卡伦·乔伊·福勒（Karen Joy Fowler）精湛的第七本小说《布斯》（Booth），跟随著名的19世纪莎士比亚演员朱尼斯·布斯（Junius Booth）的孩子，以他的表演为“疯狂的怪胎”而闻名。它是在内战之前的几年，以及林肯在朱尼斯（Junius）的第九个孩子约翰·威尔克斯·布斯（John Wilkes Booth）手中被暗杀。约翰出生后的一个不眠之夜，他的母亲要求炉膛告诉她命运。大火的答案成为家庭传奇。

In an author’s note, Fowler writes about the tension of trying to tell this story without glorifying a man who, as she puts it, “wanted to be the center of attention and had already gotten too much of it.” Her solution is to focus her resurrection of him on his siblings, particularly the sisters long relegated to the sidelines. The result is a dazzling blend of fact and fiction with piercing echoes to today — women’s lives subsumed by child care, a violent and polarized America, men warped by whiteness and power and delusions of grandeur.

即使没有约翰·威尔克斯·布斯（John Wilkes Booth）在美国历史上发挥的令人毛骨悚然的作用，这个家庭也是一个小说家的梦想：著名和谴责，交替用现金或几乎饿死，受到荣誉和非法性问题的困扰，其成员的成员美丽而聪明，紧密而紧密。福勒（Fowler）对这种材料的发掘在其广度和特殊性上令人惊讶，将历史记录的事件与秘密的就寝时间谈话和戏剧相同的细节和关怀处理。

我们被授予特殊访问Booth家族成员的特殊机会，并按照他们的出生顺序介绍了他们的观点：Rosalie是允许她每个兄弟姐妹的土壤，无论好坏her mother’s keeper, quietly drinking gin in living rooms that will never be hers; Edwin, the agonized, brilliant and dutiful son who follows in his father’s footsteps, becoming America’s Hamlet; Asia, the angry flash in the window, “less upset by her own lack of a destiny than by the fact that nobody had ever bothered to ask the fire if she had one.”

在我们几乎忘记了亲爱的兄弟约翰的去向的时候，我们沉浸在这个家庭中是如此令人陶醉，如此完整。I felt something like complicity, having spent so many pages watching him through his sisters’ eyes, as he evolved from a child catching fireflies to a presidential assassin, this son raised in the shadow of the theater who never, even when he was directly under its beam, stopped craving the spotlight. John’s increasingly unhinged political beliefs were allowed to spiral out, unchecked, by the doting family members who perhaps could have stopped him.

从林肯的生活和政治生涯中派遣，打断了亲密的家庭传奇。小约翰尼（Johnny）出生后十页，我们了解了林肯（Lincoln）令人衰弱的抑郁症，这一集以他的誓言成为值得记住的男人结束。随着年份的发展，这两个人彼此爬行，从故事的边缘转移到其中心，每个钥匙都是对方命运的钥匙。Occasionally, Fowler’s narration offers a faint and welcome whiff of judgment, weighing in on historical events, and raising questions (as when, Asia, on the cusp of labor with her first child, asks “Why does the extraordinary courage of ordinary women go so unsung?”). “Booth” does not simply report on the past. Instead, it points with deliberate intensity — and no small amount of criticism — at the hypocrisies of our present moment, at the story of America that’s still being written.

在“展位”中，男人是历史上的演员。这些妇女被它喂食，提供儿子或抚养儿子。John’s thoughts mostly only reach us through the filter of his siblings, and there’s a kind of uneasy justice in that, even as it begs a question: In an America where we rarely go more than a few months without an act of public violence, how well do any of us know our brothers?

展位
By Karen Joy Fowler
（G.P. Putnam的儿子； 480页； $ 28）

加州大学圣克鲁斯的书店圣克鲁斯和人文学院在与伊丽莎白·麦肯齐（Elizabeth McKenzie）交谈时，凯伦·乔伊·福勒（Karen Joy Fowler）：In person. 6 pm. Tuesday, March 8. $7; $32 with book. Cowell Ranch Historic Hay Barn, Ranch View Road, Santa Cruz.www.bookshopsantacruz.com