Of Authors Known and Unknown

Among my favorite parts of long airplane trips, if there can be favorite parts, is disappearing into a just long enough, just writerly enough, just engaging enough book. By this I don't mean a worthy book or a deep book. No...I mean science fiction, sword and sorcery, or romantic novels. It makes time fly and even makes the middle seat in a crowded plane almost bearable. That's because I get lost in those kind of books. I read obsessively and barely notice my surroundings. It beats sleeping pills and usually beats the movie by a mile.

On my last three plane trips, I gave myself up to three of Philippa Gregory's novels about the wives of Henry VIII. I started with The Other Boleyn Girl, followed that with The Boleyn Inheritance, and concluded my latest travels with The Constant Princess. That covers Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, and Kathryn Howard. Jane Seymour gets short shrift at the end of The Other Boleyn Girl while Katherine Parr had yet to make an appearance by the end of The Boleyn Inheritance.

Ms. Gregory is no slouch. She has her doctorate in 18th century literature; her novel on the slave trade, A Respectable Trade, was adapted into an acclaimed four part BBC television series. Miramax bought the film rights to the Other Boleyn Girl, which was a bestseller in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. Starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson, the movie is due to be released in February. As one of my long ago favorite movie critics, Joe Bob Briggs, would say, "Check it out!"

Less well known than Philippa Gregory, is my former colleague, Kim Keltner. She was first the receptionist and then the office manager at Mother Jones during about half of my time there. Kim was known for an arch style and a biting wit, but I don't think anyone was aware that she was an aspiring writer. Long after she left MJ, Kim's first book, The Dim Sum of All Things, was published. Harper Collins is just about to release Kim's third book, I Want Candy.

The pre-release promotion has this to say about Kim and the new book:

"Wong Keltner is unabashedly sassy and biting... the result is both refreshing and smart." –Publishers Weekly

Candace Ong is fourteen and sick of being "a fat, fucking dork." She'd rather be the girl on the cover of Candy-O, her favorite album by the Cars. She'd rather be her best friend Ruby, who has perfect boobs and has already "Done It." She'd rather be anyone than "the eggroll girl," frying crab Rangoon and eggrolls at her parents' restaurant.

A coming-of-age novel that's honest about the lives of teenagers, I Want Candy reads like an updated Judy Blume with a dash of Amy Tan. Bestselling author Kim Wong Keltner (The Dim Sum of All Things, Avon 2004) treats Candace's first, awkward sexual fumblings frankly and with laugh-out-loud humor. Her prose crackles like the Pop Rocks her heroine munches, and like Candace, we savor the sweet explosions.

Stuck toiling away at the fryers of the Eggroll Wonderland after school and aimlessly wandering the streets of San Francisco, Candace hoards every penny and steals what she can. She keeps it all under her bed in a pink, plastic Barbie Corvette that she dreams of trading in for a real vintage red Mustang that she can drive into the desert.

Between Ruby, who's been ditching her lately to hang out with boys, her mother, who’s “constantly extolling the virtues of perfectly fried eggrolls and an intact hymen,” and a seemingly-endless parade of street sleazies trying to get in her pants, Candace has to watch her back. Rock-and-roll reinvention seems as far away as David Bowie's Major Tom.

But when a tragic accident turns Candace's world upside down, she decides it’s finally time to change from Candace Ong to sexy Candy-O: a hip, sweet-talking bohemian whose colorful arsenal of cusswords and encyclopedic grasp of Bowie lyrics may be the key to the new Candace.

At turns honest and tender, Kim Wong Keltner writes with enough wit to smack the reader right back to the injustice of the eighth grade. Astutely capturing the paralysis that parents, bullies, and a foreboding adult world can have on the quest to find oneself, Keltner may be writing about the Chinese-American experience, but her themes appeal to anyone who’s ever wanted to be somebody else.

About the author:

In the fourth grade, KIM WONG KELTNER won a cutthroat spelling bee, which encouraged her aspirations as a writer. Over the years, she honed her ear for dialogue while listening to elderly Chinese ladies dish dirt over endless games of mahjong. Kim and her husband make their home in San Francisco’s Sunset District, where all the other Chinese people live.