First pages of Entering The Babylon System are in (that’s the first time we see the text typeset, so the manuscript exists as more than just a Word doc). Looks like we’d hoped, which isn’t the given you might think. The illustrations were finished long before the text was finished so it’s remarkable that so many of them so perfectly speak to the issues Chris and Buns tackle in the book. All were great, but I was particularly impressed by a TO illustrator, Case, ‘cause he so completely captures the conflicts traditional gun culture presents to an urban environment. His ill’s are shocking and beautiful and incredibly smart.

Now first pages go to the lawyer. Not easy throwing down the gauntlet against those who seed the root causes of gun violence without setting yourself up for a big, fat lawsuit…

I stayed up all night recently with Tomorrow, a new novel by Graham Swift, which we’ll publish in the summer of 2007. This is actually one of the real treats of my job, getting to read in manuscript, before a lot of other people have the chance, the work of a novelist as fine as Graham. But still it was funny: there I was, sleeplessly turning the pages of a deceptively simple domestic novel, which takes place in the head of a woman lying awake beside her sleeping husband from midnight to dawn. “Domestic” in Graham’s hands is not quiet in any regard. All night I found myself talking back to his book, much in the way that I wanted to talk back to Carol Shields’ last and so powerful novel, Unless.

The woman is sleepless because “tomorrow” she and her husband are going to have to tell their sixteen-year-old twins something she worries is going to completely change their family life. All the risks and fleeting joys of marriage and family twine around your throat as you read: the high stakes of loving anyone, particularly the same person for decades and decades; the inevitability of losing people; the shaky bulwark of a marriage bed; how you actually raise your children in order for them to leave you happily.

I can see Graham, when he tours, having to fend off interviewers who want to tell him stories of their marriages, because there is something in this novel that makes you want to confide in it. He says that the book, when it gets down to it, is about a lot of things, but most of all about happiness. Such a tough subject, really, and so surprisingly, refreshingly and confidently evoked by one of the most thoughtful, subtle and accomplished fiction writers I know.

Yesterday, John Grisham came to town for the first time since 1992. After the reception held at the Random House Canada offices several of us took John out for dinner at Canoe. A high profile author deserves a high profile restaurant.

Now being from the South, John has been a lifelong fan of the St. Louis Cardinals, so their recent World Series victory featured prominently in the conversation at the table, particularly because John is a friend of the team’s manager, Tony LaRussa. We did, however, find time to talk about books, and John is currently reading the new Bill Bryson. Most of us at the table had also read it, so a recounting of the more hilarious parts of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid lead to a great deal of laughter, which was somewhat disconcerting for a table of very conservative businessmen next to us who looked like they could do with reading a funny book.

We did get into a conversation at one point about John’s current book, The Innocent Man, which is a true story about a tragic case of wrongful conviction. John said that although he had been passionate about the subject and about the writing of the book, he couldn’t wait to get back to writing his legal thrillers, and that he had two great ideas that he was going to get to work on as soon as his tour was over. When pressed as to what these ideas might be he just smiled and said, “You’ll have to wait until Feb 2008 to find out.”

I for one can’t wait.

Don Hannah’s wise and beautiful new novel, Ragged Islands, arrived, as it turned out, at a propitious time for me. My mother-in-law is in her nineties and had recently moved into a residential facility for the aged, and while she chose to make the move, the adjustment was tough. A woman who had been in possession of all her faculties, she became confused about where she was, and why. She would call us in the middle of the night to find out, for example, if it was 3 AM or 3 PM and the family was becoming rather stressed.

Then along came Ragged Islands. The main character in Don Hannah’s new novel is an old woman, Susan Ann, who is in the hospital, probably dying. Most of her family surrounds her, worrying, caring and resenting all at once. I couldn’t believe the insight Don gives us in this novel about what goes on inside the mind of an elderly person who’s nearing the end of her time. It made me teary, but I felt so elated to have some new sense of my mother-in-law’s experience. It calmed me down and gave me new hope and energy for our relationship. This lovely novel, Ragged Islands, could be the sleeper of the Spring 2007 season. Hope so!