Matthew Jackson

There’s an unclassifiable quality to Toby Barlow’s work—it’s not quite fantasy, not quite magical realism. With Babayaga, the Detroit-based writer returns to the strange mix of magic and raw human energy found in his debut, Sharp Teeth. Once you begin reading, you’ll stop trying to define this novel and simply term it an exhilarating ride.

Barlow’s narrative focuses on the lives of several very different but equally fascinating individuals in 1950s Paris. Will is a down-on-his-luck American advertising agent whose firm just happens to be a CIA front. Oliver is an American partier who came to Paris with dreams of starting a literary journal. Inspector Vidot is a detective who went to an old woman’s home to investigate a murder and somehow found himself turned into a flea. And then there’s Zoya, a beautiful young woman who attracts men with ease. But then, Zoya has been a beautiful woman for centuries—and that’s just the beginning of her talents.

Barlow has a gift for rendering the fantastic in a striking, matter-of-fact way. Even at its most fanciful (we are, after all, talking about a novel that features a man being turned into a flea), Babayaga is grounded by firm and careful prose. Every page blends the realms of the impossible and bizarre with the realms of history, culture and the human condition—and in that blending, the magic begins to feel very, very real.

But Barlow is not merely satisfied to believably inject magic into his narrative. As Babayaga meanders through the City of Light, it becomes deeper and even more fascinating— a meditation on love and secrecy and magic and what it means to be human that moves far beyond its intriguing premise. Babayaga is a book that, appropriately, casts a spell that’s hard to break.

Coming-of-age stories about young men trying to find their purpose in life can make readers cringe before they’ve even read the first page—such stories are often assumed to be nothing more than solipsistic exercises in pretension with no real plot. But as Owen King’s powerfully insightful and often devastatingly funny debut novel proves, those assumptions are often very, very wrong.

King’s hero is Sam Dolan, an aspiring filmmaker who must juggle a broken family, a collection of very odd friends and his own attempts at establishing a creative vision as he tries to find his place in the world as an artist, a lover and even a son. His father, Booth, is a B-movie actor whose views on cinema and life are vastly different from his son’s. His mother, Allie, is only a beautiful and bittersweet memory. Sam’s friends range from an ex who won’t stop texting him for phone sex to his unpredictable roommate to his godfather, a contractor whose ever-expanding mansion of a house stands in sharp contrast to Sam’s own fragmented, tenuous creative career.

King follows Sam and the often bizarre cast that surrounds him through creative triumphs and blunders, sexual awkwardness and glimpses of real love, familial strife and fleeting moments of what could have been lasting happiness had things gone just a little differently. Double Feature constantly walks the line between tragedy and comedy, between love and loathing, between friendship and strained codependency, between art and what’s only posing as art.

Stories that attempt such delicate thematic juggling can become mired in the muck of their own intellectual ambition. King overcomes this with witty and tightly paced prose, and the novel breezes by in spite of (and even because of) its depth.

King first caught the attention of readers with his 2005 short story collection, We’re All in This Together. He is equally—perhaps even more—adept at long-form writing, and this novel heralds a new phase in an already promising literary career.

The island of Galveston is a strange kind of American microcosm, existing both as its own slightly warped little world and as an important thread in the national fabric. It’s Texas but not Texas; tourist-filled and welcoming, yet uniquely distant; and always dangerously close to natural disaster. Elizabeth Black sets her spellbinding debut novel, a story of secrets, loss and the redemptive power of truth, against this compelling backdrop.

Clare is a celebrated New York photographer whose life crumbles in the wake of tragedy. When an invitation to stage an exhibit of her work promises to take her back to Galveston, her hometown, Clare relishes the chance to escape the stifling world of her married life. But back home, she finds old secrets stirring, and she becomes captivated with a decades-old legend of a drowned girl and what it means for her family’s own relationship with the wealthy, almost mythological Carradays of Galveston.

Black’s luxurious prose makes Galveston into a dark, fading fairy-tale world, and her descriptions of Clare’s internal strife reveal a keen insight into the human condition that eludes many more seasoned novelists. A page-turning chronicle of grief and memory, The Drowning House is a remarkable blend of human drama and satisfyingly Southern Gothic mystery, propelled by Black’s lyrical, haunting narration.

The title of John Irving’s latest novel is a declaration of its ambition. In One Person is an attempt to capture the harrowing personal journey of a single man as he finds his own sexual, emotional and even literary identity—and to capture it in a way that matters to every single person who picks up the novel. In that way, In One Person had to become a book not just about a single human being, but about every human being. That’s not an easy thing to accomplish, but as this novel unfolds with all the grace and power we’ve come to expect from John Irving, it’s clear that he’s done it.

At the heart of the novel is Billy, Irving’s narrator, a successful novelist reflecting on his life in old age. He begins his tale with the story of his fascination with the local librarian, an attraction that sparks both a sexual and literary awakening. From there we follow him through his high school and college years, on to his early successes and even into the early years of the AIDS crisis, when Billy—who is bisexual—watches his friends succumb to the disease.

Billy’s tale is an emotionally wrenching one, and Irving portrays it unflinchingly. He hones in on the most vital parts of his protagonist, drawing them out with vivid, bittersweet prose. In One Person never falls into the trap of becoming a preachy, issues-based novel. The issues are there, but the focus is on Billy, and on the fascinating and often confusing life he leads. That’s where the heart of the novel is, and Irving never strays.

In One Person is among the most challenging, dense novels Irving has ever produced, but readers willing to take the journey will find immense rewards. It’s a staggeringly ambitious work, and its success reaffirms Irving’s place among our greatest working novelists.