David Duchovny's MISS SUBWAYS

Blauner Books Literary Agency



From Publishers Lunch 
January 6, 2017
Fiction:

David Duchovny's MISS SUBWAYS, one woman's trippy, mystical journey down parallel tracks of time and love, on the way battling forces natural and supernatural, to find her true voice, power, and destiny, to Jonathan Galassi at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, for publication in Spring 2018, by Andrew Blauner [at Blauner Books Literary Agency] (world).

From @Publisherslunch, @davidduchovny's MISS SUBWAYS to Jonathan Galassi @fsgbooks Details @ https://t.co/ckOlE1WgWJ https://t.co/HIYOAKN5xe

— Blauner Books (@BlaunerBooks) January 6, 2017

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FOREWORDS — THE BOOKS BEFORE THE BUZZ

Mon, 01/09/2017 - 10:03am

With our column Forewords, we let readers know the latest book news on some of publishing's most-anticipated upcoming releases across genres — just as the projects are announced!



Mainstream Fiction — For those X-Files fans out there, David Duchovny will pen a new novel, Miss Subways. It will follow one woman’s journey down parallel tracks of time. We loved Sliding Doors and we have a feeling we will love this book too. Spring 2018 from Farrar, Straus.

Full article
Rtbookreviews

Miss Subways
A Novel

David Duchovny
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Hardcover

$26.00

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

05/01/2018

ISBN: 9780374210403
304 Pages

Inspired by W.B. Yeats’s play, The Only Jealousy of Emer, New York Times bestselling author David Duchovny reimagines the Irish mythological figure of Emer in Miss Subways, a darkly comic fantasy love story set in New York City.

Emer is just a girl living in New York City who takes the subway, buys ice cream from the bodega on the corner, has writerly aspirations, and lives with her boyfriend, Con. But is this life she lives the only path she’s on? Taking inspiration from the myth of Emer and Cuchulain, loosely based on W. B. Yeats’s play The Only Jealousy of Emer, and featuring an all-star cast of mythical figures from all over the world, David Duchovny’s darkly funny fantasy novel Miss Subways is one woman’s trippy, mystical journey down parallel tracks of time and love. On the way, Emer will battle natural and supernatural forces to find her true voice, power, and destiny. A fairy tale of love lost and regained, Miss Subways is also a love letter to the city that enchants us all: New York.


US Macmillan

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Interesting cover ... it's a picture of Mona Freeman, the very first "Miss Subways", who had never ridden a subway when she was awarded the title in 1941. She went on to have a career as an actress in film and television, and died in 2014.

Thanks Ballantrae, I didn't know that. And yes, interesting cover and plot.

Download Miss Subways: A Novel Audiobook

Author: David Duchovny
Narrator: to be announced
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Format: Unabridged Audiobook
Delivery: Instant Download
Audio Length: 7.75 hours

Release Date: May 1, 2018

ISBN: 9781427297044


Coming Soon!

The audiobook will be available for pre-order on April 10, 2018. Check back on that date to pre-order this title for the May 1, 2018 release!

Available for pre-order on: April 10, 2018


AudioBook

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Most Anticipated Releases of 2018 (So Far!)



It's hard to believe we are nearly through with the second month of 2018.

There's something blurry about life. Sometimes, the older that you get, you can't help but to feel like time is passing way too quickly. Then, there's the days where time trickles by so slowly and you just want, want, want a specific date to come around. In the case of any literature lover, those days we're prone to counting down for are upcoming release dates for books we're itching to read.

2018 is shaping up to be yet another brilliant year of publications. My wallet is already glaring at me in distress. We all have our eyes on specific titles--these are my most anticipated release of 2018 so far. I'm going to narrow it down to the books that will be released up until the summer-time, just so I don't overdo it!

Enough chit-chat. Let's get to the book part. 




MISS SUBWAYS by DAVID DUCHOVNY (May 1st, 2018): 

Known primarily for his work in The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Californication and Aquarius, David Duchovny is one of the most talented actors of his generation. As his career expands to both literature and song-writing (with both a new album and book out this year!), it becomes more and more apparent how versatile he truly is. In his past two publications, he's shown that he is someone to look out for in the book community--Miss Subways promises to be just as satisfying as Bucky F*cking Dent and Holy Cow. Duchovny is the type of author you soak up and consider his words for months after finishing.

