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FictionLiterary FictionDebut FictionComing of Age

A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl

A harrowing tale of sacrifice, survival and identity, Nanda Reddy’s A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl presents an unvarnished look at how the American Dream can morph into a nightmare for immigrants.
A harrowing tale of sacrifice, survival and identity, Nanda Reddy’s A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl presents an unvarnished look at how the American Dream can morph into a nightmare for immigrants.
FictionPopular FictionFamily Drama

I Leave It Up to You

You won’t forget Jinwoo Chong’s big-hearted, beautifully written I Leave It Up to You, about a son returning to his fractious but loving family following a two-year coma.
You won’t forget Jinwoo Chong’s big-hearted, beautifully written I Leave It Up to You, about a son returning to his fractious but loving family following a two-year coma.
FictionFamily DramaComing of Age

Red Dog Farm

A heartfelt coming of age story about a son leaving college to help on his father’s farm, Nathaniel Ian Miller’s Red Dog Farm is note-perfect in its evocative depiction of life in rural Iceland.
A heartfelt coming of age story about a son leaving college to help on his father’s farm, Nathaniel Ian Miller’s Red Dog Farm is note-perfect in its evocative depiction of life in rural Iceland.
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FictionLiterary FictionDystopian Fiction

Hum

Review by Thane Tierney

When it comes to dystopian futures, author Helen Phillips hits the American zeitgeist jackpot in her sixth novel, Hum. Cancel culture, job displacement due to AI, government overreach, deteriorating middle class wealth, missing children, declining air quality, bad breakfast cereals . . . the future’s so dark, you gotta wear a miner’s helmet.

In fiction, a trip out into nature almost always ends up with Job-like trials being visited upon the vacationers. Deliverance. 127 Hours. Jurassic Park. Into The Wild. Even Hansel and Gretel, for goodness’ sake. But despite these fictional precedents, when May makes a little extra money by submitting herself as a test subject for a surgical procedure that will disguise her features from the latest iteration of AI recognition software, she decides to take her family on vacation to the very expensive hyper-natural Botanical Garden. May hauls her two kids and her husband off into this Disney-fied paradise, requiring them, for good measure, to leave their phones and other communication devices at home so they can reap the full benefit of the experience.

And reap it they do.

The “hum” of the title is an AI-powered, jack-of-all-trades android, able to fill roles from a dental hygienist to a pop psychotherapist. If there was any question as to whether Phillips has seen 20 minutes into the future, in addition to dispensing whatever wisdom is appropriate to the moment, hums shill commercial products—unless you upgrade to the ad-free tier. Hum is, as dystopias go, reasonably breezy; it’s suitable for a coast-to-coast airline flight or an extended stay on the beach as an antidote to binge-watching the latest season of your favorite TV show. For those just dipping their toes into speculative fiction, the setting is relatable enough to not make you feel like (ahem) a stranger in a strange land.

For those just dipping their toes into speculative fiction, Helen Phillips’ prescient dystopia Hum is relatable enough not to make you feel like a stranger in a strange land.
FictionLiterary Fiction

How to Leave the House

Review by Cat Acree

Nathan Newman’s first novel, How to Leave the House, tracks a young man named Natwest in his quest to reclaim a missing package. Inside the package: a large sex toy. Along the way, various players in Natwest’s small town step forward to share apparent wisdom with the young man, in scenes that range from ludicrous to genuinely philosophical. Through these loosely connected narratives, readers encounter a bawdy tale of the unseriousness of existence and the impossibility of knowing our neighbors.

Some chapters relate Natwest’s interior narrative (often obnoxiously laden with literary and artistic references), while others inhabit the minds of other characters, including his dentist (obsessed with painting mouths), his former English teacher (recovered from cancer and looking for sex) and his mother (proud of her son and desperate to show it). There are comedic and entertaining stories, especially one involving an egg fight and one in which a woman dances on her brother’s grave. Others are upsetting and cruel, like the chapter narrated by Natwest’s self-loathing ex-boyfriend, and another about the provocative internet activities of a girl named Lily.

In one storyline, an imam named Mishaal struggles with his love for classic cinema. He is enraptured by closeups of Ingrid Bergman, tortured by them as if he were having an illicit affair. When the imam encounters Natwest, he lectures the young man on binaries: “If it’s not Chaplin or Keaton, it’s Spielberg or Scorsese. If it’s not Spielberg or Scorsese, it’s Truffaut or Godard.” He insists that Natwest embrace his inner Keaton and stop trying to be a Chaplin.

