In his marvelous novel The Stranger’s Child, Alan Hollinghurst spanned the 20th century to tell the story of an enigmatic poem and its relevance to generations of one family. He employs a similar structure in his new novel, The Sparsholt Affair, another multigenerational saga, this time focusing on the Sparsholts and the effect a highly public midcentury scandal has on their family and legacy.

The first of the novel’s five sections is set in 1940. Several Oxford classmates, many of them gay, belong to a literary society. The students become infatuated with David Sparsholt, an aspiring engineer whom they first encounter as he exercises in front of an open window, “a figure in a gleaming singlet, steadily lifting and lowering a pair of hand-weights.” David has a girlfriend, but the classmates wonder if that might be a smokescreen. One student convinces David to pose nude for a drawing. Another is determined to sleep with him.

The novel’s main character, however, is Johnny Sparsholt, David’s son. Readers first meet Johnny in the mid-1960s when, at age 14, he’s vacationing with his parents and eager to pursue a romance with Bastien, an exchange student who’s staying with Johnny’s family. During this holiday, a scandal involving David’s secret affair brings ignominy to the family. The notoriety of the scandal weighs on openly gay Johnny for the next 50 years, as he becomes a celebrated painter and interacts with many of the people from his father’s past.

Hollinghurst has a tendency to use dialogue too obviously to convey background information, but the Jamesian elegance and psychological acuity of his previous novels grace The Sparsholt Affair as well. This is a moving work from one of modern literature’s finest authors.

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Given the fractures that mark the history of the United States and the many immigrants who call this nation home, it’s not particularly surprising that so much of American storytelling gravitates toward the familial, seeks shelter in that blood-bound country within the country. What has been said best about American life in the realm of fiction has often been said through the prism of the American family.

It is squarely through the door of the familial that Luis Alberto Urrea’s dizzying new novel, The House of Broken Angels, enters the pantheon and takes its rightful place alongside the best contemporary accounting of what it means to belong in this country of endless otherness.

The novel takes place both in chronological time and in violation of it. It follows the de la Cruz clan, “an American family, which happens to be from Mexico.” The family’s eldest, Mamá América, has died. Her son, the family patriarch Miguel Angel de la Cruz, is also dying, but he attempts to ward off death long enough to organize back-to-back family gatherings: his mother’s funeral and his own final birthday party. The narrative—sometimes bittersweet, sometimes uproarious—swoops between these two events and the personal histories of their attendees.

Urrea writes in exhilarating but controlled slashes, wielding a machete that cuts like a scalpel. Every page comes alive with scent, taste and, perhaps most movingly, touch. The novel’s most affecting characters are passing through the tail end of life. They carry the burden of a shared history, and in this way their smallest, most delicate interactions—the brush of a hand, the sight of scarred and sagging skin—are alive with the weight of all that once was. The House of Broken Angels is about a quintessentially American family, a family that came north looking for heaven but found that “heaven was a blueprint.” But it’s also about what it means to look back on a life and, with total honesty, take stock.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Urrea for The House of Broken Angels.

This article was originally published in the March 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In a startlingly relevant update, Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire relocates Sophocles’ Antigone to present-day London and weaves a timely tale of two British Muslim families with differing ideas about bigotry, belief and loyalty.

After years of devoting herself to raising her younger siblings, Isma Pasha is free to return to college and complete her degree in sociology. She worries about leaving behind her beautiful, headstrong sister, Aneeka, but of even more concern is Aneeka’s twin brother, Parvaiz, who has disappeared. Parvaiz surfaces in Syria, pursuing the dreams of Adil Pasha, the jihadist father he barely knew. The two sisters are devastated by his choice and frightened by the intrusion of the British Security Service into their lives.

When Isma meets handsome Eamonn Lone in the college coffee shop, she recognizes him as the son of controversial political figure Karamat Lone, who was a member of Parliament at the time of Adil’s death and is now British Home Secretary. But it is Aneeka who sees in Eamonn a unique chance to get her brother home and starts an intimate relationship with him. Is it love? Or simply political manipulation?

Home Fire is Shamsie’s seventh and most accomplished novel. The emotionally compelling plot is well served by her lucid storytelling, and she digs into complex issues with confidence. Divided into five sections, one for each of the main characters, the narrative combines the themes of Sophocles’ tragedy with this most up-to-date of stories. As this deftly constructed page-turner moves swiftly toward its inevitable conclusion, it forces questions about what sacrifice you would make for family, for love.

Read our Q&A with Kamila Shamsie for Home Fire.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Maile Meloy specializes in writing short fiction about privileged but emotionally fragile characters who are self-aware to an almost destructive degree, and who can be startled by their own dark thoughts. Meloy delves deeply and expertly into these personalities, plumbing the repercussions of various events in their worlds. In her new novel, she takes that approach and revs it up to top speed.

Do Not Become Alarmed starts as two cousins and their families are setting out on a cruise to South America. At first everything is pleasantly relaxing, but things quickly begin to go wrong. Persuaded to take a day off the ship, the two families are divided: The men go golfing, while the women take their kids on a zip-line tour. Almost immediately, complications arise for the zip-lining crew. Their vehicle breaks down, and when they go for a swim at a nearby beach, the kids disappear. It’s any parent’s worst nightmare: You’ve lost your kids, and it’s your fault.

The book moves at a rapid-fire pace through the events that follow, as the kids get into deeper and deeper trouble and their parents become ever more distraught. The story is told from as many viewpoints as there are characters, and everyone gets at least one chapter. Meloy skillfully analyzes each person’s reaction to his or her situation in remarkably efficient prose that never scrimps on detail or emotional impact. It’s a grim story told with a light touch, and it’s completely addictive.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.