@davidduchovny takes the top spot in my most anticipated reads of 2018, with "Miss Subways" (May 1st, 2018 @fsgbooks)  https://t.co/sMdJzOwsKR

— Jessica (@bookedj) 23 de fevereiro de 2018

MISS SUBWAYS
by David Duchovny

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KIRKUS REVIEW

A woman stumbles into the realm of myth when a supernatural creature offers her a heartbreaking choice.

Fresh off a new season of the evergreen X-Files and a late-blooming music career, the multitalented Duchovny (Bucky F*cking Dent, 2016, etc.) offers a spooky domestic drama that is equal parts Nick Hornby and Neil Gaiman. In this tale based on an ancient Irish legend about two star-crossed lovers, Duchovny transposes the story to present-day New York, a city he clearly loves. Emer Gunnels is a masterful second-grade teacher who still experiences fleeting visions from a childhood brain tumor. Her boyfriend is Cuchulain Constance “Con” Powers, an academic who is writing an obscure, right-wing treatise on pre-Christian deities and folklore—“J.K. Rowling meets Michael Lewis in a London pub, they fuck and have a baby that William Buckley raises,” more or less. Things go dark when Emer is confronted by Bean Sidhe, a wildly profane Celtic fairy, who offers her an impossible choice: Con (who has been canoodling with the scary spider goddess Anansi, by the way) may live, but the lovers must separate forever—or he dies right here, right now. After a glimpse of how each choice plays out, Emer makes her fateful decision. “The man lives. Love dies,” declares Sidhe. Duchovny finds a deft balance here between Emer’s domestic rituals and the machinations of actual gods and monsters. It’s also worth praising the novel’s upside-down love story in which Emer grows into the hero of her own story, not merely the object of a man’s quest. As happens, Emer and Con are drawn to each other over and over, while the old gods yearn to break their eternal cycle. With mythical embodiments scattered among the book’s surprisingly down-to-earth milieu—a trio of goddesses and a foulmouthed “mistress-dispeller” among them—Duchovny adroitly couches a Nora Ephron–esque romance in the sphere of Joseph Campbell.

An entertaining, postmodern fairy tale that tests the boundaries of love and fate.


Pub Date: May 1st, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-374-21040-3
Page count: 320pp
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20th, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1st, 2018


Kirkus Reviews

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Miss Subways
A Novel

David Duchovny

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

EMER

ON MARCH 20, AT 6:37 P.M., Emer Gunnels sat on the Lexington Avenue IRT line subway deep below Manhattan hurtling toward the future, hopefully making a stop at Ninety-sixth Street as well. She tried to avert her gaze from any man. She didn’t consider herself beautiful, but she had something some men sometimes liked. Some thing. Some times. Some men. Like she was in on the big joke. A blue-green refraction in her eyes of some charismatic, universal, lighthearted melancholy, like she saw things at a distance, a gently ironic remove. She dabbled in yoga; she could sometimes be found on a Stairmaster or a stationary bike; she was a New Yorker.

Here in the simulated captivity of a subway car, it seemed that the male imperative to gaze unapologetically at the female was a creepy game of chicken. The manspreading, lip licking, eye fucking—exhausting. These were men who would never act this way up in the disinfecting light of the street, but down in the subway, confined, these same males reverted to a kind of primal, almost prison-like dominance-testing behavior. It’s like a big-game reserve underground, she thought. Every day down here was like a new Stanford experiment. Thanks be to Jobs for the iPhone, which seduced a good number of the underworld travelers into a zombified and harmless solipsistic reverie, though it also seemed to embolden others by adding a propulsive soundtrack to their passive ogling. It was as if they thought, like children, if they couldn’t hear you, then you couldn’t see them.

She laughed lightly at that thought, making inadvertent eye contact with a pin-striped homunculus across from her, who, taking this as a sign that Emer was into him, manspread his open lap over not one, not two, but almost three seats. This antisocial act of opening wide your legs to cover multiple seats, presumably to air out your impressive package, was a true urban media obsession for a couple months back in 2014 that had spawned its own word and six-day culture war.

She felt a cold bead of sweat liberate itself from her right armpit and track down her ribs to a latitude even with her belly button. The Manafort-looking manspreader in the pin-striped suit—could be a Wall Streeter, possibly a top one or ten percenter—arched his eyebrows and tilted his pelvis ever so slightly, subtly enough to maintain the wiggle room of plausible public deniability. He ran his tongue across his lips. Gross. And clichéd. Double whammy. She involuntarily winced and made a gagging motion, as one might wave a cross in front of Dracula.