Natwest’s story, along with everyone else’s, is bisected, torn between conflicting desires. The characters’ fates are ambivalent, not only in that we don’t know how things will work out for them, but also because none of them know how they’d like their stories to turn out. “I believe that a happy ending is at least as realistic as an unhappy one,” the imam says. Natwest is horrified by that idea, as the young man insists that unhappiness is “real shit.”

How to Leave the House is fiction as friction, designed for discomfort. This is a novel of dichotomies that beg to be challenged, with psychological spaces that desperately need transparency but are inherently, tragically closed off to each other.

Read our Q&A with Nathan Newman about How to Leave the House.

Nathan Newman’s debut is a bawdy tale of the unseriousness of existence and the impossibility of knowing our neighbors, set in a small town over the course of 24 hours.
FictionPopular FictionDystopian Fiction

Burn

Review by Alice Cary

After their annual two-week hunting trip in northern Maine, lifelong friends Jess and Storey emerge from the wilderness to a bewildering new world. Bridges have been blown up, houses burned and villages abandoned—and there’s no internet connection to turn to for an explanation. Before their trip, there had been rumblings about militant groups that wanted Maine to secede, but the pair hadn’t been worried. Now, however, they find themselves “in the wake of a rolling catastrophe, moving behind some malign harvest whose shape and intention they could only guess.”

Peter Heller’s seventh novel, Burn, is one of his best: It’s full of heart and soul amid the bleak landscape (be forewarned, there are numerous bodies). In fact, even those who don’t normally turn to dystopian novels are likely to be completely captivated. Heller excels at writing about the wilderness, showcasing its might and beauty amid deadly situations, as he’s done before in books like The Last Ranger, The Guide and The River. Here, humans present the greatest danger as Jess and Storey attempt to make their way to safety, combining their intellects and survival skills in a way that brings to mind HBO’s The Last of Us, minus the fungus-infested zombies. Before long, these two men make a discovery that changes the calculus of their each and every move.

In addition to being a survival thriller and insurrectionist nightmare, this is also a story centered on friendship, how it is tested and how it perseveres. Burn interweaves the friends’ past and present lives with admirable flair, making each thread equally riveting. Some readers may find one surprising past relationship hard to buy, but even that doesn’t distract from the tight, authentic bond that forms the basis of this novel. “Love is attention,” Jess’s ex-wife once told him. “That is all you know on earth.” Over the course of the novel, Jess finally comes to understand what she means, making his emotional journey just as charged as the perilous landscape that he and Storey are forced to traverse. Burn is a propulsive tale that will keep readers on the edge of their seats from beginning to end.

Peter Heller’s seventh novel, Burn, is one of his best: It’s full of heart and soul amid the bleak landscape, and even those who don’t normally turn to dystopian novels are likely to be completely captivated.
FictionLiterary FictionComing of Age

Catalina

Review by Eric A. Ponce

College is supposed to be the best four years of your life. Throwing a Frisbee on the quad, spending late nights in the library, meeting people from all over the world—in the American imagination, college is a utopia. In Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s debut novel, Catalina, the titular character goes to Harvard and realizes that college can be a dystopia, too. As an undocumented person in the United States, Catalina Ituralde is forced to live her life quietly, mostly staying home with her two grandparents, who are also undocumented and at risk of deportation. But Catalina can’t avoid attention, or at least she doesn’t want to. An adventurous free spirit, she wants to live life to the fullest. She wants to fall in love and experience all of life’s pleasures and pains.

Every college student dreads graduation: After four years of security, what comes next? The “real” world? For Catalina, in her senior year, this dread is emphasized by an actual existential threat. Her status as a student helps to keep her from being deported, and if she can’t find a sustainable life path to follow after college, she risks being taken from the only world she’s ever known. When a pretty, privileged boy starts to take interest in her, it seems like a way is opening to get everything she wants. Nathaniel—whom Catalina never refers to as “Nathan” or “Nate,” underscoring the disparity of their social statuses—is the son of a famous director and an aspiring anthropologist. Both he and his father have a keen interest in the culture of Latin America, particularly Ecuador, where Catalina and her family have roots. Catalina flirts with Nathaniel, ensuring that he slowly, helplessly falls for her, and she starts to catch feelings too. But when the threat of deportation becomes a reality for her family, Catalina has to take advantage of her budding romance, asking Nathaniel’s father to help her gain public support by collaborating on a documentary. The project puts a strain on Catalina as she is forced to define herself, to speak for her dysfunctional family and to confront what kind of person Harvard has made her.

