At a crowded outdoor book fair, a mother and daughter are separated. In the I-turned-around-and-she-was-gone of a parent’s nightmares, 8-year-old Carmel vanishes. Did Carmel, whose teacher calls her “dreamy,” try to get lost? Or did the fears of her recently divorced mother, Beth, cause it to happen? These questions tear at mother and daughter as they navigate unfamiliar, foreboding territory. 

In The Girl in the Red Coat, which made the shortlist for the Costa First Novel Award after its publication in the U.K., Welsh writer Kate Hamer seamlessly alternates between the perspectives of mother and daughter, capturing the ongoing effects of a tragedy in stark detail. Struggling to describe her daughter’s hair to police, Beth finally settles on the exact color of a brown paper envelope, believing that if she can just be detailed and precise enough, that will bring Carmel back. Hamer pinpoints the moments that take on a painful poignancy after a loss: Beth walking past Carmel’s school; seeing the red shoes Carmel wanted in a shop window; realizing the first time she went a minute without thinking of her daughter. 

Hamer also thoroughly inhabits the voice of young Carmel, who is at once both childlike and preternaturally endowed. Taken by a man with a fanatical agenda, she is a pawn in a game she doesn’t understand. The author lets the reader linger in uncertainty and frustration as Carmel’s rescue seems further and further away. The tension builds, making the book one you want to finish, but also can’t bear to keep reading. As Beth marks the time—day 1, day 7, day 51, day 100—we hope, worry, fear, trust and doubt with her and Carmel. The Girl in the Red Coat is an engrossing, smart, well-paced read that surprises until the end.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Charlotte’s family is starting over, and she isn’t sure what to make of it. Charlotte and her sister, Callie, have long been considered the weird ones in their Boston neighborhood. They speak in sign language as often as anything, a skill acquired from their mother, Laurel. But now that skill is setting them apart in another way: The Toneybee Institute for Ape Research has hired Laurel to teach sign language to a chimpanzee, Charlie—and the rest of the family is expected to treat him as one of their own. 

The family reacts in different ways, though. Laurel and Charlie easily bond. Callie aims to do the same, but the chimp doesn’t return her affections. He quickly becomes a point of division in Laurel and her husband Charles’ marriage. Charlotte, meanwhile, struggles to understand why her mother is so quick to embrace Charlie.

As Charlotte studies the institute’s past, her feelings grow increasingly conflicted. Seventy years prior to the Freeman family’s arrival, researchers at the Toneybee conducted studies comparing African-American people with apes. Charlotte is determined to reveal the link to her family and unveil the story they may now unwittingly be participating in.

In her debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, Kaitlyn Greenidge addresses race with a knowing, deft hand. And there’s far more at work here, as Charlotte and Callie face their teenage years and wrestle with the line between what their parents want and what they desire for themselves. The result is a story about identity, both self-determined and dictated by outsides sources, and a family’s aim to settle into who they are.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Jung Yun’s debut novel, Shelter, opens with a scene all too familiar in every parent’s life: a child out of bed way too early. We meet main character Kyung Cho, a first-generation Korean American, as he, annoyed and blurry eyed, tries to gratify the demands of his 4-year-old son, Ethan. Through this mundane encounter, the reader gets a sense of Kyung’s unhappy state of mind. The young professor is broke, and things get worse when he learns that his parents have become victims of a violent crime.

With each page, Yun takes us deeper into Kyung’s troubles, caused not only by the criminal acts of strangers but also by his own ineptitude, which he blames on his sadistic and loveless childhood. Gillian, his understanding, supportive, non-Korean wife, and Mae, his traditional, religious and artistic Korean mother, provide a juxtaposition of female influences in Kyung’s life, while his father, the elder Mr. Cho, questions whether Kyung is to blame for his own problems. 

As the crime drama unfolds in the background, Yun expertly explores what it means to be an immigrant in America, the true value of tradition, the parent-child bond, what makes a good marriage and the need for forgiveness. Yun introduces us to a man riddled with anger and self-doubt, leaving the reader to judge whether time can truly mend what’s broken. The story of Shelter is more than just about having a home; it is about finding a refuge in one’s own skin.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

From John Wray’s Lowboy to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, contemporary authors have boldly chronicled the minds, trials and tribulations of characters facing a range of cognitive and neurological challenges. Michelle Adelman’s debut, Piece of Mind, fits neatly into this genre.

