Books: 787

“My Family of Hicks”
Scot Rogers
Grateful Media
$18.99

Winston Clark checks out of rehab early. He’ll give away his wealth, renounce duties to his Hicks family, never again set foot in Hicksville, Ind. Too late. Waiting is ancient, uber-wealthy Aunt Darceline’s chauffeur. Win’s whisked to her private jet (waiting this fortnight) and returned to her fortress in … Hicksville. But she, herself forced to abandon her lover Violet (by family order of succession), now gives Win (gay, mourning dead lover Chris) an out. She bestows keys to a secret vault … they go to dine in the vast Great Hall with Win’s mother, chronically late. Darceline begins to cough … and cough … I’m not making this up. Scot Rogers is, and this details only the first few hours of a long, long day for Winston Clark. Hilarious. Horrifying. Entrancing.

“Spent: A Comic Novel”
Alison Bechdel
Coloring by Holly Rae Taylor; Shadowing by John Chad
Mariner Books
$32

A cartoonist by the name of Bechdel is running a pygmy goat farm sanctuary in Vermont. The outside world is a seething irritant. Might she halt humanity’s fall by a memoir about her own life, riddled as it is (like others’) by greed and privilege? Previous publication of her father’s life spent mounting Victorian taxidermy displays generates loot in a remunerative TV series. Gladstone-Gandered from margin to munificence, her old friends, aka “Dykes to Watch Out For,” take note as “Death and Taxidermy” garners awards. Last straw, her indefatigable partner Holly’s wood-chopping video goes viral. Is that Envy whispering in her ear to ethically monetize a show to point the way to freedom out of consumer capitalism? It’s at least me urging you to read this book.

“Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits”
Nienke Bakker, Katie Hanson et al.
MFA Publications
$35

Visiting Boston? The artwork in this volume will be at the MFA through September 7. Van Gogh, seeking physical warmth in Arles, struggling in new surroundings and fighting worsening mental problems, hoped to create an artist’s community starting with Paul Gauguin. By chance — and a neighboring café — he found a long-lacking familial warmth within the family of ale-quaffing postman Joseph Roulin, wife Augustine, and children Armand, Camille and baby Maricelle. This marks the first exposition exploring the artist’s intimacy within a welcoming family, upon whose members he practiced techniques of earlier Dutch painters and Japanese woodblock prints. “Lullaby” focuses on Mme. Roulin’s calm countenance and the cord in her hand leading to the cradle. Uniformed, bearded postman Roulin sits erect, beer-heightened ruddiness glowing with pride and warmth.

“A Remarkable Man: Dr. Shuntaro Hida from Hiroshima to Fukushima”
Marc Petitjean tr. Adriana Hunter
Other Press
$25

Longevity can be useful to a witness. Shuntaro Hida, 1917-2017, lived a full century. On August 6, 1945, he was only six kilometers outside ground zero of Little Boy’s atomic devastation of Hiroshima and its citizens. What Hida observed that day — those who died, those treated but who sustained terrible injuries and whose future lives were blighted by their radioactive stigma — made him a lifelong advocate against nuclear weapons. He urged that people consider also the insidious residual radiation existing in air, water and soil. He was opposed by the American and Japanese governments, each fearing public anger. But Hida, 94 in 2011 for the earthquake/tsunami tragedy of Fukushima, found that more advanced testing proved the continuing presence of radiation. Hida’s persistence may influence future nuclear projects.