Written in brilliant, overflowing prose, Catalina is one of the best, most fun-to-read books you will find. You may see a bit of yourself in Catalina, or you may learn how to empathize with someone whose entire life is chaos.

Read our interview with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio about Catalina.

In Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s brilliant and fun debut novel, Catalina Ituralde, an adventurous free spirit and an undocumented student at Harvard, finds college to be a more dystopian experience than the typical American envisioning.
FictionThrillerDebut FictionCrime Fiction

Between This World and the Next

Review by Alden Mudge

Joseph Nightingale, nicknamed Fearless after a moment of heroism during the Bosnian conflict, is a British war photographer who was in Nairobi during the August 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy. While he was away, his pregnant girlfriend, an award-winning investigative journalist, was killed in an automobile accident. As Praveen Herat’s gripping debut political thriller, Between This World and the Next, opens, Fearless has accepted his old friend, Alyosha Federenko’s invitation to Cambodia, arriving overwhelmed by grief and guilt.

Federenko stashes Fearless at the Naga, a gathering place for the gangs and soldiers of fortune set loose upon the world after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the chilling pleasures of this book is Herat’s vivid, knowledgeable portrait of this threatening netherworld, from outposts like the Naga to breakaway states like Transnistria, where money is exchanged for advanced weaponry and private armies are assembled to rule in feudal power.

Federenko himself resides at a luxury hotel while he wheels and deals in an attempt to gather money and power to work himself back into the upper echelons of the new Russian elite. Fearless at first forgives the acquisitiveness of a man he knows was born in chaos and poverty. But as events unfold, and people get hurt and killed, Fearless’s worldview of engaged empathy collides with Federenko’s selfish, transactional view of human interactions.

Also at the Naga is Song, a young Cambodian woman enslaved as a cleaner. As children, she and her twin sister were sold into prostitution. Song’s face has since been ravaged by an acid attack, and her soul is deflated by loss of contact with her sister. She cares for the young children who are brought to the Naga by adult predators and whose gruesome abuse is recorded on video. The existence of one of these videos, handed off to Fearless, sets the elaborate plot rolling with increasing velocity.

The final chapters of Between This World and the Next are breathtaking in their descriptive power and imaginative reach, and the novel’s ending is very satisfying. But some threads still dangle and not all questions are answered—which makes one hope for a sequel.

Praveen Herat’s prizewinning debut thriller, Between This World and the Next, paints a vivid, knowledgeable portrait of a threatening political netherworld, including breakaway states like Transnistria.
FictionThrillerLiterary FictionDebut Fiction

Bright Objects

Review by Lauren Bufferd

A fatal accident, a cosmic visitor and a mysterious stranger all come together in a small Australian town in Ruby Todd’s dazzling debut, Bright Objects.

Young widow Sylvia Knight is recovering from the car accident that killed her husband and left her with serious injuries, both physical and psychological. Profoundly lonely, Sylvia works at the local mortuary, keeps her husband’s grave tidy and puts on a cheerful face for her mother-in-law, Sandy, whom she visits weekly. But she is haunted by sketchy memories of the night of the accident. Although another car was involved, nobody was arrested, but Sylvia believes she knows who was responsible. When word comes through her friend Vince that the police are closing the case, she falls into a deep depression and plans to take her own life. However, the appearance of a rare comet proves a distraction. When the comet’s discoverer, American astronomer Theo St. John, walks into the mortuary one day, Sylvia’s life takes a turn. Sylvia and Theo begin to find connection through shared meals and trips to the observatory to view the comet.

As the comet’s path draws closer to Earth, the mood in town shifts from celebratory to ominous. Joseph Evans, local meditation teacher and the heir of a wealthy family, sees the comet as a divine messenger and begins a series of mystical lectures that attract a cultlike following. He is eager to involve both Sylvia and Sandy, and Sylvia is distressed to see her mother-in-law drawn in by his promises. Conflicted in her feelings towards Theo and still wrestling with suicidal ideation, Sylvia finds her obsession with uncovering her husband’s killer pushing her to the edges of her sanity.

