PECKERWOOD BOOK CLUB: What's A Perfect Book To Read In The Fall? Plus "A Calling For Charlie Barnes!"

Greetings, Peckerwood book lovers! What type of books do you like to read in the fall? Something spooky or scary? An easy bon-bon of a book? Fall is allegedly a time for "serious or important liter-a-chure," or at least that's what the Big Five publishing houses have long decreed. Why release a "feel good" novel like "The Midnight Library" in the fall, their thinking goes, when it can sell like hotcakes in the summer months as a popular, breezy beach read? Sales have born out this marketing strategy, though "serious" and "important" are certainly in the eyes of the beholder.

Is "Absolution" important, serious fiction? Let's see: a National Book Award-winning author, a decades-spanning scenario originating in the Vietnam War, pre-publication praise from no less than Ann Patchett. Why, yes, I'd say it qualifies and I look forward to reading it. Are Britney's and Jada's and Stamos' tell-all memoirs "important?" In terms of broad, magaziney cultural conversations, perhaps, and honestly, the last thing I want to read during my lazy summer months is a thrown-together, self-serving celeb memoir (actually, I never want to read them, because life's too short, yickety-yack and so forth, but that's me).

For my part, I very much like serious, important liter-a-chure in the fall, but one spiked with dark humor and eye-popping surprises. In this vein, Joshua Ferris' "A Calling For Charlie Barnes" is just about irresistible.

In this witty, pitch-black arena, we meet Charlie Barnes, a late-60s, shamelessly womanizing Midwestern man with multiple ex-wives who's struggled for professional success his entire life. His story, we realize, is being told by his son, Jake, in a novel which may be true, or maybe not. Or maybe both. When we first meet Charlie, he's in full panic-mode and awaiting test results, as he may have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Rushing to inform his family, he contacts his eldest son Jerry, a supposed Zen master and would-be social justice warrior who’s actually a near-homeless crank; tries and fails to reach his youngest son Jake, the novelist; leaves a frantic message with Marcy, his divorced daughter in Texas who can switch from kind to vicious on a dime; and his blithely unconcerned, 88 year-old mother, Delwina, who dismisses Charlie’s circumstance, believing that no one dies from cancer these days.

For his part, Charlie is a character at once infuriating and sorrowful, a morally shifty man who’s also piteously – sometimes hilariously - chasing, and just missing out on, the American Dream. He’s Willy Loman filtered through Al Bundy, which also sums up the author’s haywire narrative approach, one that bends staid archetypes and seemingly cliched story turns like so much taffy. Charlie’s children are no less effective, including Marcy, the ruthless pragmatist who survived a harrowing childhood and has no interest in reuniting with her father; and Jake himself, the novel's "author" and family outsider who can’t quite decide whether truth or fiction is best.

The novel has so many pull-the-rug-out-from-under-you moments - some of them concerning the characters, some with the storyline - that I sometimes found myself laughing and gasping and emotionally pulverized all at once. Yet the author's technical high-wire act isn't just showboating. "A Calling For Charlie Barnes" gets under your skin as few novels do. It's a great read for the fall, I think, since, yes, it's literary and critically lauded, but also volatile and unpredictable, like a roller coaster that flies off the rails but somehow lands intact. It's quite a ride.

Speaking of rides - oh no I di'nt! - your happy neighborhood Bibliophile Boy™ needs recommendations for his fall reading list. And while he's aware of all the celeb bios being released, since he's one of our Peckerwood blog readers, he feels like he's already caught up with urgent celeb rigamarole, thankyew. So give him your best shot. Something scary? Serious liter-a-chure? He'll take it all in! Till next time, fellow book tricks!

Photo Credit: Little Brown & Company