CANR
WORK TITLE: Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
WORK NOTES:
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BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.matthewjsullivan.com/
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LAST VOLUME:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/20/mystery-abounds-in-midnight-at-the-bright-ideas-bo/ * http://www.bigbend.edu/in-debut-novel-former-tattered-cover-bookseller-brings-fictional-bookstore-to-life/ * http://www.bigbend.edu/academics/programs/english/faculty-bios/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1970; married; wife’s name, Libby (a librarian); children: two.
EDUCATION:University of San Francisco, B.A.; University of Idaho, M.F.A.; also attended University of Lodz, Poland, and Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Oxford, England
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author. Resident writer, Yaddo, Centrum, and Vermont Studio Center. Also worked at Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, CO, 1994-98, and Brookline Booksmith, Boston, MA; taught writing and literature in Boston, ID, and Poland; instructor in writing, literature, and film, Big Bend Community College, Moses Lake, WA.
AWARDS:Received Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and Florida Review Editor’s Prize for Fiction.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals, including 580-Split, Chattahoochee Review, Evansville Review, Fugue, and Painted Bride Quarterly.
SIDELIGHTS
Big Bend Community College English instructor Matthew Sullivan’s long-form debut is Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. The novel draws on Sullivan’s long personal history. “The story and the Bright Ideas Bookstore of the title,” stated a Big Bend Community College website contributor, “are based on Sullivan’s experiences as a bookseller at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver’s historic LoDo neighborhood from 1994 to 1998.”
Sullivan’s novel opens when longtime Bright Ideas Bookstore employee Lydia Smith discovers the corpse of a customer named Joey Molina hanging from the rafters. Lydia has no idea why Joey would have killed himself—or why he is carrying a picture of her taken at her tenth birthday party. Her “efforts to answer the questions surrounding Joey’s death,” said a Publishers Weekly reviewer, “uncover clues to a cold case from her … past.” When a childhood friend named Raj Patel emerges in Lydia’s life, new aspects of the case also come to light. Sullivan slowly reveals that Lydia had been a witness to a particularly horrific crime: the brutal murders of her best friend Carol and Carol’s family. “Lydia’s investigations eventually yield a number of shocking secrets,” said a Rhapsody in Books reviewer, “upending everything she thought she knew, and allowing her finally to solve the mystery of what really happened that traumatic night.”
Critics enjoyed Sullivan’s debut. “This quirky debut novel,” declared Michele Leber in Booklist, “will have particular appeal for puzzle solvers and booklovers.” Sullivan’s story, opined a Kirkus Reviews contributor, is “a nicely paced tale about a horrifying incident with a woman at its core who must put aside her ordered life to find out what really happened all those years ago.” “Sullivan nails it,” concluded Christina Ledbetter in the Washington Times, “delivering a captivating conflict plus masterfully executed prose. To boot, the bookstore setting will charm even those who devour this read electronically.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 1, 2017, Michele Leber, review of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, p. 24.
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2017, review of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore.
Publishers Weekly, April 10, 2017, review of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, p. 52.
Washington Times, June 20, 2017, Christina Ledbetter, review of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore.
ONLINE
Big Bend Community College, http://www.bigbend.edu/ (April 26, 2017), “In Debut Novel, Former Tattered Cover Bookseller Brings Fictional Bookstore to Life”; author profile.
Matthew Sullivan Website, http://www.matthewjsullivan.com (September 18, 2017), author profile.
Rhapsody in Books, https://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/ (June 21, 2017), review of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore.*
Matthew Sullivan received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His short stories have been awarded the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editor’s Prize for Fiction and have been published in many journals, including The Chattahoochee Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Fugue, Evansville Review, and 580-Split. In addition to working for years at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver and at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, he currently teaches writing, literature, and film at Big Bend Community College in the high desert of Washington State. The author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, he is married to a librarian and has two children.
Matthew Sullivan grew up in a family of eight children in suburban Denver, Colorado. He received his B.A. from the University of San Francisco, his M.F.A. from the University of Idaho, and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and other awards, and has won the Florida Review Editor's Prize and the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize. In addition to working for years at Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver and at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, he has taught writing and literature at colleges in Boston, Idaho, and Poland, and currently teaches writing, literature, and film at Big Bend Community College in the high desert of Washington State. He is married to a librarian, Libby, and has two children and a scruffy dog named Ernie.
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
Michele Leber
113.17 (May 1, 2017): p24.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore. By Matthew Sullivan. June 2017.336p. Scribner, $26 (9781501116841).