Bright Objects is a riveting literary thriller of obsession, vengeance and astronomy, but its most poignant gift may be its depiction of trying to make sense of life after tragedy.

Ruby Todd’s dazzling debut, Bright Objects, is a riveting literary thriller of obsession, vengeance and astronomy, but its most poignant gift may be its depiction of trying to make sense of life after tragedy.
FictionAudioLiterary Fiction

Long Island

Review by Deborah Mason

In Long Island (9.5 hours), Colm Toibin wastes no time before lobbing a hand grenade into the happy, suburban life of Eilis Lacey, the heroine of his critically acclaimed novel Brooklyn. The resulting shock waves push her out of her home in Lindenhurst, New York, and back to her mother’s home in Enniscorthy, Ireland, where she confronts past regrets, present secrets and, perhaps, future happiness.

Oscar-nominated Irish actress Jessie Buckley does an excellent job of switching from Eilis’ lilting Irish accent to the distinct Long Island accent of her Italian American in-laws, creating nuanced, complex characters on both sides of the ocean. Moreover, Buckley honors the many pauses and silences Toibin builds into the story, allowing the reader to fill those spaces with the weight of the characters’ hesitance, hope and fear.

Read our review of the print version of ‘Long Island.’

Oscar-nominated Irish actress Jessie Buckley gives nuanced voices to Eilis Lacey’s Irish relatives and Italian American in-laws in the audio version of Long Island, Colm Toibin’s sequel to Brooklyn.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Writing a woman on the verge

Interview by Carla Jean Whitley

Both Same as It Ever Was and your debut, The Most Fun We Ever Had, are lengthy novels that examine family dynamics over the course of decades. What draws you to this type of story?

I’ve always been drawn as a reader to big, meaty novels that stick with a cast of characters over a long period of time, and it’s very much where I feel most at home as a writer—having the ability to explore my characters from all angles, from different vantage points in time and space. Once I fall in love with a character, I want to know absolutely everything about them, and in the case of Julia that meant getting to know not just her but her entire family, the trajectory of her upbringing and her marriage and her becoming a mother.

This time around, the time span is a bit tighter and the family’s matriarch, Julia, is at the center of the story. Can you tell us about how Julia’s character came to you?

Julia’s voice came to me first—her observational skills, her neuroses, her tendency toward self-sabotage. I find difficult characters much more interesting—and endearing, as it were—than their better behaved counterparts, and Julia delivered tenfold in this respect.

“We’re so deeply, messily shaped, as women, by our mothers—or mother figures.”

You’ve spoken before, to the New York Times, about doing your “emotional homework” in order to write about characters with experiences that are different from your own. How did you prepare to tell the story of Julia, a 57-year-old woman whose marriage has persevered despite past challenges and who is preparing for life as an empty nester? 

I had to get to know Julia as a much younger woman before I felt comfortable writing about her later in her life. I did similar work with The Most Fun We Ever Had, overwriting a great deal just to get my characters in certain situations to see how they’d react, examining them in childhood and in the quieter and less cinematic moments that don’t make it into the final draft of a novel. I explored many different phases of Julia’s life—her difficult childhood, her somewhat traumatic adolescence, her lost decade before she meets Mark, the early days of marriage and parenthood—before arriving at the 57-year-old Julia and understanding who she was.

Same as It Ever Was focuses on complex maternal relationships. What inspired you to explore this subject?

There’s just endless fictional fodder in family relationships, and I think mother-daughter relationships are perhaps the most fodder-full of all; I could write 10 more books exploring characters exclusively through this lens. We’re so deeply, messily shaped, as women, by our mothers—or mother figures—and then by becoming mothers, or not, the how and the why of it. And there’s a great deal of societal pressure and expectation as well—what it means to be a good mother, how much mothers are accountable for, the notion that we should want children and delight in them. Julia’s feelings about motherhood are complex and not especially rosy, and she’s often ashamed of them, or confused by them, which I don’t think is an uncommon experience by any stretch, so I wanted to explore it as candidly as I could.

Like The Most Fun We Ever Had, Same as It Ever Was plays with flashbacks, carrying the reader across decades to gain insight into the past moments that have shaped the characters’ present. What appeals to you about this structure? 

I love having the freedom to move around in time because it enables me to look holistically at my characters. Nobody exists in a vacuum; everyone is shaped by a wealth of big and small moments. I’ll also say that there was some degree of claustrophobia writing this novel—residing in the head of a single character over 500 pages—and moving between different versions of Julia allowed me some breathing room, and often spaces to find empathy for the character.