Adelman’s protagonist, Lucy, was struck by a car when she was 3, leaving her with a traumatic brain injury "before it was trendy," as Lucy wryly offers in the novel’s blackly comic opening line. There’s a dash of Silver Linings Playbook in this portrait of an entire family confronting these challenges, as well as in the book’s unlikely romance.

Strong coffee, art (many pencil sketches are actually included in the book) and the Central Park Zoo have lent a semblance of structure to Lucy’s life, but she still struggles mightily. As if her physical injury weren’t enough, Lucy and her younger brother, Nate, lost their mother at a young age. This leaves Lucy seeing ghosts and relying on her father, who attempts to nudge his now 27-year-old daughter into the real world. These efforts are sometimes practical, occasionally hapless, but always loving. Which is why it is such a blow when Lucy’s father is felled by a heart attack, forcing Nate to assume a parental role he is not ready for. Strong coffee, art (many pencil sketches are actually included in the book) and the Central Park Zoo have lent a semblance of structure to Lucy’s life, but she still struggles mightily.

Piece of Mind lightens up when Lucy meets Frank at a Manhattan coffee shop. Frank’s got familial and social problems of his own, and as he and Lucy (quite awkwardly) grow closer, they have to figure out if they are the solutions to their respective troubles or, instead, just a new set of very complex problems. Adelman’s spare prose ably captures Lucy’s inner workings, though the book’s flashes of black comedy may make some readers hungry for more to lighten up the more somber proceedings. In the end, a colorful minor character named Enid pushes Lucy to fulfill the promise implicit in the Moliere quote that serves as this often touching novel’s epigraph: “The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.”

There may be animals, an imminent flood and a guy named Noah, but Noah’s Wife is not the familiar Genesis account. Imagine not a wind-tossed ark on rough waters but a town where the rains began and never stopped. Never a break in the gray clouds, never a feeling besides damp, no change in the forecast. The town at the center of Noah’s Wife is such a place—a place where the weather is the topic of conversation. The town’s inhabitants, who have stayed and watched their town slowly contract and the waters rise, are embittered, doggedly optimistic or simply resigned. First-time author Lindsay Starck excels at detailing her characters’ emotional and physical responses to this bizarre meteorological situation.

Into this near-ghost town arrive Noah and his wife. He, an energetic pastor with salvation on his mind, brings her, a quieter participant, skeptical but supportive. As the rain continues and the town’s once-lauded zoo floods, the townspeople begrudgingly rally to shelter the remaining animals. It’s the stuff of slapstick comedy: tortoises tucked into car trunks and monkeys buckled into passenger seats. Mauro, the happy-go-lucky Italian general store owner, becomes enamored with the brilliant peacocks he almost runs over. Mrs. McGinn, head of the town council, tries to maintain normalcy as she runs her diner and penguins bed beside the dairy in her cooler. But years of rain have made the people hard, and their rescue effort only adds to the feelings of despair and falls short of reuniting them.

Noah is especially floored by the town’s somber state and, as his eagerness cracks and doubts blossom, his wife finds herself without the man she put all her faith in. Noah, the man who “walked with God,” may have gotten the call, but it is his wife who ends up being the one to answer, to lead.

Starck writes thoughtfully, with a real ear for the rhythm of language and talent for finding surprising moments of humor amidst the dark nights of the soul her characters face. How do they hold onto hope in this rain-drenched place, where they have become experts at noticing different shades of gray? With wisdom and insight, Starck captures all their losing, leaving behind and longing. It takes one last defiant stand, one last tenacious grasp at hope, for this community to become one.

The occupation of Iraq was as nebulous as the reasons for the original invasion. Indeed, the war's raisons d'être multiplied as the years progressed. In Matt Gallagher's important debut novel, Youngblood, a lieutenant stationed in Iraq asks the trillion-dollar question: "Just what . . . were we doing?"

The ephemerality and pointlessness of this postmodern war pervade the novel's skeletal plot. Lieutenant Jack Porter goes on missions, people are killed, mosques are destroyed, blood money is offered. Soldiers stage fights between spiders and scorpions for amusement; they read misleading press releases to incredulous reporters. Vehicles are dismantled to avoid falling into enemy hands. Ultimately, Porter's only worthwhile endeavor is arranging an Iraqi family's escape from the country. He does this despite his more bellicose superiors, who refer to Iraq as "Indian country.”

Gallagher is best when conveying the predictable hostility of Iraq's people and geography. Like many Americans, Porter protested the invasion, or "collapse," as Iraqis called it. But, like his compatriots, he becomes determined to see the war through. Between attachments to the Iraqis and his fellow soldiers, and the rush of combat, he finds purposefulness amidst the waste and pain. He's no innocent, however. He boasts 48 kills, wants a "real war" and snaps dubiously that America "wins wars.” Striking imperial poses, he derides the Iraqis' lack of punctuality.

