BBC推薦：6月必讀書單

BBC文化頻道的每月書單更新啦，本期推薦作品既有神祕離奇的驚悚小說，又有探究社會傳染效應的現實作品，哪一本會被搬上你的書架？

1. Christopher Bollen, The Destroyers
《破壞者》克里斯托弗•博倫

Bollen opens this thriller, set on the Greek island of Patmos, with an explosion ripping through the outdoor patio of Nikos Taverna, killing a young American tourist, and he never slows down. The narrator for most of the book is Ian, who is down on his luck and running away from the tense aftermath of his father's death. He travels to Patmos to visit his boyhood friend Charlie, who offers him a job with his new charter yacht business. But Charlie's life as the son of a wealthy Greek-Cypriot businessman is filed with unexpected dangers. And the game they played together when they were young – in which a group of masked gunmen bursts into the room and starts shooting – begins to seem all too real. Intellectually intriguing and eerily timely. (Credit: Harper)
這部恐怖小說背景設定在希臘帕特摩斯島，以尼克斯•塔維爾娜家戶外庭院的一場爆炸拉開帷幕，爆炸導致一名美國青年遊客死亡。小說情節緊湊，步步驚心。伊恩是書中主要的敘述者，他窮困潦倒，爲了逃避父親去世後的麻煩而離家出走。伊恩來到帕特摩斯島看望兒時好友查理。查理給他找了一份工作，於是伊恩開始經營包租遊艇的業務。查理的父親是希臘-塞浦路斯商人，身爲富豪的兒子，查理身邊充滿預想不到的危險。一羣蒙面人持槍衝進屋內開始掃射是他們兒時一起玩的遊戲，如今遊戲似乎開始成爲現實。小說劇情燒腦、詭異的氣氛渲染的恰到好處。（來源：哈勃出版社）

2. Nick Laird, Modern Gods
《當代諸神》尼克•萊爾德

Laird's intimate and searing look at the aftereffects of violent conflict and religious fanaticism, revolves around two sisters facing personal crises. Liz, a New York-based academic, is preparing to travel to the rainforest of Papua New Guinea to make a BBC documentary about Belef, the charismatic woman leader of a cargo cult. But first she's back in her hometown of Ballyglass in Northern Ireland, for her sister Alison's second wedding. Before the honeymoon begins a newspaper headline reveals Alison's new husband's past as a member of the Ulster Freedom Fighters involved in a pub massacre. And now she is morally implicated. Half a globe away, Liz is drawn into Belef's rituals, with tragic consequences. Finely etched, impeccably structured, Modern Gods has the enduring echoes of a classic. (Credit: Viking)
萊爾德圍繞着兩姐妹身上發生的危機，近距離審視了暴力衝突和宗教狂熱帶來的惡果。利茲是來自紐約的學者，她準備前往巴布亞新幾內亞的熱帶雨林爲BBC製作一部關於魅力超凡的貨物崇拜運動女領袖比利芙的紀錄片。但是，利茲要先返回家鄉巴利格拉斯——位於北愛爾蘭的一個小村落，參加姐妹艾莉森的第二次婚禮。艾莉森開始度蜜月之前，一家報紙的頭條新聞曝光了其新婚丈夫的過往，他曾是阿爾斯特自由戰士組織的成員，這個組織與一起酒吧大屠殺有關。於是現在艾莉森也被牽連其中，遭到道德批判。而在地球的另一端，利茲被比利芙的宗教儀式所吸引，最終引禍上身。《當代諸神》文筆細膩，結構縝密，是一部耐人尋味的經典之作。（來源：維京出版社）

3. Victoria Redel, Before Everything
《最重要的事》維多利亞•雷德爾

Redel's new novel brings to mind Virginia Woolf's The Waves, with its chorus of distinctive voices sharing private perceptions along with their sustained collective experience. Five girls who dubbed themselves "the old friends" in sixth grade have carried their connection forward through decades, sharing tragedies and triumphs. In March 2013 they gather as Anna, the sparkplug of the group, decides to discontinue her cancer treatment after four remissions. She wants to say her goodbyes. In lyrical prose, Redel interweaves Anna's final days with echoes of the past – the day Helen accompanied a teenaged Anna to her abortion, the day of Ming's daughter Lily's brain surgery, the weddings, the divorces. The endings. "This, Helen thought, this is what Anna will do. She will teach us all how to do this thing we don't know how to do." (Credit: Viking)
雷德爾的新小說《最重要的事》讓人想起弗吉尼亞•伍爾芙的《海浪》，它將不同的聲音融合在一起，透過大家一直以來的共同經歷分享每個人的認知。五個女孩在6年級時就互稱“老相識”，她們同甘共苦，友情維持了幾十年。2013年3月，她們之中的核心人物安娜在癌症反覆四次後決定終止治療，她希望向所有人道別，五個女孩因此重聚。在這部抒情散文中，雷德爾將安娜最後的時光與昔日的記憶交織在一起，海倫陪伴着年輕的安娜墮胎、明的女兒莉莉接受腦部手術、結婚、離婚，直到走向生命的終結。“海倫想，這就是安娜要做的。她將教會手足無措的我們如何面對死亡。”（來源：維京出版社）

