Boston Book Festival 2018

Nothing’s simple in this trio of intriguing novels about the intricacies of lives and relationships. In Suzanne Matson’s Ultraviolet, three generations of women strive to define themselves as individuals but also in relation to one another; Kirkus praises the novel’s “unsentimental reflection on both the tribulations and the importance of filial connection.” In The Dante Chamber, a companion to The Dante Club, Matthew Pearl imagines a group of detectives--who also happen to be nineteenth-century literary luminaries--investigating a mystery that may implicate one of their own. Finally, in Spencer Wise’s The Emperor of Shoes, the personal and global become entangled when a young man sets out to oversee his family’s shoemaking business in southern China and realizes the human cost of economic prosperity. Our host for this session of fascinating fiction readings is Aaron Devine, organizer of the Dorchester reading series Write on the DOT. Sponsored by BookBub.