Gallagher is a former U.S. Army captain who blogged about his own deployment in Iraq. The novel sometimes resembles a mishmash of blog and screenplay; it's mostly dialogue, some action, less Weltschmerz. It has the light footprint American planners always hoped for in Iraq, but provides no easy answers. It's chaotic and sometimes nonsensical. But as Gallagher writes, "the truest war stories made the least sense."

Wendell and Frank, the elderly lovers of Matthew Griffin’s debut novel, are an annoying pair of hairpins. When the reader meets them, they are crotchety old guys living in some moribund little town in North Carolina. Soon, you learn the two of them were sort of curmudgeonly even when they were young.

Wendell, the narrator of the tale, would also probably object to him and Frank being called “lovers.” Though the action takes place in the waning years of the 20th century, Wendell pretends to be Frank’s brother when he’s taken to the hospital for a stroke. He also disapproves of the way younger gay men flaunt themselves; the sight of Nate Berkus on the cover of Architectural Digest with his husband and baby would have given him the vapors. The book isn’t called Hide for nothing; Frank and Wendell are comfortable in their closet. He and Frank have chosen to live in a place just far enough from town so they can do their shopping but discourage busybodies. 

Still, after a while the two begin to grow on you. Wendell, rejected by his family, is a misanthrope. A taxidermist, his relationship with Frank begins while Wendell prepares a deer—surely one of the squickiest getting-to-know-you scenes in modern literature. Frank, who comes from a loving family, ultimately rejects them to be with Wendell. They are each other’s entire world. Why else would Wendell spend hours baking complicated cakes or buying up every last fruitcake in town because they’re the only food that appeals to Frank after his stroke? The reader understands, with an anticipatory grief, that the stroke has not only taken Frank’s appetite but has left him weak and confused. Wendell will simply not be able to take care of him for long.

Frank and Wendell’s tragedy is that they’ve been forced, by law and then by habit, to forswear those networks that would have made the vulnerabilities of old age more bearable. There are no friends, no babies, no grandbabies. Even pets don’t fare very well. So, though Griffin fills his story with prickly humor and wit, and a dash or two of gruesomeness, in the end Hide is a book that breaks your heart.

Sharon Guskin’s debut novel is the tender story of a mother’s desperate struggle to heal her troubled child, artfully blended with an intriguing exploration of the world of the paranormal and the provocative question of whether consciousness can survive death.

When conventional therapy fails to alter or explain the disturbing behavior of her 4-year-old son, Noah, single mother Janie Zimmerman turns in despair to the Internet. There she discovers psychiatrist Jerome Anderson, whose unconventional research into the recall of prior lives has cost him respectability in his profession. Soon, their lives are linked in an effort to resolve Noah’s debilitating condition, a quest that takes them deep inside another family’s tragedy.

Though it’s wholly original, the tale of disappearance and death that lies at the core of The Forgetting Time summons the spirit of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. Guskin adroitly maintains the pace of her mystery plot while simultaneously revealing the deepening emotional bonds between Janie and Noah and Anderson in a way that contrasts effectively with the novel’s more fantastic elements. She brings that same sensitivity to her portrayal of the grieving mother whose loss draws the trio to the climax of their quest.

Guskin acknowledges her debt to the work of a pair of real-life Jerome Andersons at the Division of Perceptual Studies of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, quoting striking case studies. Regardless of your skepticism or credulity about reincarnation, you’ll come away moved by this affecting tale of maternal love and the unbreakable cords of memory.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Is there a better setting for a mystery with a whiff of the supernatural than an English country manor house? From Thornfield Hall to Manderley, literature is replete with spooky old homes: places that pulse with untold dangers, where secrets and horrors from the past whisper from the shadows. 

The eponymous estate in Eve Chase’s debut novel, Black Rabbit Hall, is one such place, though this wasn’t always the case. During the 1960s, it was the Cornish holiday home of the Alton family. Under the watchful eye of their beloved mother, children Amber, Toby, Barney and Kitty would spend lazy summers and school holidays reveling in the pursuits of childhood. But in the present day, the house sits shuttered. To stave off financial ruin, its owner has agreed to rent out the property for weddings, which brings Lorna Smith and her fiance to its gates. Although Black Rabbit Hall is entirely unsuitable for entertaining, Lorna is immediately captivated by the place and can’t shake the feeling that she has visited it before. Curiosity turns into obsession, and Lorna soon finds herself desperate to uncover Black Rabbit Hall’s tragic history.