4. Colin Harrison, You Belong to Me
《你是我的》科林•哈里森

Harrison's encyclopedic knowledge of New York, his noirish genius and his storytelling chops are on fine display in this new thriller about immigration lawyer Paul Reeves and the couple who live across the hall, a blonde American beauty named Jennifer and her wealthy Iranian-American husband Ahmed. Reeves is twice divorced and focused mostly on his passion for old maps of New York, which he stores in his apartment and his family home in Brooklyn. Jennifer tags along with him to Christie's one day while Ahmed is out of the country on business, and Reeves witnesses her surprise at spotting a blond man in desert-coloured soldier's fatigues staring at her. She leaves with the man. And so begins the unwinding of a marriage, with tragic consequences for the men in Jennifer's life. (Credit: Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
哈里森就是個紐約百事通，他的暗黑天賦以及敘事能力在這部全新的驚悚小說中得到了完美的呈現。小說講述了移民律師保羅•裏夫斯以及住在隔壁的情侶的故事。詹妮弗是一位美國金髮美女，她的丈夫艾哈邁德是伊朗裔美國富豪。裏夫斯離過兩次婚，他醉心於紐約老地圖，將它們收藏在自己的公寓和在布魯克林的家中。有一天艾哈邁德出國談生意，珍妮弗就尾隨裏夫斯去了佳士得拍賣行。而裏夫斯發現她在看到一個身穿沙漠迷彩服的金髮男人注視她時意外驚喜。詹妮弗和這個男人離開了。一場婚姻由此破碎，詹妮弗生命中的那個男人以悲劇收場。（來源：Sarah Crichton出版社/Farrar, Straus and Giroux出版社）

5. Julia Fierro, The Gypsy Moth Summer
《舞毒蛾入侵的夏天》茱莉亞•菲耶羅

In June 1992, gypsy moths invaded Avalon Island, caterpillars stripping trees, covering houses and pavements, and raining down upon the residents. This is the summer, writes Fierro in her luminous second novel, when Leslie Day Marshall, "golden-haired prodigal daughter, returns with her black husband and brown children to claim her seat as First Lady." Leslie's son Brooks falls in love with Avalon's Maddie, the daughter of a wealthy mother and a working-class father. Their Romeo and Juliet story plays out as Grudder Aviation, the island's major employer, is blamed for a cluster of insidious cancers and for dozens of women, including Leslie, suffering repeated miscarriages. Fierro laces her lyrical tale of revenge and rebellion with gritty details, mythic settings and a nuanced sense of how class and racial divisions shape us. (Credit: St. Martins)
這部精彩的小說是菲耶羅的第二部小說。1992年6月，舞毒蛾入侵阿瓦隆島，這種蛾蟲吃光樹木，覆蓋在房子和人行道上，如雨點一般掉落在居民身上。菲耶羅寫道，就在這個夏天，“叛逆的金髮女兒萊斯利•瑪西爾帶着她的黑人丈夫，棕色皮膚的小孩們回來了，坐上第一夫人的位子。”萊斯利的兒子布魯克斯愛上了島上的姑娘麥蒂，她的媽媽是個富人，而爸爸是工薪階級。阿瓦隆島上的一羣人在不知不覺中患上癌症，幾十名女性經歷多次流產，其中包括萊斯利，島上的用工大戶格路德飛機制造公司被指爲罪魁禍首。菲耶羅通過栩栩如生的細節、神祕的背景設定以及對階級種族分化如何塑造人類的細微刻畫，書寫了一部充滿感情的復仇和反抗的故事。（來源：聖馬丁斯出版社）6. Sherman Alexie, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me
《不必說你愛我》謝爾曼•阿列克謝

"Salmon-grief" echoes throughout the pages of this sardonic, raw and moving memoir from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist. Wild salmon provided physical and spiritual sustenance for the Interior Salish – Alexie's Native American people – for thousands of years. In 1938, five years after the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state, they were gone. Alexie's Spokane mother and Coeur d'Alene father, fluent Salish speakers, were the first generation to live entirely without wild salmon. "Poverty was our spirit animal", he writes of growing up on the Spokane reservation. (Credit: Little, Brown)
《不必說你愛我》的作者阿列克謝是普利策獎獲得者。這部諷刺、樸實、感人的回憶錄字裏行間都流露着“對三文魚的悲傷”。數千年來，野生三文魚一直是內陸薩利希語族（阿列克謝筆下的印第安人）身體和精神上的食糧。1938年，在華盛頓州的大古力水壩竣工5年後，它們消失了。阿列克謝的媽媽來自斯波坎，父親來自科倫達，他們操着流利的薩利希語，卻是第一代完全不依靠野生三文魚生存的薩利希人。在斯波坎印第安保留地長大的阿列克謝說，“貧窮就是我們的精神寫照。”（來源：利特爾&布朗出版社）

