A remarkable exploration of storytelling, fame and the Nigerian American experience, acclaimed science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author surprises all the way to its brilliant ending.
A remarkable exploration of storytelling, fame and the Nigerian American experience, acclaimed science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author surprises all the way to its brilliant ending.
In bestselling author Sarah Jio’s novel With Love From London (11.5 hours), a recently divorced Seattle librarian named Valentina heads to London to settle the estate of her late, estranged mother, Eloise. Valentina is unsure about both the inheritance and her feelings toward Eloise, but she gets drawn in by the quaint bookstore her mother owned in Primrose Hill, her mother’s friends and neighbors, and a scavenger hunt arranged by Eloise that references both points around London and literary works beloved by Valentina and her mother.
In chapters that alternate between Valentina’s experiences in 2013 and Eloise’s life from the 1960s to the ’90s, voice actors Brittany Pressley (Valentina) and Gabrielle Glaister (Eloise) animate daughter and mother with equal warmth and exuberance. Their American and British accents lead listeners into a cozy world that’s alive with intrigue, female camaraderie and the fellowship of book lovers. Eloise’s scavenger hunt not only directs the suspenseful plot but also points to the message at the heart of With Love From London: Books can act as portals to the human soul.
As Valentina finds a fulfilled life in Primrose Hill, readers find a retreat from a harried world.
In the audiobook With Love From London, voice actors Brittany Pressley and Gabrielle Glaister animate daughter and mother with equal warmth and exuberance.
What’s worse than being stood up on Valentine’s Day? Siobhan’s morning coffee date with her standing hookup was supposed to test the waters of them becoming more than just a good time. Miranda’s fancy lunch with her new beau was supposed to reinforce the seriousness of their relationship. And Jane’s date—well, Jane’s date was with a friend who agreed to play the part of her boyfriend at a social event so her nosy co-workers would stop matchmaking. The man hurts all three women with his absence. Yes, man, singular. Because the guy who ditches them all is the same person, one Joseph Carter.
It sounds like a premise for a French farce. In fact, anyone familiar with the play Boeing-Boeing by Marc Camoletti—or the movie adaptation with Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis—might think they know where the story is going. But if you’re expecting an absurdist comedy in which everything is played for laughs, you’re in for a surprise. While Beth O’Leary’s The No-Show is frequently funny and playful, it’s never silly or frothy. O’Leary digs deep into the stories of these women: They’re three-dimensional, thoughtful, challenging people dealing with real problems and real feelings that are absolutely no joking matter. They also have great friends, who are fleshed out and fantastic characters in their own right, giving the story not just a sense of place and community but a genuine feeling of warmth. Each woman gets only a third of the book to herself, but O’Leary manages to convey intimate knowledge of each woman and her loved ones . . . with one exception. Joseph remains something of a cipher. O’Leary never steps inside his head to understand what he’s thinking or feeling.
O’Leary cleverly uses literary smoke and mirrors to keep Joseph’s motivations mysterious, and to keep the reader invested regardless. But the fact that such a pivotal piece is missing for most of the novel may leave readers cold, especially those looking for a more traditional love story. Siobhan, Miranda and Jane are painted so vividly that it’s frustrating to have their mutual love interest merely sketched in. When the romances aren’t center stage, The No-Show is a terrific read, filled with people who are enjoyable company even when the story goes to dark places, including struggles with doubt and insecurity and past traumas involving sexual manipulation and a miscarriage. O’Leary is a great storyteller, with keen insight into all the phases of romance, even falling out of love.
The No-Show is sweeter and sadder and deeper and lovelier than I expected, and I enjoyed reading it. But I think I would have enjoyed it even more if I hadn’t constantly been questioning “whydunnit.”
The No-Show is a terrific read, with keen insight into all the phases of romance and three very compelling female characters.
he Pacific Northwest is a region that defies simple categorization. Although most people automatically associate it with rain, the Northwest is in fact a complex and varied area, with volcanoes over 14,000 feet tall, the deepest gorge in the country, desert areas and the only rain forest in North America. A River Out of Eden, a new novel from John Hockenberry, is just as varied as the region, and just as intriguing.