It was rare that she was without a book—she favored nineteenth-century novelists: George Eliot, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens—but this was one of those times she lacked printed matter. She found that looking down at her smartphone or tablet as the train was moving made her dizzy and nauseated, and while she realized that some vomit might clear valuable space in this crowded car, she chose to pass the time by reading the signs and advertisements that lined the tops of the walls all around her. Ever since she could read, Emer had felt the compulsion to read and even reread—cereal boxes, toothpaste tubes, subway ads. She was a reader. It defined her. She fixed her gaze well above the lap of the manspreader and made out what she could.

The first ad that caught her eye was for the ambulance-chaser law firm of Washington, Liebowitz, and Gonzalez, offering lottery-type rewards for heartbreaking diagnoses—$5.3 million for lead poisoning, $6.3 million for rubella, $11.3 million for mesothelioma, and so on. The repetition of the .3 was slightly suspect. How could all the crappy tragedies that might befall you be worth a fortune point three hundred thousand? Emer did the dread math in her head that she was convinced we all do when faced with these types of Faustian lawsuit scenarios. 11.3 million for mesothelioma … uh, no, nope, pass, but 6.3 mill for a little rubella? Maybe, maybe. Beats working. What was rubella anyway?

Next to Washington, Liebowitz, and Gonzalez was a placard from a series the MTA had instituted called Trains of Thought, in which quotations from great literature and philosophy were randomly posted to entertain the masses in the midst of mass transit.

One morning as Gregor Samsa was waking from an anxious dream, he discovered that in his bed, he had been changed into a monstrous, verminous bug.

—FRANZ KAFKA

“The Metamorphosis” was one of her favorite stories. She’d read somewhere that Kafka couldn’t get through a reading of his own work without collapsing into fits of laughter. A deadpan humor born of incomprehensible horror. The literary equivalent of her favorite comedian/actor—Buster Keaton. Kafka was a dark fantasist whose unadorned prose read like newspaper accounts from hell on earth. She wondered at the wisdom of bringing the specter of the cockroach, which was really the official anti-mascot of New York City, into the minds of subway riders trapped belowground, a place arguably more hospitable to vermin than people. She had seen roaches the size of New Jersey and rats you could throw a saddle on play on the tracks like they owned the place, like a postapocalyptic Disney movie.

She did not like to kill anything and had been an on-and-off, semi-strict, nondogmatic, occasional vegetarian since college when she’d read Diet for a New America, but she made an exception for cockroaches, flies, and mosquitoes. (And really good sushi.) Some insects deserved to die. She thought briefly of the Zika virus and its sad crop of pin-skulled, brain-damaged infants. She had no children. She was forty-one years old.

She quickly glanced down to see what el manspreader was doing, and shit goddammit, she met his eyes, and, having failed to hide a jittery and guilty flinch, she flailed around for something else to read. As she cast her eyes nervously about the car, she was surprised at the violent and vindictive fantasies of revenge that visited her. Her inner judge never had rehabilitation in mind—Hammurabian, very eye for an eye, and leaning heavily toward poetic justice. Vengeance would be taken from the man’s offending organs. A ball for an eyeball. An image flashed into her mind unbidden—of the offender’s junk stretched across the third rail as a train barreled down. She felt bad for visualizing that. A tad harsh, perhaps. Maybe the draconian Giuliani had recommended something like that. She shook her head, remembering the days of that lispy, hissy, death’s head of a mayor.

She readjusted her gaze to the next placard, which, she was warmed to see, featured a new Miss Subways competition. Miss Subways? Really? She happened to know all about that bygone “pageant.”

It was a real thing. She’d read about it in an Urban Studies program she’d taken a few years ago at Hunter College, where she’d decided to take a course every now and then, because, to paraphrase Dylan, if she wasn’t busy learning or being born, she was busy dying. The qualifications for entering the contest were both lax and touchingly parochial: she “had to be eligible, a NYC resident, and herself use the subway.” This was 1941, mind you. And yet as quaint as those strictures may seem, the contest itself was progressive, opening up to races and ethnicities that no other American pageant of the time would consider for decades. The clownish but deep former mayor Ed Koch had once said, “Even now, I can sit in the subway, and look up at the ads, and close my eyes, and there’s Miss Subways. She wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the world but she was ours.”

