’re absorbed into a compelling tale. Following are three very different new novels, perfect for winter reading — a little girl finds a sense of family she’s never known with her Southern aunt, a Manhattan lawyer plagued by a mysterious condition must walk away from everything, and a woman examines the sticky and sweet aspects of her ex-husband’s family candy business.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt
(Pamela Dorman Books, 2010)
With an absentee father always gone on business, it’s up to 12-year-old CeeCee Honeycutt to take care of her mother, a former fun-loving Southern belle whose tenuous grasp on reality causes her to regularly don her 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen sash over old prom dresses and wander around Willoughby, Ohio, in 1967. Alienated from her classmates because her mother is the town’s laughingstock, CeeCee takes refuge in books and with her only friend, an elderly neighbor. When CeeCee’s mother dies, things look bleak until her great-aunt Talullah Caldwell arrives and whisks her off to live in Savannah, Georgia. There, CeeCee meets an array of strong Southern women, including housekeeper Oletta Jones and the eccentric and beautiful Thelma Rae Goodpepper, who help her find a sense of belonging and understand her mother’s death — and life. Beth Hoffman’s debut can transport you from the coldest winter surroundings to feeling the summertime Georgia sun on your skin and will have you rooting for CeeCee throughout this sweetly-spun tale.

The Unnamed
(Reagan Arthur Books, 2010)
After Joshua Ferris’ brilliant debut, Then We Came to the End (Little, Brown and Company, 2007), which blended humor and poignant humanity, The Unnamed is equally compelling, yet surprising in its devastating sadness. Tim Farnsworth is a successful Manhattan attorney with a beautiful, loving wife; a somewhat awkward teenage daughter and a gated suburban home.

But he’s plagued with a mysterious condition that causes bouts of compulsive walking to the point of exhaustion. As Farnsworth struggles with the war between his mind and body, his slightly surreal world starts to crumble — not only does his illness test the strength of his marriage, wreaking havoc on his professional life and straining his relationship with his daughter, but his environment falls into chaos, from extreme heat waves and cold snaps to swarms of dead bees. This novel, fraught with frustration and despair, will cause you to reevaluate what’s often taken for granted.

True Confections
(Shaye Areheart Books, 2009)
Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, who marries into the Zip’s Candies family in the mid-’70s after an unfortunate incident derails her college plans, is the reader’s guide through the fictional candy family’s tree. With plenty of wit and a conversational tone, Alice unravels the often-sticky family history in the form of an affidavit.

The tale includes Hungarian immigrant Eli Czaplinsky’s harried flight from New York City to New Haven and his inspiration for Zip’s Little Sammies, Mumbo Jumbos and Tigermelts from a purloined library copy of Little Black Sambo (HarperCollins, 1923), as well as the current family entanglements that necessitate the telling of the story. Katharine Weber, author of Triangle (Picador, 2007) and The Music Lesson (Picador, 2000), effectively blends the fictional tale of Zip’s (which even has its own website) with actual historical anecdotes for a story so believable, people sometimes tell Weber they remember the fictional treats. The book also examines the question of the damages caused by accepted cultural racism, such as Zip’s motto, “Say, Dat’s Tasty!”

For more winter reads, check out VIVmag’s January/February issue. Do you have any new books you’d recommend?