National Book Critics Circle finalists / Fiction

Even the greatest storm of the century couldn't keep intrepid book critics from convening in New York on Saturday to discuss their nominations for the National Book Critics Circle awards. This year's list of popular, widely praised novels is a stark contrast to the slate put up in November by the National Book Foundation, which nominated five mostly experimental novels that few people had heard of. The NBCC finalists include the Booker Prize winner, a Booker nominee, a collection of stories that was chosen for the "Today Show" book club, and two novels that showed up on many end-of-the-year roundups. About 130 people braved the snow to attend the announcement party Saturday night, including novelist Jonathan Lethem, who read the list of fiction finalists. The winners in all five categories - fiction, nonfiction, criticism, biography, and poetry - will be announced at a ceremony in March. Also, Louis Rubin, the author and editor of more than 50 books and the founder of Algonquin Press, will receive a lifetime achievement award. We'll review finalists in other categories in February. - Ron Charles

This novel takes its strangely beautiful title from a survivor's description of President Duvalier's torturers in Haiti: "Mostly it was at night. But often they'd also come before dawn, as the dew was settling on the leaves, and they'd take you away." Most of the nine stories in this collection have appeared before, but considered together they describe the trajectory of psychological shrapnel that emanates from political terror. Danticat is equally interested in the inverse challenge faced by a retired torturer, who must keep the unmentionable aspects of his past disassociated from his reformed persona. The novel opens with a haunting story told by a young American artist who learns that her beloved father was the notorious Dew Breaker. In "Seven," a Haitian immigrant in New York nervously waits for the arrival of his wife, determined to make everything as nice as possible, unaware that his landlord is the retired Dew Breaker. A story about the torturer's wife describes the anxiety of a woman devoted to a reformed murderer. Only after we've caught fragments of his victims and family members do we meet the Dew Breaker himself working on his last kill in Haiti. Danticat is a master at capturing the inarticulate sorrow and bafflement that evil inspires. (Full review March 23)

The novel opens in 1983 when a graduate student named Nick moves in with an upper-class family in London. He's an old Oxford chum of the family's oblivious son, and he's become the unofficial caretaker of their dangerously depressed daughter. The parents are wealthy conservatives who want to be perfectly clear that they have no objection to Nick's sexual orientation, particularly if it remains entirely theoretical, but Nick is ready to move beyond that. The first section of the novel details his first date, an assignation with a black man he meets for sex through a personal ad. Their relationship deepens into something more meaningful, drawing Nick into the working-class life of his lover even while he floats into the lavish lifestyle of his host family. By 1986, Nick is still living with them, but he's moved on from his first lover to a Lebanese millionaire, a cocaine addict who's engaged to be married. Nick has a vague sense that this isn't a satisfying way to live, but he's mesmerized by the glare of money and sensualism and terrified by the prospect of loneliness. As AIDS ravages the gay community and scandal rocks his host family, Nick finds himself as abandoned as he ever feared, and the compensation of beauty seems heartbreakingly tragic. (Full review Oct. 26)

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