Thinking about a seemingly more innocent past, when the messiness of private life was no doubt the same, but the façade, how one spoke of the inside in public, was much simpler and the codes more easily figured, made her sleepy and warm. The lights flashed on and off like the staccato announcement of an epileptic seizure. “Dostoyevsky,” she muttered to herself, like an omen, another underground man. The subway itself was womblike, dark, and humming—Emer, who could have trouble falling asleep in her bed at night, often dozed sitting straight up on her commute. Sleeping amid strangers on a crowded subway car in New York City—an act of trust to make any saint weep with joy.

The train shuddered to an unscheduled stop between stations and the lights went out. Everyone groaned en masse. Perfect, Emer fretted, I’m already late. Con wants me there. He wants me there, but then he wants to ignore me. Like a child, a man-child. But that’s okay. This is his time, his time to shine, and she still had her secret wish, her secret plan within herself. A type of plan hatched in the infancy of civilization and the more primitive parts of a superstitious brain stem that lay underneath a rational modern forebrain, like water flowing under rock. A hope more than a plan, a wish she shared with no one for fear she’d be ridiculed as an old-fashioned gal.

She wouldn’t even form the words in her mind right now. She thought only of Miss Subways. July 1946 was one Enid Berkowitz, whose bio next to a fetching photo of the dark-haired Jewess read, “Art student at Hunter College—interested in advertising and costume design—plugging for B.A. but would settle for M.R.S.”

One step forward, one half step back. In April ’48, thirty-five years before the first black Miss America was crowned, meet caramel Miss Subways Thelma Porter, who “sings in a choral group and is a Gershwin devotee.” Of course she is. One step forward, and, oh well.

By the mid-’70s, the old girl, Miss Subways, quietly faded away, a necessary casualty of raised feminist consciousness, but she was nostalgically reinstituted for one year by the New York Post in 2004. And it now appeared the whole thing was making another postironic run again in 2017. Emer felt a little out of step with the times, and thought sometimes of the days of Miss Subways when it could be said without irony of a woman like Rita Rogers of March 1955 fame, “A sparkling, dark brunette, Rita was graduated cum laude last June from Notre Dame College of Staten Island. Works for a magazine. Likes fencing. Knits Argyle socks expertly.” Well, touché then, what man can resist a gal who can crochet up some Argyle? (Was it misogynistic? Was it pure nostalgia and therefore obviating questions of misogyny—like her uncle collecting Negro League baseball cards was not considered racist? But more important, was she too old to apply?)

The lights came back on and the train started up again. To save time, she was going to get off at Eighty-sixth and run the six blocks to the 92nd Street Y rather than going on to Ninety-sixth. Even in these heels. Her right hand wandered up to trace a scar hidden beneath her hair, by her left ear, a remnant of surgery to remove a benign tumor from her temporal lobe almost ten years ago now. She was beginning to realize that this had become a habit, and was less and less surprised when she caught herself in a reflective surface with her hand to her head.

When she thought about the significance of this tic, she figured it was grounding, reminding her, unconsciously, of who she was, her history, bumps overcome, and of mortality. She had been having some very mild, imperceptible seizures and ever-so-fleeting hallucinations, which ended with the removal of the tumor. She was supposed to get checked at least yearly, but for the past couple of years she’d been delinquent, telling herself that she would feel with her own hand if there were any changes that needed attention. It was her secret, kept from her mother when she was alive and her father now and all her friends, even her boyfriend, that she sometimes felt under the power of hallucinatory thought, of dreamlike late-night states in the middle of the day. If she were honest with herself, she might admit she liked the hallucinations. They were infrequent and often beautiful, and afterward, she felt a spent calm that many epileptics report feeling after a seizure. But, yes, she would make an appointment with the doctor. Just not this week.

The only outward sign of anything amiss was the difference in the size of her pupils. One black circle in the green was more dilated, larger than the other, as a stroke victim will sometimes present, but Emer had never had a stroke. It was merely a consequence of the operation the doctors could not explain and Emer, after crying for a week that her symmetry had been ruined (as it turns out, no one ever even noticed), started delighting in the fact that now she looked like David Bowie, and that it represented to her a certain rebellious, schizy nonconformity—as if one eye, with the smaller pupil, was focused on the light of day, while the other, the larger, the right one, was always trained on darkness and night.

