I just finished The Maid by Nita Prose. It’s a debut novel by a longtime editor and I enjoyed it a lot. It’s a murder mystery set in a five-star hotel in Toronto. It has a very endearing central character in Molly, a maid who works at the hotel. It is a NYT bestseller that will be made into a movie. Stephen King’s quote on this book: “Excellent and totally entertaining…The most interesting (and endearing) main character in a long time.” What debut novelist wouldn’t like that SK quote on the cover of her book?
I’m in the middle of reading Erasure by Percival Everett right now. It’s the novel that the recent film, American Fiction, is based on. I got sucked right in in the first few pages and I’m loving it. The central character is a black university professor of English Literature, who writes literary novels and gets frustrated (to say the least) when a hack writes a hit popular novel about life in the ghetto chock full of stereotypes. If you like dark comedy about writers and the publishing industry, I recommend this. I have not seen the film yet but the novel, so far, is great.