This novel is rich and sprawling—easy to read, but packed with hefty sentences full of detail and action. Those sentences surely couldn’t have been as easy to create as they are to consume. How long did it take you to write Same as It Ever Was?

I actually started this novel around 2015, when I was still finishing The Most Fun We Ever Had—I like to have two projects underway simultaneously. And like Most Fun, I wrote this book very much out of order, so the structure took a lot of working and reworking. This story isn’t told linearly, and finding the right shape for it was a challenge.

Tell us more about your writing process. Do you outline? Do these rich sentences appear more or less fully formed, or do you labor over their composition, starting with something leaner before hanging meat on the bone?

I don’t outline until I have a full draft on the page—once I do have a finished draft, I make a storyboard, which helps me to visualize the arc of the novel and fine-tune how I might make it work better. The sentence-level writing came fairly easily to me—it helped to have such a voicey narrator in Julia! Once I really got to know her voice—which, to be fair, is a lot like my own, full of segue and non sequitur and interruption—I had no trouble articulating her thoughts.

What are your reading habits like when you’re writing?

I have to be careful! I try not to read books with too much thematic overlap to avoid being unconsciously nudged in any particular direction. When I was deep in the writing of Same as It Ever Was, I was reading a lot of mystery novels—I read the entire Louise Penny series, for instance—because they felt in terms of genre and structure to be far enough away from my project.

Given that you also work part time as a bookseller, I’m curious: What books have you been encouraging customers to buy lately?

It is such a joy that part of my job is getting to shove books I love into the hands of customers. Some of my most-shoved books lately are The Trees by Percival Everett, The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, and American Mermaid by Julia Langbein. I also love nudging our mystery seekers toward Tana French and Richard Osman.

Do you bring anything from your experience as a bookseller to your writing?

There’s absolutely overlap between the bookseller and writer parts of me—I’m fascinated by human dynamics, by understanding what makes people tick, and I think those interests benefit me in writing books and talking to other people about them. And working in a bookstore has turned me on to books I might not otherwise have read, which is a great gift.

Read our review of Same as It Ever Was.

Following up The Most Fun We Ever Had, Claire Lombardo returns with another big introspective novel, Same as It Ever Was, which explores the highs and lows of a family and a marriage from the point of view of its matriarch.
FictionPopular FictionLiterary FictionFamily Drama

Tackle complicated mother-daughter stories with your book club

Feature by Julie Hale

Diane Marie Brown’s Black Candle Women tells the story of three fierce Black women united by the spells and elixirs that have been passed down in their family. Willow, Augusta and Victoria Montrose lead a quiet existence in California until Victoria’s teenage daughter, Nickie, becomes involved with Felix. Unaware of the family curse—that anyone a Montrose woman falls in love with is doomed to die—Nickie risks everything for her new relationship. Richly atmospheric, Brown’s moody, magical novel is a profound exploration of family, legacy and love.

In Thao Thai’s Banyan Moon, Vietnamese American artist Ann Tran struggles with the loss of her grandmother, Minh. After unexpected events jeopardize her romance with Noah, a professor, Ann goes to Florida for a difficult reunion with her mother. As they work to heal their frayed relationship, they learn that Minh has bequeathed them Banyan House, their old family home—an inheritance that may help them find a way forward. Thai’s poignant portrayal of three women connected by the bonds of family offers many discussion topics, including the immigrant experience and the nature of grief.

Hula, Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes’ moving multigenerational novel, takes place in Hilo, Hawaii. Hi’i Naupaka has a deep interest in hula and hopes to win the Miss Aloha Hula contest, a competition her mother triumphed in years ago. But painful questions haunt Hi’i. She doesn’t know who her father is, and her grandmother—a formidable figure in the community—has nothing to do with her. When the truth about her parentage comes to light, Hi’i’s world is turned upside down. Hakes uses elements of Hawaiian history and culture to create a transportive tale of family and community.

With Burnt Sugar, Avni Doshi probes the complexity of the mother-daughter tie. In Pune, India, newly married Antara is disturbed by the behavior of her mother, Tara, who seems to be suffering from dementia. A headstrong, free-spirited woman who walked out on her marriage, Tara was a less than ideal mother throughout Antara’s childhood. Now she and Antara must come to terms with the past as they face an uncertain future. With themes of memory, forgiveness and aging, Doshi’s multilayered novel is a rewarding reading group pick.