Removing her hand from the ridge on her scalp, she returned her eyes to the manspreader, and thought of Con, and how they had made love last night. She liked the phrase “making love,” as if the act itself brought something new into the world, created something—made more of love itself. Con was very good at that. They had been together years, and sometimes she did feel that the consequent steps of their lovemaking were as predictable as Christ’s stations of the cross—as they lay in bed, Con’s hand would brush up against her thigh, he would turn her to him, they would kiss for thirty seconds, while his fingers explored her and opened her up, followed by a couple minutes of obligatory but still blissful oral pleasures, and then onto ten or fifteen minutes of fairly vigorous coupling in two or three positions, culminating in simultaneous, mutually assured orgasm.

As she put these clinical words on their still nightly ritual—it felt rote in retrospect, in the telling, like a how-to-assemble-an-orgasm manual, but it never felt rote in the doing. In their bed, Con was most present through his touch, and his presence conjured her own call to a full presence. Maybe it wasn’t fireworks, but it worked. She loved making daily, end-of-day love with Con, and the sameness of their moves felt to her not as the boredom of puppets going through the motions, but like being known—known by her man, and in turn, knowing, and pleasing, that same man. She could weep at the prospect of not making love to Con anymore. So she banished that thought.

Her man, not this hedge-fund simulacrum of masculinity across from her. She decided on behalf of all former and future Miss Subways to confront the Wall Street manspreader. She resolved to mouth the words “Fuck you, asshole” at him as she left the train car in minor triumph. She would confuse the offender, stun him, divert his attention, paralyze a retort. That would show his entitled smug jerk face. The douche bag probably worked for Lehman Brothers and caused the recession. I’d like to shove the whole subprime-mortgage crisis up his ass. She started to feel righteous. She took a deep breath and leveled her eyes at Lehmanschpreader, her upper teeth already pinched on her bottom lip to form a very capital “F” …

But the man had dozed off, his mouth open dreamily, like a little boy. His once widespread lap was pulled up into a childlike fetal position. Emer’s shoulders fell. “Aw…” she heard herself say involuntarily, then recoiled and wondered, What the fuck is wrong with me? before someone who saw her not as an object, but an obstacle, pushed her from behind making for the opening subway doors.

Copyright © 2018 by David Duchovny


Macmillan

Miss Subways: A Novel (Audio CD)

by David Duchovny (Author), Tea Leoni (Reader)

Price + Shipping $29.99

Delivery This item will be released on May 22, 2018. Pre-order now!


Amazon.com

Tuesday, 17 April 2018

Book Review: Miss Subways by David Duchovny



Title: Miss Subways
Author: David Duchovny
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 
Publication Date: 1 May 2018
Pages: 254
Format: eBook - EPUB
Genre: Fantasy/Romance/Myth
Source: ARC via NetGalley

Emer is just a woman living in New York City who takes the subway, buys ice cream from the bodega on the corner, has writerly aspirations, and lives with her boyfriend, Con. But is this life she lives the only path she’s on? Taking inspiration from the myth of Emer and Cuchulain and featuring an all-star cast of mythical figures from all over the world, David Duchovny’s darkly funny fantasy novel Miss Subways is one woman’s trippy, mystical journey down parallel tracks of time and love. On the way, Emer will battle natural and supernatural forces to find her true voice, power, and destiny. A fairy tale of love lost and regained, Miss Subways is also a love letter to the city that enchants us all: New York

I knew David Duchovny had started writing, but I'd never picked up one of his earlier releases. Therefore, when I saw this one on NetGalley, I decided to give it a try. Miss Subways was a delightful read that had me laughing out loud on several occasions. I loved the way Duchovny wove various myths into his principal tale, and the characters were all well drawn and great fun, including the city, which almost became a character in its own right. The plot held my interest throughout, and I was eager to see how things would end for Emer and Con. If you are looking for a myth retelling with a good dose of humour, Miss Subways is the book for you. Based on this, I would certainly read more of Duchovny's writing in the future. A solid 4.5 stars.

#BookReview: Miss Subways by David Duchovny from @fsgbooks via #NetGalley *4.5 stars* #fantasy #myth #retellinghttps://t.co/zvqL9BChHx

— Nicki J Markus (@NickiJMarkus) April 17, 2018

A Review of Miss Subways by David Duchovny

April 17, 2018


A Review of Miss Subways by David Duchovny

I have heard David Duchovny's voice for years as an actor on television and in film. With Miss Subways, I discovered a new Duchovny. This is the man who has a fine educational pedigree, the man who reads widely and turns phrases, making prose sound poetic. This is the well-read man who can create tension and emotion as well as display it.

