Now our very own Stuart Clark, has his soon-to-be-released second novel The Sensorium of God in the Fall 2012 International fiction preview!!

The author will discuss The Pilgrim, read extracts and sign copies at the following venues during his “Gaspe Launch Week”:

First off we have The National Post who did such an amazing review of The Lola Quartet!

 ”So far, in her young career, Mandel has been pegged as a writer of what jacket copy calls literary noir, blending page-turning sensibilities with prize-worthy prose.” Click here to keep reading!! 

Secondly, Emily did an interview for the Vancouver International Writers Festival Newsletter, discussing everything from what is she’s reading now, to books that have moved and inspired her and even her guilty reading pleasures. This you have to see!!

Lastly, Emily did an interview with Fictionaut who examined Emily’s tactics for getting through writers block, advise for other writers and even what she is working on next!

That is all for now, but I can guarantee this will not be the last time you hear about Emily St. John Mandel or The Lola Quartet!!

There is so much commotion going on about Emily St. John Mandel’s third book The Lola Quartet we thought we would do an entire round up of what we’ve found!

“The Lola Quartet is an absolutely beautiful, dare I say brilliant, novel that I loved tremendously.” says fellow WordPress blogger – Book Addiction 

“This is The Great Gatsby for the disillusioned, overworked, economically desperate late-20s readership.” says Bookshop Santa Cruz

And to top it all off The Lola Quartet was ranked #3 for May titles by WORD!! http://www.wordbrooklyn.com/top-10

We’re loving all the love!!

Two of the leading characters in scientific history are Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke. They were contemporaries, although certainly their relationship was always difficult. It must also be said that both men had difficult characters.

The story of the differences of opinion between them has been told many times, but in The Sensorium of God – the second book in the Sky’s Dark Labyrinth Trilogy author Stuart Clark puts a rather different complexion on it. It is a method that works very well and enables us to look more closely at the thinking of scientists of the Restoration period. Clark is a well-known astrophysicist and a former vice-chairman of the Association of British Science Writers. This book will certainly enhance his reputation.

The novel is set in the mid-17th century, when it had only just been universally agreed that Earth moves around the Sun and was not the most important body in the Universe. Neither Newton or Hooke doubted this, but in many other ways they did not agree at all. You can read this book even if you have not come across the first of the trilogy, and although it is not always pleasant reading, you have to remember these were not always pleasant times!

It has been said that Clark “effortlessly blends science into an enthralling story of triumph over adversity”. Certainly, The Sensorium of God is a blend of historical fiction and astronomy that most people with an interest in science will wish to obtain.

Five stars

Sir Patrick Moore

The Globe and Mail

THE DAILY REVIEW, MON., APRIL 30

Where has all the music gone?

Ever play that game, where will I be in 10 years? The drama in Emily St. John Mandel’s noir thriller hinges on what becomes of four teens who form a jazz quartet in high school, when their lives collide a decade later.

Gavin (trumpet) is a sensitive fabulist who wears fedoras, certain he was born in the wrong era. Jack (piano/saxophone) has a touch of synesthesia and sees light when he plays, music being “the brightest thing in the room.” Daniel (bass), the skinny kid with an afro, wears T-shirts for bands no one has ever heard of. Sasha (drums) is feisty and bookish.

The suspense in The Lola Quartet revolves around Gavin, as his life splinters into shards and he tries to track down his high-school girlfriend, Anna, whom he believes was pregnant when she vanished during the quartet’s last gig. Mandel sets up a rhythm between 1999 and deepest, darkest 2009, during the recent economic crash.

Gavin lands his first job at The New York Star. Daydreaming of changing the world, he invents sources and quotes for his stories, “because real people are so goddamn disappointing.”

Fired and disgraced in a Jayson Blair-like scandal, Gavin returns home to South Florida to work for his sister, a real-estate broker of foreclosed homes. After glimpsing a photo of a girl he assumes is his lost daughter, he becomes obsessed with finding Anna and their child, contacting their old crowd for help.

Mandel can be a spare, graceful writer. She brings music alive. Gavin and his sister, Eilo, are finely wrought, layered characters. The South Florida landscape is evoked in all of its hot-house horror, as suburban sprawl encroaches on natural swampland and nervous residents encounter unsuspecting reptiles. Small, glittering lizards grow into seven-foot-long, 200-pound monsters “with eerily intelligent eyes and extravagantly pebbled skin, perfectly capable of eating a small dog.” (Not to mention a small child.)

The narrative has a hurtling pace, with swift shifts in time, place and perspective. On page one, we meet 17-year-old Anna, transient, hiding out in Virginia. She is drinking her morning coffee in a park, as her daughter Chloe sleeps in the stroller. Mandel peppers this quotidian scene with a little static shock: Duct-taped to the underside of the stroller is more than $100,000 in cash. A few pages and a decade later, Gavin glimpses a photograph of a little girl who resembles him and has Anna’s last name. She’s 10. With this whomping coincidence – within the first 10 pages – we hear the clanking machinery of plot. Mandel strains too hard, too fast.

This adrenaline-fuelled tale is hard to put down, though details are not subtle or well thought out. If Anna’s raison d’être is to protect her baby, is taping stolen money under the stroller a good idea? Mind you, she’s ripped off a homicidal drug dealer. Granted, Anna is not a rocket scientist, but need she be that dim?

Anna is a problem. Central to the story, her character is not deeply imagined. After we meet her briefly on page one, she does not reappear until nearly halfway through the novel. A runaway from a troubled home with a fat file at Family Services, she is a good bad girl, unformed, a type.

The novel dramatizes the painful gap between a teenager’s idealized future and a young adult’s reality. Jack, the one they all thought would make it, is good, just not good enough. He’s sunk into despair and Vicodin addiction, living in a tent. Daniel is barely recognizable as a stoop-shouldered cop, bald and overweight, with two failed marriages behind him. Sasha, who studied English literature, now works the graveyard shift in a roadside diner. Rode hard and put away wet, she spends her free time at Gamblers Anonymous.

Though The Lola Quartet is uneven, it has unsuspected depth. How do you help a friend who’s drowning without going under? How do you reconcile the young dream of self with the later limits of life? These are timely and timeless themes that burrow under the skin.