Happy Publication Day to a Great Novel(ist)

Tue 13 Feb 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., | Posted by: Gavin

Tonight, weather willing, Kelly will launch her new book, her first novel, The Book of Love, at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn. (All her tour dates .) It is an amazing novel, has received the kind of reviews an author might dream of and I love the framing of 20+ years of nope, no novel, nope then oh, ok, HUGE novel. What a treat for me and everyone else. I meant to write about it in the run up to publication but other things kept getting in the way.

Now here I am on publication day, lying on a couch in a hotel in NYC while Kelly has gone off to her a reading and I have run out of juice so here are a few links. Some people will have seen some of them, with luck they are wide enough scattered that they might intrigue many different readers. With Kelly away, I’ll go listen to her talk to Beth Golay on KMUW’s Marginalia.(Later: I strongly recommend this!) I enjoyed, even if I disagree about the book’s length, Michael Patrick Brady’s review on WBUR. My favorite thing that came out today was Riza Cruz’s Shelf Life piece on Elle where Kelly gets to recommend some favorite reads.

Before today, Ron Charles reviewed the novel in the Washington Post, Steve Pfarrer chatted with Kelly and reviewed the book in our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, and yesterday Amal El-Mohtar’s review — such a review to bring tears to one’s eyes — arrived in the New York Times.

Kelly’s posted her Book of Love playlists — Apple; Spotify — and if you can’t get to any of the readings, there’s now an online event: Kelly & Kathleen Jennings read from and discuss their new books, The Book of Love and Kindling respectively and Moon Palace will have signed book plates to go with orders.