The book is set on the Columbia River, which flows from Canada through Washington and Oregon. At times a thoughtful, eloquently written character study, and at others a fast-paced thriller, A River Out of Eden succeeds on both levels.
The story begins with the mysterious deaths of several federal employees who were working to maintain the dwindling levels of salmon in the Columbia River. Francine Smohalla, a Chinook Indian and government biologist working with the salmon, is the first to discover a body, this one floating in a salmon breeding tank next to the Bonneville Dam. Soon, Duke McCurdy, the son of a white supremacist, and Duane Madison, chief of security for the Hanford Nuclear Reserve in eastern Oregon, find the bodies of two more salmon workers. Each victim appears to have been killed with a Native American salmon harpoon. As the body count rises, the lives and stories of the characters begin to collide.
Why these people have been killed, and by whom, is only the tip of the iceberg. Hockenberry, who wrote about the challenges of working as a wheelchair-bound journalist in Moving Violations, is an Emmy-winning correspondent for NBC’s Dateline. In his first work of fiction, he creates believable characters and ties them together with a story that traces the long and varied history of Native Americans along the Columbia River. In addition to Francine, Duke and Duane, there is a large supporting cast, all with rich stories that add to the narrative. And with right wing extremism, racial and economic tensions, and record-setting rains thrown into the mix, Hockenberry has created a potent blend that reflects the conflicting beliefs and cultural traditions of the region. When floodwaters begin to threaten dams along the river, it seems an ancient Indian prediction of the apocalypse might prove true.
A River Out of Eden is mysterious, enthralling and powerful, an apt tribute to the river on which it is set.
Wes Breazeale is a freelance writer who lives in the Pacific Northwest.
he Pacific Northwest is a region that defies simple categorization. Although most people automatically associate it with rain, the Northwest is in fact a complex and varied area, with volcanoes over 14,000 feet tall, the deepest gorge in the country, desert areas and the only…
illie Morris is one of the sweet and tender voices of the South. I don’t mean by this that he is without irony and toughness or that his work fiction or nonfiction is without violence and breathtaking loss, but rather that there is a sense of deep longing and a gentle heart in just about everything he has written. And, to be sure, he has written some lyrical and unforgettable work about his Mississippi homeland books such as North Toward Home and Homecomings as well as funny, touching tales like My Dog Skip and My Cat Spit McGee that bridge the gap between the worlds of adults and children.
Taps, a posthumously published novel, is Willie Morris’ best book, a story written with genuine passion and soulful understanding. It is an old-fashioned Dickensian sort of novel, but with a Southern accent, filled with main characters one is compelled to love and hate and minor characters one is unable to forget. The plot has the simple authenticity of an honest memory, along with the mesmerizing power and the stunning inevitability of a gathering storm. The story is a retrospective tale told by Swayze Barksdale about the years during the Korean War when he played the trumpet at a succession of military funerals in his small Mississippi town. Fisk’s Landing, population 10,000, is surely a fictional stand-in for Morris’ own Yazoo City. As Sam Clemens had his Hannibal, Missouri, Willie Morris had his Yazoo City, the locus of his imagination. Swayze’s narrative, written as a funny and poignant backward glance at young love, depicts an evolving understanding of all the heartbreaking beauty and sadness and unearned terror the world can offer. Morris’ characters are truly and memorably drawn from a principal character like Georgia, Swayze’s teenage sweetheart, an attractive collection of contradictions, to a minor figure like the ornate and complex personage named Asphalt Thomas, Swayze’s basketball coach. Tragedy and loss are at the heart of the novel just as the Korean War shadows everything that happens in Swayze’s life his love for Georgia, his friendship with Luke, his basketball games, his trumpet practices with his misanthropic friend Arch Kidd. Loss is a part of love and beauty Morris is not coy about that. But we have our stories to sustain us, and Swayze tells his, a story of death, of passionate love, of the fact that not even innocence can protect us from the cruelties of the world. Swayze’s voice is Morris’, it seems to me, at once comic and compassionate, as sparkling with poetry as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s and as capable of illuminating evil as Mark Twain’s. In a sense, this is a Southern story of arrogant patriarchs like the Godbolds and wonderfully eccentric teachers like Mrs. Idella King, of obsessive mothers and lost brothers, of a restless and powerful land . . . gentle too in its eternal promise of a place where all our troubled kind can rest when day is done. This novel is Southern in its lush Romanticism a quality tempered by a fine-tuned humor and in its sense of mystery and craving, in its occasional Faulknerian sentences and ever-present concern with old verities like loyalty, honor, decency and love. At times Morris’ style may seem ornate or antique, but to me it is the sound of wind rustling through magnolia leaves, plaintive and lovely. This book, coming two years after his death, is like a gift, his spirit returned to us to speak one more time. Morris was a great lover of practical jokes. Not many, of course, were better than Tom Sawyer’s observing his own wake. Morris, like Sawyer, returns after we thought he was gone. He comes back, it seems, to remind us just how much we miss him. This novel is a fitting elegy for him, a mournful tune, graceful and evocative, making us recall his remarkable talent and generous heart. Taps is Morris’ voice from the grave, and it is hard to imagine a more lasting or beautiful epitaph.