Four powerful novels chronicle the drama and intensity of mother-daughter relationships.
FictionDystopian Fiction

This Great Hemisphere

Review by Lauren Bufferd

Mateo Askaripour’s second novel, This Great Hemisphere, is set 500 years in the future. The world is broken up into warring hemispheres, in which some of the inhabitants are born invisible and consigned to second-class citizenship (vizzers) while the manipulative Dominant Population (DPs, or dippies) rule with an iron grip.

Sweetmint, born invisible but imaginative and hardworking, is granted a highly sought-after internship with eccentric inventor Croger Tenmase. He encourages her scientific creativity, inspires her with obsolete objects like books and cameras, and teaches her to play tennis. But Sweetmint’s projects are shut down after a political assassination; the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere is killed and Sweetmint’s long-lost brother Shanu is accused of the murder. Sweetmint is determined to locate Shanu, embarking on a quest that takes her far outside her community, forging new relationships and digging into the mysteries of her origins. Meanwhile, a power struggle ensues between ambitious politicians and ruthless generals as they vie to win the hearts and minds of the DPs in an upcoming election.

Part political thriller, part sci-fi, This Great Hemisphere revels in dystopian details with plausible roots: the ruling class controlling access to information, history and religion; the abundance of cheap processed food to keep the Invisibles in poor health; and the hypocrisy of the DPs between their pious pronouncements and secret sex clubs. At the same time, a secret Invisibles army, the “Children of Slim,” gains strength and power through collective knowledge of their shared legacy.

Askaripour’s breakthrough 2021 novel, Black Buck, was a wicked satire about a young Black man leaving his job as a barista for a position in a dubious tech start-up with cultish vibes. Similarly, This Great Hemisphere explores the allure of power and the lengths people go to gain and retain it, but it’s also a story about rebellion, resilience and the strength to shape your own future. It’s only when Sweetmint stops relying on false narratives that she can truly become the inventor she longs to be.

Part political thriller, part sci-fi, Mateo Askaripour’s second novel, This Great Hemisphere, revels in the dystopian details of a world where invisible citizens live under the control of the visible Dominant Population.
FictionPopular Fiction

The Same Bright Stars

Review by Harvey Freedenberg

Set in the Delaware coastal town where he lives, Ethan Joella’s third novel, The Same Bright Stars, is a gentle story of one man’s attempt to come to terms with his past and his present as he confronts the challenges of middle age.

For nearly 70 years, the Schmidt family—Jack Schmidt and before him, his grandmother and father—has operated a popular restaurant on the beachfront of Rehoboth Beach, the “Nation’s Summer Capital.” Now, as Jack, a bachelor whose entire life for more than 30 years has been devoted to that family business, approaches his 53rd birthday, he must weigh whether or not to accept an offer from DelDine, an aggressive chain that owns several restaurants along the shore, to purchase his business and allow him to retire with financial security, if not true purpose.

Following his protagonist from the eve of Thanksgiving to the following autumn, Joella unobtrusively produces a sympathetic portrait of a man who “hasn’t let himself do anything,” but is ambivalent about trading the only life he’s known for a new, uncertain future. His feelings about a possible sale are complicated by intense loyalty to his staff, some of whom have worked for the restaurant for decades, especially Genevieve, a longtime employee approaching retirement who’s facing a crisis involving her drug-addicted son.

Just as insistently, Jack can’t free himself from the tug of his past. He’s never fully recovered from the loss of his mother when he was 12 years old, and when Kitty, a former romantic partner, returns to town after her divorce to care for her dying mother, his feelings for her are rekindled. But those aren’t the only echoes of Jack’s personal history, and he unexpectedly learns something about a summer romance from his college days that threatens to upend his entire understanding of who he is and how his life has played out.

While The Same Bright Stars is unapologetically realistic in its content and style, and conventional in its structure, Joella adroitly delivers plausible plot twists that evoke empathy for his characters and maintain the story’s momentum to the end. Readers who prefer their fiction mellow and just a touch sentimental will savor the hours they spend in the company of Jack Schmidt and his friends. 