7. Gail Godwin, Grief Cottage
《悲傷小屋》蓋氏•戈德溫

Marcus is 11 when his mother dies; he never knew his father. Soon he's living with his mother's eccentric aunt Charlotte in her South Carolina beach cottage. She's painting a house built in 1804 dubbed the Grief Cottage after a family died there during Hurricane Hazel. That summer Marcus becomes himself, with the help of Charlotte, who drinks wine throughout the day in her painting studio and her empathetic friend Lachicotte Hayes. Marcus's grief and confusion are salved by the ocean, the sea turtles nesting nearby, and the secrets he learns about his family. But under the surface he's floundering. Soon he is obsessed with a mysterious boy he secretly visits daily at Grief Cottage. (Credit: Bloomsbury)
馬庫斯11歲時母親去世了，而他從來不知道父親是誰。不久，他搬到南卡羅萊納州一處海灘邊的小屋，和母親的姑姑、性格古怪的夏洛特一起生活。夏洛特每天在畫室裏喝酒，她畫了一座建於1804年的綽號叫“悲傷小屋”的房子。在颶風黑茲爾來臨時，有一家人死在那裏。那個夏天，馬庫斯在夏洛特和她善解人意的好友拉希科特•海因斯的幫助下恢復正常，但他的內心其實很慌亂。大海、附近築巢的海龜、以及獲知家庭的祕密安撫了馬庫斯的悲傷和困惑。很快，他就迷上了一個神祕的男孩，每天偷偷到悲傷小屋探望他。（來源：布盧姆斯伯裏出版社）

8. Lee Daniel Kravetz, Strange Contagion
《奇怪的傳染效應》李•丹尼爾•拉維茲

Kravetz moved to Palo Alto, California in 2009. His wife had just taken a job at Google and was expecting their first child. Within months, five local high school students died by suicide on the train tracks near his apartment. Why? "These kids are driven," one teacher tells him. This affluent small town at the center of Silicon Valley, Kravetz writes, is huge in terms of innovation and scaling of new ideas – and stress upon its young. Kravetz gathers research on social contagions – the ways in which others influence our lives by catchable thoughts, emotions and behaviours. He speaks with the school's principal and other community members struggling to comfort the survivors and stop the deaths. Yet in 2014 another suicide cluster emerges. A chilling and important look at the social contagions that threaten us. (Credit: Harper)
2009年拉維茲搬到舊金山附近的帕洛阿爾託。她的妻子在谷歌找了一份工作，準備迎接他們的第一個孩子。但在幾個月內，當地學校的5名高中生在他公寓附近的鐵軌處自殺。這究竟是什麼原因？一位老師告訴他：“這些孩子被煽動了。”拉維茲寫道，這座位於硅谷中心的富裕小鎮具有強大的創新力、匯聚了衆多創意，同時也給年輕人帶來了巨大壓力。社會傳染效應是指其他人通過可感知的思想、情緒以及行爲對我們的生活產生影響，拉維茲整理了與此相關的研究。他和學校的校長以及其他社區成員盡力安撫倖存者，並阻止再有人自殺。然而，2014年又發生了一次羣體自殺事件。社會傳染效應威脅着人類，這本書揭開了令人不寒而慄卻又至關重要的現象。（來源：哈勃出版社）

9. Becky Aikman, Off the Cliff
《無與倫比》貝基•艾克曼

It's been over 25 years since the release of Thelma and Louise, the ground-breaking female buddy film hailed for its comedy, stark visual effects and shocking, off-the-cliff ending. Drawing upon some 130 interviews, Aikman tracks the film from 1987, when Callie Khouri from Paducah, Kentucky, a line producer on music videos, concocts the script, to Oscar night 1992, when six nominations yield Khouri an Academy Award. She weaves the film into Hollywood history, and gives a delicious blow-by-blow account, including Ridley Scott's efforts to find the location for that ending, and the early casting of Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer (in the roles that went to Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon), and Billy Baldwin as the sexy hitchhiker instead of a young newcomer named Brad Pitt. (Credit: Penguin Press)
距《末路狂花》上映已經過去超過25年，這部開拓性的女性犯罪電影以其幽默的劇情、對比鮮明的視覺效果以及精彩震撼的結局而備受好評。艾克曼在本書中參考了大約130次訪談，從1987年開始紀錄這部電影，影片編劇卡莉•克里來自肯塔基州帕迪尤卡市，那時她還是一名音樂錄影帶的預算控制製片。1992年，該片獲得了6項奧斯卡提名併爲克里贏得了一座獎盃。她將這部電影與好萊塢歷史交織在一起，還收錄了一段段有趣而詳盡的個人陳述，其中包括雷利•史考特爲影片結尾找到合適場地而付出的努力，最初試鏡的朱迪•福斯特和米歇爾•法伊弗（他們的角色最終由吉娜•戴維斯和蘇珊•薩蘭登飾演），以及替代“小鮮肉”布拉德•皮特出演性感搭車人的比利•鮑德溫。（來源：企鵝出版社）