Definitions differ, but many people eventually discover the value in approaching life’s challenges with at least a modicum of grace. Grace and its manifestations are at the heart of The Poet’s House, Jean Thompson’s charming novel about a young California woman with a learning disability who figures out her place in life with the help of an unexpected mentor: the acclaimed poet whose garden she tends.

Carla is in her early 20s and working for a landscaping company in Northern California. She didn’t finish college, in part because, as she puts it, “I have one of those brains that doesn’t process words on a page very well.” Her world consists mainly of her job, where she works for a guy who, in one of Thompson’s many beautiful pinpoint details, “was always convinced that his sweaty charms impressed the lady clients.” Carla also maintains relationships with her boyfriend, Aaron, who works in the IT department of a bank, and her mother, who wants Carla to consider a medical career.

Carla has never given any thought to poetry and assumes all poets “wore berets and drank too much.” But then she starts tending the garden of Viridian, a 70-something poet’s poet with only one published book to her name and a considerable air of mystery. Part of the mystery derives from her relationship years earlier with Mathias, “the most famous, brilliant poet of his era.” Many people believe that Mathias destroyed a new cycle of poems before his death by suicide at age 35, but Viridian has a copy of them. The only problem: She won’t tell anyone where the poems are, even though their publication would give her the financial windfall she desperately needs.

Part of the fun of The Poet’s House is in its small details and memorable descriptions, such as when Thompson writes that Viridian’s attire is “equal parts yoga practice and Star Wars costuming.” But the biggest pleasures are Carla’s evolution, the many well-drawn characters and subtle pokes at the competitiveness of the literary world. The novel occasionally takes too long to develop its themes on its way to a tidy conclusion, but this doesn’t distract from its ample joys, not least of which is Carla’s recognition that she is like the finest poems: complex and wondrous, with hidden mysteries and graces that aren’t immediately apparent.

In Adam Langer’s sixth novel, The Diary of Anne Frank acts as the backdrop to a group of student actors’ formative experiences, which are carried forward into the cultural and political conflicts of the early 21st century. 

Cyclorama begins at a magnet high school in the northern suburbs of Chicago in 1982. Tyrus Densmore, an imperious and wildly inappropriate director of the school’s drama program, is holding auditions for a production of The Diary of Anne Frank. When the role of Peter Van Daan goes to inexperienced underclassman Franklin Light instead of seasoned senior Declan Spengler, it sets off a series of cataclysmic events, including a sexual assault, among the young cast.

Tyrus is the kind of teacher who exploits his students’ fears and insecurities, especially those who are undersupervised or from single-parent families. When Franklin goes to Tyrus’ home for a costume fitting, two other students, Robert Rubicoff and Eileen Muldoon, witness Tyrus commit what looks like nonconsensual sexual actions. Robert and Eileen plan to expose Tyrus on the night of the cast party, but their plot not only fails to entrap their teacher but also puts several other students in grave jeopardy.  

Thirty years later, on the eve of the 2016 election, Tyrus is still teaching. His former students may no longer live in his vicinity, but many of them still feel, decades later, that their lives were shaped by his abuse. When someone comes forward with an allegation that dates back to the early 1980s, the consequences ripple through the entire Anne Frank cast in unexpected ways. 

Cyclorama is an often funny, slightly messy but mostly deeply moving novel about the ways unresolved trauma affects the life choices we make, including the paths we take in our careers, the partners we choose and the politics we support. It’s also a novel about how the bonds of friendship can transcend adolescent vulnerabilities and motivate us to work for change. Langer treats these teenage upheavals with a light hand, and though the novel occasionally takes some shortcuts in character development, the results are generous to its flawed cast.

In theater, a cyclorama is a cylindrical curtain or wall that’s positioned to form a panoramic background for the staged action. Like such a device, Langer’s novel reveals how the past echoes through the present and continues to shape our futures.