In short, this is Duchovny as storyteller, composing the narrative, rather than speaking the words of someone else's story, playing a part in their world. I was very pleased with what I found in this book and, to my chagrin, I admit this is the first of Duchovny's three books I have read. I will now be turning my attention to the other two.

There is a literary sense about the book, a sense of playful wit, with the narrative drawing on mythology in a decidedly modern setting. There is humor here, and a fully-realized, engaging, and sympathetic character in Emer, the novel's lead.

Damn good writing that creates a pleasing sound on the ear. The book will be released May 1, 2018 in the United States.

A Review of Miss Subways by David Duchovny https://t.co/0DfvxHlB7M @fsgbooks

— Reading & Lit Resources Blog (@ReadingLit) April 17, 2018

Book Review: Miss Subways by David Duchovny

1 hour ago
by Sheryl



David Duchovny is a multi-talented individual. Having already proven himself as a successful actor over the last two or three decades, in recent years he has begun to branch out into the worlds of music and literature. With two albums and two novels already under his belt, on May 1 he releases yet another novel, Miss Subways. Each of his books is very different from the others. Holy Cow is a whimsical story about a cow who is determined to escape the possibility of a very grim future. Bucky F*cking Dent is the story of a grown man’s relationship with his ailing father, with some baseball thrown in along the way. And his newest entry into the world of fiction literature, Miss Subways, is a fresh, modern take on some Irish (and other) mythology in the telling of the story of Emer.

Emer Gunnels is an average woman in her late thirties living in New York City. Her boyfriend, Con, is an intellectual who has “been working full-time on his opus for more than ten years”. Emer’s life changes one night when she encounters Sidhe, a doorman in her building. Or is he? You might recognize some of the characters that Emer encounters along her journey, although in this tale they all come to life in new ways. 

Set in the current timeframe of New York City, specifically above-ground in Central Park and below in the underground subway system that is every bit as much a part of the city as the skyscrapers themselves, Miss Subways captures the personality of the beloved city as well as a certain mythological aspect that is hard to pin down. It is beautifully written and tells a tale of love, commitment, and choices made. The story captures your attention with mythology, yet never strays so overly far as to get away from what is real as well.

Duchovny continues his talent for writing with a dry wit in his third novel. The characters and voices in his books are diverse, what with a cow, an everyday ballpark worker, and a female teacher traveling along on the subways. All of his books are written with an entertaining intelligence that captures your attention and tends to not let it go until the last page. Miss Subways continues the tradition. I highly recommend picking up a copy when the book is released to the public on May 1, or you can pre-order it here.

Wrote a book review for #MissSubways by @davidduchovny. Short summary... I loved it! My favorite novel of his so far. https://t.co/cpR6xbr5EJ

— Sheryl 👧🏻🌎 (@girlvsplanet) April 18, 2018

Miss Subways: A Novel (Audio CD)

by David Duchovny (Author), Tea Leoni (Reader)

This program is read by the author and Tea Leoni, with their children, West and Miller Duchovny.

New York Times bestselling author David Duchovny reimagines the Irish mythological figure of Emer in Miss Subways, a darkly comic fantasy love story set in New York City.

Emer is just a woman living in New York City who takes the subway, buys ice cream from the bodega on the corner, has writerly aspirations, and lives with her boyfriend, Con. But is this life she lives the only path she’s on? Taking inspiration from the myth of Emer and Cuchulain and featuring an all-star cast of mythical figures from all over the world, David Duchovny’s darkly funny fantasy audiobook Miss Subways is one woman’s trippy, mystical journey down parallel tracks of time and love. On the way, Emer will battle natural and supernatural forces to find her true voice, power, and destiny.

A fairy tale of love lost and regained, Miss Subways is also a love letter to the city that enchants us all: New York.


Amazon.com

Posted on April 22, 2018 by Eileen G. Mykkels

Book Review: David Duchovny’s Miss Subways: A Novel

We at 25 Years Later would like to thank Farrar, Straus, and Giroux representatives Veronica Ingal and Sarita Varma for giving us the chance to review an advanced readers copy of David Duchovny’s Miss Subways: A Novel, which will be released May 1st, 2018. The audiobook version will be released on the same day and is narrated by the author, Tea Leoni, and their children, West and Millar Duchovny. The following spoiler-free review is conveyed as a conversation between staff writers and editors Rob E. King and Eileen G. Mykkels. This is the first book review/discussion on the site. We hope you enjoy it and pick up a copy of Duchovny’s book to join in our future discussions.