Chase’s pacing and world-building are excellent, thoroughly setting the scene and bringing her characters to life. There is a dreamy quality to the writing that gives the novel the tenor of a Gothic fairy tale, and although there is a sense of malice and danger that thrums beneath it all, Chase’s achingly beautiful investigation of her characters’ inner lives results in a story that is haunting rather than scary. For fans of Kate Morton and Daphne du Maurier, Black Rabbit Hall is an obvious must-read, but it is sure to please any reader who delights in devilishly thrilling dramas.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Legendary writer M.M. “Mimi” Banning hid herself away after feeling suffocated by the fame that accompanied winning a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award at age 20. The only piece of work the reclusive author has managed to produce since then is her son, Frank, a brilliant fourth-grader who uses smart 1930s garb—like pocket squares and wingtips—and facts about the movie business as armor. But after losing her fortune, the tetchy literary talent must write a new book ASAP. 

Enter Alice Whitley, an assistant deployed by Mimi’s editor to travel from New York City to L.A. to make sure Mimi is working. But Mimi doesn’t want Alice’s help, and Alice instead finds herself tasked with being Frank’s companion. Both taken with and frustrated by Frank’s eccentricites, Alice can’t help but be curious about the identity of the boy’s father—and how his handsome, flirty piano teacher fits into the cloistered family’s life. Meanwhile, Alice gently urges the frequently unpleasant Mimi to please, please finish her book.

In her debut, Julia Claiborne Johnson ably conjures a quirky cast and a privileged California world. Be Frank with Me is about being an outsider and the ways in which differences help others see the world in a new way. Like Frank, this offbeat story has a big heart.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Fiction Top Pick, February 2016

Poet and translator Idra Novey brings a considerable imagination to her first work of fiction, Ways to Disappear, in which the disappearance of a famous novelist upends the life of her American translator.

The novel opens with a touch of magic realism: Legendary Brazilian writer Beatriz Yagoda lights a cigar, climbs into an almond tree with a suitcase and vanishes. Hundreds of miles away, her American translator, Emma Neufield, hears the news. Abruptly canceling her classes and leaving her stuffy boyfriend, Miles, behind, Emma flies from snowy Pittsburgh to sultry Rio to lead the search. By the time she arrives, the situation has grown complex: Yagoda’s children, the practical Raquel and the devastatingly sexy Marcus (neither of whom has ever completed reading one of their mother’s books), have discovered that their mother owes thousands to an angry loan shark. The eccentric cast of characters crisscrosses Brazil from Rio’s sordid back alleys to sunny beach towns and island resorts in pursuit of the missing writer. 

Stylish and funny, romantic and surreal, Ways to Disappear is a quirky look at the intimate relationship between author and translator. Novey, who has translated several South American writers, including the great Clarice Lispector, has absorbed their experimental spirit, and the story is interspersed with Miles’ increasingly panicky emails and Emma’s translation notes. Though Ways to Disappear unfolds at the rapid pace of a screwball comedy, there is also something patient and artful about the novel, making it a thoughtful treatise on writing and artmaking that is as profound as it is playful.
 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Novey about Ways to Disappear.

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

There is power in words. A book requires its reader to fill in the blanks, to imagine a world into being. Sometimes, that world is grander than reality.

That’s always appealed to Swedish bookstore clerk Sara Lindqvist. Books are better company than most people, and they’ve taken her to the most amazing places.

The words of Sara’s pen pal, elderly Amy Harris, also appeal to Sara’s imagination. The two struck up a friendship over an exchange of letters and books, and Amy invited Sara to visit her in Broken Wheel, Iowa, to explore the town and fit in plenty of reading. Sara is in. 

Unfortunately, she arrives just after Amy’s funeral. Suddenly, Sara is slapped with a reminder that truth isn’t always as interesting as fiction. 

Sara finds comfort in Amy’s books and becomes determined to draw the townspeople into the world of words. She uses Amy’s collection to launch Oak Tree Bookstore, which becomes a Main Street hub, drawing visitors from beyond Broken Wheel. With every book she sells (or lends), Sara comes closer to finding purpose and a home in a place she didn’t expect to belong.

In The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, Swedish author Katarina Bivald beautifully illustrates the relationship between a reader and her books. Sara once used books as a barrier, but she comes to learn how exchanging stories can connect people—and finds that sometimes, life can surpass even your favorite book.

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.