In Ethan Joella’s gentle third novel, Jack Schmidt must weigh a lucrative offer to purchase the family business, a popular restaurant on the beachfront of Rehoboth Beach, against his uncertainty about the future and his loyalty to his staff.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

The Lion Women of Tehran

Review by Alice Cary

“Writing about Iranian women has been a central theme of my life,” Marjan Kamali says in the author’s note to The Lion Women of Tehran. On the heels of The Stationery Shop and Together Tea, Kamali continues this pursuit with the riveting saga of the friendship between Ellie and Homa, which begins in 1950 in Tehran, when the girls are 7, and continues through 2022. The events of their lives are interwoven with Iran’s recent history, including the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the 1979 Revolution and the violence and brutality of the following fundamentalist regime. Prepare to lose yourself in a historical drama that evokes the sights and sounds of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar, with its maze of stalls and bartering merchants, while artfully exploring the labyrinthine complexities of deep friendship—especially jealousy, betrayal and forgiveness.

After Ellie’s father dies suddenly, Ellie and her mother are forced to move to a new neighborhood, where she meets Homa. Ellie’s mother likes to constantly remind her daughter that they are descendants of royalty and is horrified by their new surroundings, as well as Ellie’s new friend: Homa comes from a poor family, and her father is in jail for opposing the monarchy. Ellie, however, loves Homa’s warm, welcoming household, and wishes Homa’s family was her own. Their class difference, along with Ellie’s mom’s disapproval, drives a wedge into the girls’ friendship. At one point, Ellie muses that Homa “would always see me as too privileged, too shallow, too rich.”

Kamali closely examines how the country’s changing regimes have affected women’s rights, bringing the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in police custody (after allegedly violating the mandatory hijab law) into the novel’s conclusion. From an early age, Homa hopes to become a lawyer who crusades for change and women’s freedom, but the government as well as an accidental betrayal by Ellie cruelly sidetrack those plans. Homa notes, “That’s how losses of rights build. They start small. And then soon, the rights are stripped in droves.” Kamali writes deftly of the intersection between personal and political issues. She also excels at exploring the bonds of female friendship, as well as the changing and complex nature of mother-daughter relationships, especially in terms of heritage, family shame and secrets.

Reminiscent of The Kite Runner and My Brilliant Friend, The Lion Women of Tehran is a mesmerizing tale featuring endearing characters who will linger in readers’ hearts. 

Prepare to lose yourself in Marjan Kamali’s The Lion Women of Tehran, a historical drama that evokes the sights and sounds of Tehran’s Grand Bazaar while artfully exploring the labyrinthian complexities of deep friendship.
FictionHistorical Fiction

The Glassmaker

Review by Matthew Jackson

There is an immediate richness to the historical fiction of Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring, Remarkable Creatures), one that goes beyond carefully researched details and evocative prose, and into deep emotion. In her 12th book, The Glassmaker, Chevalier weaves a tapestry of character and conflict, change and stability, to create a story that elegantly glides along the line between historical drama and something more experimental, while never losing sight of the tactile humanity that gives her work such pure, invigorating life.

The glassmaker of the title is Orsola Rosso, a young woman living on the island of Murano just off the coast of Italy next to Venice. When we meet Orsola, the Renaissance is in full swing, and Murano’s reputation as the “Island of Glass” means that her glassmaking family enjoys a stable, happy life. That all changes when Orsola’s father, the heart of the family, dies in an accident in their workshop, leaving his son unprepared to take over the business. With her family’s future in question, Orsola begins a secret glassmaking enterprise of her own, making beads over a burning lamp in a corner of the Rosso kitchen. What begins as a chance to earn some extra money soon turns into something more, as Orsola’s life, and the lives of those around her, are forever changed by her approach to her craft.

Chevalier, too, takes a uniquely impactful approach to her craft. Steeped in detail, The Glassmaker charts the history of Venice and the delicate balance of trade that keeps the glassmakers working. But instead of transpiring over decades, the Rosso family story stretches over centuries, with the same characters aging slowly while the world around them changes dramatically. Venice goes through wars, regime changes, plagues, political upheaval and much more, and all the while Orsola makes beads, and she and her family persevere.

Through her measured, passionate prose, Chevalier sinks us into this strange relationship with time, where the passage of years is as moldable and oozing as molten glass fresh from a furnace. The characters and their lives take on an almost meditative quality, and The Glassmaker becomes a study not just of history, but of what endures history. That makes it a potent, bewitching bright spot in a stellar career.

Tracy Chevalier’s 12th book is potent, bewitching and addictive as it elegantly glides along the line between historical drama and something more experimental.

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