Michael Pearson directs the Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University. His most recent book is Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx Syracuse University Press).
illie Morris is one of the sweet and tender voices of the South. I don't mean by this that he is without irony and toughness or that his work fiction or nonfiction is without violence and breathtaking loss, but rather that there is a sense…
The evolution of the mystery story has been driven by the development of the story’s central character, especially since the influx of talented female writers into the genre. While the cerebral Victorian sleuth never missed a clue, many modern detectives show more complexity and even human frailty. They sometimes don’t say or do what a classic detective hero might, but as such they’re more fully realized characters. Novelist and screenwriter Delia Ephron’s heroine Lily Davis is no exception. Divorced and caring for a son deep in the throes of adolescence, Lily decides to move from New York City to a small town on Long Island. There she meets and immediately offends a handsome police officer. Ephron follows Lily as she recovers from this awkward introduction, realizes her attraction to the married officer, and investigates several small mysteries that tantalize the town’s gossip mill. Big City Eyes wears loosely the mantle of mystery. Although Lily glimpses the victim early on, the actual corpse doesn’t turn up until the novel’s halfway point. Suspense and suspicion flourish, as small-town political strife, workplace tensions, and infidelity plague Lily and her friends. But Ephron focuses on her heroine’s experiences as a former New Yorker transplanted to an unfamiliar environment, and lets the events of the mystery develop in the background. This approach gives Ephron the freedom to explore avenues of the story unrelated to the central mystery, including several subplots that tantalize the reader.
In the midst of exploring her feelings for the charming cop, Lily finds herself counseling her one close friend in town whose husband might be having an affair. She also discovers that her son might have deeper troubles than she suspected. These events distract Lily from the murder case and cause her to adopt deceitful ways of her own. She realizes she can’t fully trust anyone not her friends, not her son, not even herself. By presenting a wider set of obstacles and a detective who needs to find out more than just who done it, Ephron’s Big City Eyes lets the reader share a triumph wider than simply catching a killer. Gregory Harris is a writer and editor in Indianapolis.
The evolution of the mystery story has been driven by the development of the story's central character, especially since the influx of talented female writers into the genre. While the cerebral Victorian sleuth never missed a clue, many modern detectives show more complexity and even…
A gripping tale of guilt and grace Mary Culpepper isn’t your typical modern heroine.
The lead character in Lisa Reardon’s haunting new novel, Blameless, is a working-class, big-boned, tough-talking school bus driver in northern Michigan. Quite a departure from the recent rash of svelte, sophisticated Gen-Xers agonizing over their high-powered careers and tortured love lives.
Mary Culpepper is agonizing over something quite different the death of a child she transports on her school bus route. When the little girl’s older sister and brother ask for Mary’s help, she discovers the child’s body in the closet of the family’s mobile home.