Rob: So, we both spoke to the fact that David Duchovny has an ability in his writing to convey a sense that he really understands people. In that, I suppose I mean his characters feel genuine, and none of their traits feel labored. Without us spoiling the work, what about Emer conveys that to us?

Eileen: The scariest part about Emer is that I see not only a real person within her, nor even that I can recognize traits seemingly (but unlikely) bastardized from many acquaintances over the years, but rather that, even as early as the seventh page, it is quite clear that Emer exists even as several very particular and variably prominent aspects of my own self and personality. There is nothing about her that is so fantastical it cannot be believed, even in the midst of fantastical happenings. I could meet her on the street (or Subway) today as easily as a friend or neighbour.

Rob: Without having read the novel, just by reading its summary, one could come to this book expecting a plot that borrows from the conventions of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. Did the novel read like that for you? Speaking to what I have taken as the strengths of this novel, how does this book resist that interpretation, meaning, what did David Duchovny really want to accomplish with this novel using mythology?

Eileen: While it has been suggested that Miss Subways shares something elementally with American God’s though the base concept is the same, the utilization is so vastly dissimilar as to hardly justify the comparison; the goals of the two books are as disparate as night and day, though the avenue to convey them is the same.
Using mythology, Duchovny (and in this aspect too, I suppose is Miss Subways a bit liken to American Gods) conveys the authenticity of culture in a particular location of the world in the modern age, in this case, New York. Culture has been important in all of Duchovny’s previous works, though it is never the main theme. One might argue that what Duchovny understands best of all is that, in order to convey an authentic tale, range of characters, et al, one must fully realize the many cultures that the story subsumes, or from which its characters come. Any world, fictional or otherwise, is bland and unrealistic without acknowledging the rich cultural histories to which the origin of the story or characters is owed.

Rob: What is this book—is it a romance, a coming of middle-age, a testament to New York? What do you think it is for the author?

Eileen: Miss Subways is many things. A nod to Duchovny’s Jewish heritage, his upbringing in New York, a distinctly feminist text with various political asides. A modern reality fantasy, its own oxymoron that such a story can exist, that something with themes so grounded in actuality can be focused on the fantastical and convince you that it is at all possible. Even the fantasy is mired in reality, be it history, mythology or even modern technology. Like all things in Miss Subways even the fantasy must adapt to the world in which it exists.

Rob: David Duchovny played an important character in Twin Peaks, one that dared to normalize the controversial for its time in a transgender character. Where am I going with this … he has been known to take some pretty quirky, perhaps edgy roles in his career, does this sense of interest come out in this novel or his previous novels? What makes Miss Subways uniquely a work of David Duchovny?

Eileen: As a male author writing a female main character in 2018, Duchovny is unapologetically honest, just as he was in Bucky F*cking Dent. Nothing is too shiny or perfect, but rather the assumed perfections are found in the often grungy, sometimes embarrassing reality of life – i.e. he pulls no punches. Be it in character racism, antisemitism, sexual encounters or even the simple act of regurgitation, Duchovny’s unwillingness to make pristine the baseness of human life is that which makes his books fantastic. It’s a bit like sitting down in a movie and actually watching a character use the bathroom – it simply doesn’t happen very often.

Rob: Is this a feminist text? And even if so, how is it also that and more?

Eileen: Duchovny has proven himself a capable author in the past, though this is the first time that his main character has been a human female. I would argue that this is an extremely feminist text, not only supportive of what it means to be a woman, but acutely understanding of it: what women go through on a daily basis, how they think, and react, and indeed, what they think and react to. Emer, though the description of the book would have readers assume her story is mainly focused on her lover, Con (Cuchulain), is a vibrantly independent, forward thinking, emotional and intelligent woman, whose life is full of pastimes and people as vibrant as she. The story is the evolution of her personal journey, a clear beginning and end exist, even if the end is merely another new beginning, a tenet of the cyclical nature of most mythos. It is a roadmap to personal fulfillment more so than anything else.

