Palahniuk's film industry novel and Nita Prowse's The Maid: February New Books

Chuck Palahniuk, Birth of Sound (AST)

The Birth of Sound is a new novel by Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club, Choke, and Survivor.

This time the focus of the writer is the film industry.

Palahniuk talks about Hollywood, the film academy and filmmakers.

The protagonist of the work is Mitzi Eaves, a noise engineer who sells incredibly realistic recordings of groans, screams and death rattles.

Studios willingly buy materials without thinking about their origin.

One day, Gail Foster, the father of a girl who disappeared 17 years ago, comes to the Mitzi Eaves studio during an investigation.

“The Birth of Sound” is Palahniuk at his best, venomously sarcastic, disgustingly inventive and talented master, able to draw extremely convincing, gloomy and not always pleasant pictures,” the publisher writes about the book.

“Until that day, any rude bus driver could bring Mitzi to tears.

From that day on, her job was to bring others to tears.

She rose to the level of a professional sadist, only better.

Her ability to create general tension, and then blow up the audience, let everyone blow off steam, without exaggeration, could be called supernatural.

It was two years before graduation, but Mitzi never returned to school.

The girl became the only Ives in Ives Foley Arts.

Other 15-year-olds, those who want to go to university, had to study.

Mitzi already knew everything she needed to know about life, a terrible death, and how to quietly receive royalties from world rentals, not really bothering with tax deductions.

• Chuck Palahniuk, Birth of Sound

• © AST

In the Monster Garden, Eric Larson (Alpina Publisher)

Action documentary novel by journalist Eric Larson takes place in Berlin in the 1930s.

The author writes about the changes that resulted in the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship in the country.

The book is based on numerous documents, memoirs, letters and diaries of politicians, public figures and ordinary people.

The plot revolves around US Ambassador to Berlin William Dodd and his daughter.

In 2019, a film based on Larson's book was announced.

The film is produced by StudioCanal and Playtone Productions.

Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Anna Karenina will be directed by Joe Wright.

Producers include Tom Hanks.

He is also expected to play the lead role.

“On one occasion, von Coburg, the same duke with a dagger at his belt, walked past her when she was talking with Kurt Daluege, a police official whom the journalist considered “cruel and ruthless.”

She saw that the duke really wanted to appear haughty, but no matter how hard he tried, he remained only ridiculous.

In the words of Bella Fromm, he looked like a "hunchbacked gnome."

Dalyuge said:

— This Coburg performs like on stilts.

Then he pointed out viciously:

- Information may leak to the press that his grandmother cheated on the Archduke with one Jewish court banker.

The next day at ten in the morning, Bella Fromm called Poulette.

The old maid answered the phone.

She said that "Madam Baroness left a note in the kitchen asking her not to disturb her."

But Poulette had never stayed in bed for that long.

“And I immediately understood everything,” recalled Bella Fromm.

• "In the Monster Garden" by Eric Larson

• © Alpina Publisher

Nita Prowse, The Maid (ABC-Atticus)

The Maid is the debut novel by literary editor Nita Prowse.

The work has been compared to Gail Honeyman's Eleanor Oliphant is All Right and Agatha Christie's detective stories.

In the center of the plot is an employee of a luxury hotel, Molly Gray.

She is used to the fact that every day of her life is practically no different from the previous one.

But one day Gray finds the body of a rich and influential guest in the room and becomes the main suspect in his murder.

The heroine, who is fond of detective series and all sorts of puzzles, will have to apply her knowledge and solve the crime.

Otherwise, she risks ending up in jail.

At the end of 2020, even before the release of the book, it became known that Universal Studios had acquired the rights to film it.

Oscar nominee Florence Pugh, best known for her roles as Elena Belova in Black Widow and Amy March in Little Women, will play the lead role in the film.

“On unsteady legs, I shuffled over to the table on the other side of the bed, where the phone was, and called the front desk.

— Regency Grand, reception.

How can I help you?

“Good afternoon,” I began.

- I'm not a guest.

Usually I don't ask for help.

This is Molly, the maid.

I am now in the penthouse on the fourth floor, in room 401, and I have a non-standard situation here.

A mess of a special kind, so to speak.

Why are you calling reception?

Call the cleaning service.

“I am the cleaning service!”

I raised my voice.

“Please, could you inform Mr. Snow that we have a guest here... who is not quite alive.

“Not quite alive?”

That is why it is better to say everything and always directly and unequivocally, but, I confess, at that moment I lost my head for a while.

- He's completely dead!

- I said.

- Lying in bed, completely dead.

Contact Mr Snow.

And please call emergency services.

Immediately!"

• Nita Prowse, "Maid"

• © Azbuka-Atticus

Quive McDonnell, "Strange Times" (MYTH)

Vincent Bancroft is the editor-in-chief of a supernatural newspaper.

The pages of the publication publish news about the predictions of the three-headed chicken, the attack of the mummy and the appearance of UFOs, in which no one believes.