Caroline Muller’s life is a fairy tale. She doesn’t come from much, but her parents did all they could to help her be successful, and by 21, she was an Olympic gold medalist who held the world record in the women’s marathon. But as Caroline grew up, her body changed—and so did her gait. A misstep while training sent her stumbling, ending her athletic career and landing her in a rehabilitation hospital. There she finds what will become her new purpose: a hulking, handsome man she knows only as Finn.

Finn and Caroline reunite years later, at which point she learns that he isn’t a former hockey player or some kind of athlete, as she’d assumed. He’s Prince Ferdinand Fieschi of Lucomo, a tiny, wealthy European country wedged between France and Italy. And Finn, 10 years Caroline’s senior, is as taken with her as she is with him. They fall fast, but he sets limits: He won’t be intimate with her until they’re married, and they won’t marry until she’s spent 10 days in the castle, gaining insight into life as a princess.

Barbara Bourland’s third novel, The Force of Such Beauty, depicts Lucomo and the Fieschi family’s opulence in lavish detail, from the sumptuous fabrics to elaborate events. But Caroline isn’t a Disney princess, and Bourland pushes past the “happily ever after” of a royal wedding and focuses on what comes next. It quickly becomes apparent that Caroline’s fairy tale is more akin to a cautionary fable. 

Caroline’s new royal status offers a remove from even the slightest discomfort, but behind the public facade, she’s depressed. The Crown controls everything in her life, from her friends to her reproductive health: “I was a paper doll. Tabs held my dress on. Hands moved me from place to place.” The daily regimen of exercise, plain meals and evening events becomes her prison. She won’t receive her promised budget until she delivers the throne “an heir and a spare,” and even then she’ll find limitations on her charitable donations—and her husband’s attention.

Bourland draws inspiration from real-life royalty and the fantasies that are constructed for the outside world, in particular the lives of Charlene, Princess of Monaco, Diana, Princess of Wales and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. Rich in emotion and luscious descriptions, The Force of Such Beauty is a careful dismantling of royalty that leaves readers wondering if any fairy tale is worth our desire.

Like Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, the protagonist of Mohsin Hamid’s fifth novel, The Last White Man, awakens one morning to find that he’s undergone a startling change. But instead of assuming the form of an insect, Anders, who went to sleep a white man, rises to discover that his skin has “turned a deep and undeniable brown.” Hamid, whose previous novel, Exit West, explored the plight of refugees and the issue of immigration through the lens of magical realism, now employs a similar technique to consider the concept of race in this thoughtful allegory.

Once Anders overcomes his initial shock and summons the courage to re-enter the world in his changed condition, he discovers, to his surprise (if not necessarily relief), that his altered appearance is “not unique, nor contagious.” When he returns to the gym, he finds himself suddenly contemplating the possibility of a different relationship with the “dark-skinned cleaning guy,” but Anders’ interactions become increasingly strained. Through his eyes, and those of his girlfriend, Oona, a yoga instructor who must “will herself to see Anders” in the man who, in reality, is different only in a superficial way, Hamid subtly exposes how judgments of others are so often based on the most superficial characteristics, like skin color.

Hamid only alludes to the dislocation that results from the gradual but inexorable physical transformation of more and more people in the unnamed town and country where the novel is set. Mentions of riots and kidnappings give a sense that society is spinning out of control and hint at the breadth of the disruption, but the struggles of Anders and Oona remain in the foreground.

But Hamid doesn’t confine his attention to The Last White Man’s theme of racial identity. This is also a novel about families, and specifically about the complex relationships between adult children and their parents. Anders’ father, who’s entering the final phase of a terminal illness, is baffled by his son’s changed appearance, and yet he provides a safe haven when white vigilantes arrive at Anders’ door. Oona’s mother, in contrast, is terrified by the present events, her anxiety fueled by the apocalyptic conspiracy theories she consumes obsessively on television and the internet. For both Anders and Oona, the limits of filial love are put to the test.

In recent years, and increasingly since the murder of George Floyd in 2020, there have been countless sociological and political analyses of Americans’ fraught encounters with the construct of race. Hamid adds a worthy voice to the conversation and reminds us yet again that fiction sometimes provides the most direct path to truth.