Recensori in anteprimaNick Mamatas

Berkeley brings its own unique blend of Bay Area noir, complementing the grit and grime that preceded it in San Francisco Noir and Oakland Noir. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: Barry Gifford, Jim Nisbet, Lexi Pandell, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Mara Faye Lethem, Thomas Burchfield, Shanthi Sekaran, Nick Mamatas, Kimn Neilson, Jason S. Ridler, Susan Dunlap, J.M. Curet, Summer Brenner, Michael David Lukas, Aya de León, and Owen Hill. From the introduction by Jerry Thompson and Owen Hill: A town named after a British philosopher doesn’t exactly evoke visions of Goodis or Highsmith. Grifters? Dames? Cops? In Berkeley? On the surface the alleys don’t seem that dark, until we look a little closer. Possibly the most iconic visual image of Berkeley does involve cops. It’s the film with Mario Savio, atop a police car with a megaphone, declaring, “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part!” Now there’s a statement that sums up the spirit of noir. Berkeley Noir asks, If not here, where? While deciding which keys were needed to rev its engines, it was clear to us that for every mile, for every author who helped pave the way for this collection, writers like Anthony Boucher, Janet Dawson, Margaret Cuthbert, Ellen Gilchrist, Linda Grant, Jonathan Lethem, and Barry Gifford (included here with a new gem, “Barroom Butterfly”), there would always be a place in the heart of Berkeley where one would feel at home. From legends like Philip K. Dick setting his stories here, or Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni working out marital bliss in her early novels, or Linnea A. Due tackling teenage alcoholism in the 1970s in High and Outside. The search for an authentic and eclectic voice, and the search for home, become the most important ingredients of this journey.

Following the success of Montreal Noir and Toronto Noir, the Noir Series travels to the west coast of Canada. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. Brand-new stories by: Linda L. Richards, Timothy Taylor, Sheena Kamal, Robin Spano, Carleigh Baker, Sam Wiebe, Dietrich Kalteis, Nathan Ripley, Yasuko Thanh, Kristi Charish, Don English, Nick Mamatas, S.G. Wong, and R.M. Greenaway. From the introduction by Sam Wiebe: You might wonder what shadows could exist in Vancouver, rain-spattered jewel of the Pacific Northwest. Nestled between the US border and the Coast Mountains, the city’s postcard charms are familiar, even to those who’ve never been here, thanks to the films and TV shows shot in Hollywood North: The X-Files and Deadpool, Rumble in the Bronx and Jason Takes Manhattan. Vancouver is the so-called City of Glass. A nice place, in any case, and much too nice for noir. Looked at from afar, Vancouver may seem idyllic. But living here is different—cold and baffling and occasionally hostile. While outsiders focus on high-test BC bud, locals see a heroin crisis: Vancouver is home to the first legalized safe injection site in North America, now heavily taxes by overdoses resulting from street drugs cut with fentanyl. It’s ground zero for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, a nationwide catastrophe involving the deaths and disappearances of hundreds of marginalized women. Money and status trample culture and community. If Vancouver is a City of Glass, that glass is underneath our feet.

Stories covering Long Island's extremes, from the comfortable rich to the horrible porr, and all the darkness between Original stories by: Jules Feiffer, Matthew McGevna, Nick Mamatas, Kaylie Jones, Qanta Ahmed, Charles Salzberg, Reed Farrel Coleman, Tim McLoughlin, Sarah Weinman, JZ Holden, Richie Narvaez, Sheila Kohler, Jane Ciabattari, Steven Wishnia, Kenneth Wishnia, Amani Scipio, and Tim Tomlinson. Launched with the summer '04 award-winning best seller Brooklyn Noir, Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies. Each book is comprised of all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the geographical area of the book. KAYLIE JONES, JULES FEIFFER, REED FARREL COLEMAN, SHEILA KOHLER, and others reveal how Long Island has always been a playground for the rich and famous--and while it used to be that only a select few could afford it, now everyone wants a piece of the pie. The McMansions pop up like mushrooms, limiting resources and destroying an already taxed environment. It feels a little like Rome in its last days--a kind of collective amnesia and blindness to the outside world has taken over. Everyone knows this, but no one wants to do anything about it, because big money is being spent--and made. And as the rich grow richer, the poor grow poorer and more disenfranchised; and greed only breeds more greed and violence. These stories cover the range of Long Island's extremes, from the comfortably rich, to the horribly poor--people pushed to desperate acts in order to protect what they already have, or to try to take what they don't from those who do. FROM THE INTRODUCTION, BY KAYLIE JONES: "F. Scott Fitzgerald's mansions of Great Neck and Little Neck are still there, lording imposingly over their lesser neighbors. The American dream of suburban bliss has never died, only grown more desperate, more materialistic, and less romantic as it has shoved its way further east, until now there is literally nowhere left to go. The Hamptons I knew and loved are gone forever . . . These are stories about people who will never feel they have enough, whether they have everything they ever dreamed of, or nothing at all." KAYLIE JONES moved to Sagaponack in 1975, where her family continued to live for more than thirty years. She is the author of five novels, including A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, and the memoir Lies My Mother Never Told Me. She teaches in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, and in the Wilkes University low-residency MFA program in professional writing.