Shortly before the delivery of the next issue, due to a lack of materials, the newspaper's employees begin a journalistic investigation and find out that something supernatural is really happening around.

The author of the novel, Quive McDonnell, is also known as a stand-up comedian and screenwriter.

Work on television brought the writer a nomination for the BAFTA award.

McDonnell's debut novel, The Man with One of Many Faces, was released in 2016 and became a bestseller.

According to the publisher, the writer's new book will be of particular interest to fans of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman and Stephen King.

“Hannah would have given the head of this strange newspaper 40-45 years old, but his unhealthy, rumpled appearance could be misleading.

The man managed to look both fat and thin, and his face struck a funeral expression.

Although it could be explained by the taste of prehistoric pizza, which Bancroft could not manage to finish chewing.

In a word, he gave the impression of a revived corpse of himself.

Finally, the interlocutor swallowed the rest of the pizza with difficulty, burped loudly, put his feet on the table and put the cigarette he had obtained earlier into his mouth.

- Can you smoke here?

Hanna asked.

— It all depends on the circumstances.

For example, you are strictly forbidden to do this.

I, on the contrary, strongly recommended to relieve stress.

It's one of the few rewards for running a company of mediocrity and oafs," Bancroft said in a slight Irish accent that sounded more like a growl.

- I have asthma.

“Each of us carries his own cross,” the man shrugged, lighting a cigarette.

— I, for example, have a terrible fungal disease of the feet.

Well, let's start the interview, shall we?

Where do you see yourself in five years?

• Quive McDonnell, "Strange Times"

• © MIF

Peter Pringle, "Nikolai Vavilov" ("Alpina Publisher")

In his book, American journalist Peter Pringle talks about botany and genetics Nikolai Vavilov and his humanitarian mission.

The scientist sought to defeat hunger throughout the world.

To do this, he planned, with the help of advanced scientific achievements at that time, to develop crops that could grow in barren territories.

Vavilov was looking for wild varieties of potatoes, wheat, rye and corn.

His expeditions were supported by Vladimir Lenin, but after the death of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin set priorities differently.

Pringle writes not only about the search and achievements and the fate of Vavilov, he also tried to reveal the identity of the scientist.

In this, the journalist was helped by previously unpublished reports of the geneticist on expeditions, letters and memories of eyewitnesses.

“There were often heated debates between the two groups of Petrovka growers.

One winter, Nikolai Ivanovich was traveling as part of a group of students in a separate railway car from Moscow to Kharkov to the first congress on selection and seed production - its full name reflected the importance that the organizers attached to it: “I All-Russian Congress of Figures on the Selection of Agricultural Plants, Seed Production and Distribution seed material on January 10-15, 1911 in Kharkov.

A heated argument ensued in the carriage about Mendel's laws and their application in crop production, so heated that it went to a fight.

Nikolai Ivanovich intervened, proposing to continue the discussion in the form of a trial of Mendelism.

He staged a mock court hearing, taking on the role of Mendel's defender, and defended the postulate that crop production was a "science" and not an "art."

Witnesses from both sides were invited.

The "prosecutor" opened the meeting by announcing that the sowers had been selecting the best plants for sowing for centuries.

Prove, he demanded, how can young agronomists of the early twentieth century be better versed in selection than a peasant with a sharp eye trained to identify a good, healthy plant or a thoroughbred choice cow?

• Peter Pringle, "Nikolai Vavilov"

• © Alpina Publisher

Yoav Bloom, "I'm Always Me" ("ABC-Atticus")

In the world described in the novel by the Israeli writer and programmer Yoav Bloom, people get the opportunity to change bodies due to a brilliant invention.

However, one of the heroes, Dan Arbel, is not capable of such movements and always remains himself.

One day, a woman is killed in front of his eyes.

She manages to say that she was his lover and stuck in someone else's body.

Arbel will have to solve the crime, as well as find out what happened to him.  

The novel was awarded Israel's prestigious literary award, the Geffen Prize.

The author of the Shabbat magazine notes the cheerful tone of the story and the exciting plot.

According to a journalist from Makor Rishon, “To fully enjoy this book, you need to read it a second time.

However, this applies to all books by Yoav Bloom, which harmoniously combine fiction, philosophy, romance and detective story.

“For artists who painted sketches, the scope of work has become wider.

They no longer asked you to choose the shape of the nose or the shape of the eyes.

Based on your half-erased memory, they drew a whole bunch of pictures in which they tried to capture a gesture, an integral image in all its manifestations.

How a person shrugs his shoulders, how he tilts his head, how he purses his lips, how wide his step is.

Plastic has become a significant part of the description: even in someone else's body, people most often continued to behave as usual.

Small nervous movements, the posture in which a person sits, the way he stretches his neck when he listens - all this became parts of a huge fingerprint, not always clear, but rich in detail.

And here in front of me sat a policeman - an identikit draftsman - and was engaged in pantomime.

- When he was already driving, did he sit and look at you like that?

(

) Or so?

(

)"

• Yoav Bloom, "I'm Always Me"

• © Azbuka-Atticus