Rob: Right, so we can say this book has a lot to say about self-honesty. We don’t all get heroes’ journeys to reveal to ourselves these kind of truths. As David Duchovny explores this for his readers, how do you think he has grown as an author from Holy Cow to Bucky F*cking Dent to the author who produced this?

Eileen: While Holy Cow was mostly a circumspect philosophical fable (despite the myriad of f-bombs) and Bucky F*cking Dent was primarily focused on the relationships between fathers and sons, all three books contain the thematic base of self-discovery. All the main characters begin by thinking and believing one thing/way about themselves and the world around them and undergo realistic levels of change; none of the characters are unrecognizable by the ends of their stories, but all are wiser, more well-rounded figures, and indeed, happier too for their insights, no matter what pains they underwent to reach them. There is certainly some element of Buddhist considerations to this recipe, even if never outright stated, and the similarities between the books are few, despite some repeating themes. Each book has its own flavour, and each, I believe, grows progressively more natural in the evolution if its characters, as well as in the seamless inclusion of some of Duchovny’s more personal anecdotes (such as the reference to Emer’s anisocoria, which Duchovny also has).

Rob: The myth of Cuchulain and Emer is Irish and well-documented in Yeats’s poetry. From that we get the following tale (I looked for some guidance here, so please see the footnote for reference):

“In “The Only Jealousy of Emer” Cuchulain is rescued from death by the sacrifice of his dogged wife Emer. Shown by the trickster Bricriu an image of Cuchulain’s spirit being seduced by a woman from the Otherworld, Emer agrees to renounce his love, a costly lie that breaks a death spell.

In The Death of Cuchulain the hero achieves victory in battle but defeat at the hands of the now-aged Aoife. Emer defends him by slaying six of his enemies, but it’s too late: his head was cut off as a souvenir by the Blind Man.”[1]

Why do you feel Duchovny took so much inspiration from Yeats’s poetry and particularly those on the “Hound of Ulster” for this novel? I mean, it’s a superb idea, but why was it so perfect for him? Do you have a sense of that having finished the novel?

Eileen: The myth that supports Miss Subways is so thoroughly and modernly adapted as a skeleton for Emer’s progress as a character that it is hardly noticeable as adapted. It is there, almost in its exact original plot (again, one might reference the cyclical nature of myths, especially in Ireland) but it’s purpose is not to be the plot or the focus, but the impetus for positive change in Emer’s life. This is not Cuchulain’s story, though he also undergoes positive change as a result. The myth is the vehicle for change. On a metatextual level this also serves to underscore why myths remain important in cultures that have seemingly little time or use for them anymore, and, as already mentioned, Duchovny is all about culture. Myths, at their core, are meant to be able to be understood by anyone as they illustrate philosophically and ethically the history and nature not just of that culture but of mankind in general, just as do fables. Myths are applicable to all life, be there actual wars involved, or only the wars of the self imposed sort against man, against self, against the system. Duchovny’s book is a celebration of the adaptive nature of myth to suit the needs of the society it is meant to reflect.

Rob: Okay, here it is. Why is this a book we believe the readership of 25 Years Later will not only appreciate but really love adding to their entertainment for 2018? I love how Eileen says that it “… serves to underscore why myths remain important in cultures that have seemingly little time or use for them anymore…” As Twin Peaks fans and analysts, I think we are very used to wanting material that carries meaning, mythology, and layers of interpretation beneath its surface that somehow affects us on a personal level. In the world of reading, I suppose that’s sometimes posed as a “literature” versus “genre” distinction, but we won’t go there. You know, we are just scratching the surface as a year-old site now delving into film and television media beyond Mark Frost’s and David Lynch’s works, and I think a book like Miss Subways reminds us–of course, we came to it because of David Duchovny–that engaging writing is where it all starts, for the storytelling and in our examination of it all. And let’s not lie that David Duchovny’s name might bring some of his audience, some that may not often read, to his books. I suspect they will be happily surprised to find honest and thoughtful storytelling in this book as well as characters that will stay with them well after they finish it. And then maybe that leads to Yeats and back to David’s career and so on, but as for us at 25 Years Later, at least the two of us, we’re saying go, go now, go to your local bookstore on May 1st, and buy this book!

Two of our editors, @steel_neena & @RobEdKing received an advanced copy of @davidduchovny’s upcoming novel, “Miss Subways”. The following is a spoiler free conversation about the book! https://t.co/DfUoF5yJK2

— 25YL: Damn Fine TV/ Film (@25YLSite) April 23, 2018