As Denver's Bright Ideas Bookstore is closing for the day, bookseller Lydia Smith finds Joey Molina, a favorite customer, hanging in the third-floor history section with a photo of Lydia as a child in his pocket. The narrative has two avenues to explore: Joey's past and motivation for suicide, and Lydias childhood trauma caused by a still-unsolved crime. (Twenty years earlier, when she was 10 and on a sleepover at a friend's house, Lydia was the sole survivor when a killer who became known as Hammerman bludgeoned to death Lydias friend and her friend's parents.) Lydia discovers that Joey left an intricate set of clues for her in books, which have always provided her comfort and solace; her librarian father raised her alone after her mother died in childbirth, moving her away and changing their last name after the crime. Lydia finds that answers go back years and swirl around her best childhood friend, Raj Patel, whose parents run a combination gas station and donut shop. This quirky debut novel will have particular appeal for puzzle solvers and booklovers.--Michele Leber
Leber, Michele
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Leber, Michele. "Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore." Booklist, 1 May 2017, p. 24. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA495034916&it=r&asid=03d067398070a876897a1636dbb2d03a. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A495034916
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
264.15 (Apr. 10, 2017): p52.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore
Matthew Sullivan. Scribner, $26 (336p)
ISBN 978-1-5011-1684-1
Sullivan's solid first novel opens with 30-year-old bookseller Lydia Smith finding the corpse of Joseph Molina hanging from a beam in Denver's Bright Ideas Bookstore. The lonely 20-something ex-con spent countless hours wandering the shop, but Lydia can't fathom why he chose to commit suicide there--or why he died with a photograph of Lydia's 10 th birthday party in his pocket. Her confusion grows when she inherits Joey's belongings and discovers coded messages addressed to her hidden inside his books. Lydia's efforts to answer the questions surrounding Joey's death uncover clues to a cold case from her own past--a household massacre that only Lydia survived. Flashbacks to Lydia's childhood told from her father's perspective help build the tension. Quirky characters and a keen sense of place distinguish this multigenerational tale of abandonment, desperation, and betrayal. Sullivan's writing occasionally calls too much attention to itself and a surfeit of coincidence strains credulity, but this inventive and intricately plotted mystery still largely satisfies. Agent: Kirby Kim, Janklow & Nesbit. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore." Publishers Weekly, 10 Apr. 2017, p. 52+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490319245&it=r&asid=29f8104176d5c82131bcf6e6758d159a. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490319245
Sullivan, Matthew: MIDNIGHT AT THE BRIGHT IDEAS BOOKSTORE
(Apr. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Sullivan, Matthew MIDNIGHT AT THE BRIGHT IDEAS BOOKSTORE Scribner (Adult Fiction) $26.00 6, 13 ISBN: 978-1-5011-1684-1
A woman must revisit a 20-year-old tragedy after a young man commits suicide in the bookstore where she works.Lydia Smith loves her job at the Bright Ideas bookstore in Denver, puttering among the shelves and hovering over her gentle BookFrogs, the wanderers and dreamers who spend their days among the stacks. When one of her BookFrogs, Joey Molina, hangs himself in the store, she's devastated and then shocked when she learns he's bequeathed his meager possessions to her. When she discovers that he's left messages to her in the pages of his books, she's puzzled and begins trying to piece together his last days with the help of his friend Lyle. The reappearance of her childhood friend Raj Patel soon puts Joey on the back burner, however, as questions about her estranged father come to light. It all points back to the Hammerman, who, while Lydia was on a sleepover as a child, brutally killed her friend and her friend's family with a hammer, leaving Lydia alive, hiding under the sink. The Hammerman was never caught, and Lydia seeks answers from the now-retired detective who handled the case, but she may not want to hear what he has to say. Turns out he always suspected her father was the killer but was stopped from pursuing that path, even in the face of some compelling evidence, and he's never let go of his suspicion. After all, why did the killer let Lydia live after killing a 10-year-old girl and her parents, and could Joey somehow be connected? Debut author Sullivan presents a nicely paced tale about a horrifying incident with a woman at its core who must put aside her ordered life to find out what really happened all those years ago, where the truth, in the end, may be stranger than fiction. An intriguingly dark, twisty story and eccentric characters make this book a standout.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Sullivan, Matthew: MIDNIGHT AT THE BRIGHT IDEAS BOOKSTORE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487668726&it=r&asid=3402f395d6412e6efce0918f95c11c8b. Accessed 10 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487668726
Review of “Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore” by Matthew J. Sullivan
Posted on 06/21/2017
by rhapsodyinbooks
This unusual and disturbing story is part mystery, and part examination of a small, very dysfunctional group of people.
Lydia was psychologically scarred when she was 10 by being the only survivor of a gruesome murder at the house where she was at a sleepover. She managed to hide, but her girlfriend Carol and Carol’s parents were killed horrifically by someone who was never found, but was known thereafter as “The Hammerman.” The story was sensationalized at the time and retained a certain cult status, so Lydia uses a different last name, seeking to remain anonymous. She has never even told her boyfriend of five years about her past.
Now 30, Lydia has been working for the past six years at Bright Ideas Bookstore in Denver. As the story opens, one of the regulars in the store, Joey, just hung himself from the rafters of the top floor. It is Lydia who discovers him, and to her shock, she finds a childhood picture of herself in one of his pockets. She sets out to discover how he got this, and what message Joey intended for her. Her quest is aided by the fact that Joey bequeathed her his meager possessions, among them a set of mutilated books offering her clues, if a bit hard to decipher.
Lydia’s investigations eventually yield a number of shocking secrets, upending everything she thought she knew, and allowing her finally to solve the mystery of what really happened that traumatic night of her childhood she can never forget.
Evaluation: The mysteries in this book weren’t all that well hidden, but the process of their unfolding was interesting. But this isn’t a pleasant or diverting book; nor did it, in my opinion, offer any justification for including such nightmarish and violent images. It’s almost – but not quite – a horror story. I can’t say I enjoyed it enough to have been glad I read it.
Rating: 2.75/5