Don’t jump to the conclusion that this is a murder mystery. The murder and subsequent trial are not the central elements of this fine novel, but rather the means for Reardon to explore Mary’s inner torments and triumphs. Without so much as a single description of Mary’s appearance (save her height and weight), Reardon manages to create a character so real the reader is inescapably drawn into the dilemma she faces. Were there signs that the girl was being abused? Did she ignore them? Is she indeed blameless in the whole episode, or does she share some guilt in the child’s death? These issues linger in the background like an unpleasant odor as Mary goes about the routines of her life. We meet her dysfunctional (and sometimes hilarious) family, her deeply caring and compassionate best friend (who managed to steal Mary’s first husband), and her long-suffering cat Frank. With a beautifully spare writing style, Reardon captures even the mundane with uncommon grace. From a county beauty pageant to a meal at the local diner, the scenes of small town life ring true. Along the way, Mary moves cautiously toward facing the demons that have traumatized her and seared her heart. Following on her well-received first novel, Billy Dead, Blameless once again demonstrates Reardon’s rare gift for creating gritty characters who enthrall and enlighten us.
A gripping tale of guilt and grace Mary Culpepper isn't your typical modern heroine.
The lead character in Lisa Reardon's haunting new novel, Blameless, is a working-class, big-boned, tough-talking school bus driver in northern Michigan. Quite a departure from the recent rash…
Hundreds of books have hit the bestseller lists so far this year, but which ones deserve the hype? We think these 13 titles earned their places on the list.
As she has consistently proven in historical novels such as The Alice Network and The Rose Code, Kate Quinn is a master at crafting an intoxicating, well-balanced blend of immersive period details and deft character work. With The Diamond Eye, she returns to the fertile storytelling terrain of World War II for a tale inspired by the extraordinary life of Russian sniper Lyudmila “Mila” Pavlichenko, known as “Lady Death.”
Mila becomes a mother at 15; six years later, amid an impending divorce, she promises her son that she’ll teach him to shoot. In between working on her dissertation at Kiev University and raising Alexei, she finds that she’s brilliant with a rifle. When the Nazis invade the Soviet Union, her elite skill becomes a key asset in the Red Army’s fight to defend the motherland. Mila sets off for war and marches into her own legend.
In each of her novels, Quinn displays an innate awareness of how history can be warped by time and power. In The Diamond Eye, we don’t just follow Mila’s journey into war; we see her actions in sharp contrast to what the Soviet government will later say she’s done. Mila’s perceptions of events are shown in relief to those of the men around her, and even to the perceptions of the American public, thanks to a 1942 press tour hosted by first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. That press tour forms the novel’s narrative spine, unfolding in sections that alternate with Mila’s larger wartime odyssey. This structure steadily ratchets up the suspense as it becomes clear that Mila is not as welcome in the U.S. as she was led to believe.
The Diamond Eye is a remarkable combination of immersive wartime storytelling, rich detailing and wonderful pacing. What really makes The Diamond Eye land, though, goes beyond Quinn’s mastery of her chosen genre. This is, first and foremost, an exceptional character piece, a study of a woman who is a killer, a mother, a lover and, above all else, a survivor.
Kate Quinn’s track record for delivering captivating historical fiction continues with the remarkable story of the notorious Russian sniper known as Lady Death.
Serena Drew is returning to Baltimore after a daytrip to meet her boyfriend’s family. As she and her boyfriend wait for their train home, she thinks she spots her cousin Nicholas Garrett. Her boyfriend is incredulous; how can she be unsure whether or not the man is her cousin? But Serena doesn’t come from the sort of family in which first cousins recognize each other in the wild.
Anne Tyler is a master of interpersonal drama and intricate depictions of characters’ lives. Her astute observations have earned her a Pulitzer Prize (Breathing Lessons) and two turns as a Pulitzer finalist (Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant and The Accidental Tourist), among other accolades. In French Braid, her skilled storytelling once again takes center stage as she reveals the minor family dramas that have resulted in Serena’s inability to positively identify her cousin. Chapter by chapter, Tyler follows a different member of the Garrett family, beginning with a family vacation in 1959 and ending in spring 2020.
As Tyler turns her attention to each Garrett, she reveals finely honed character portraits. Daughters Lily and Alice are opposites, and their little brother, David, often goes his own way. Mother Mercy searches for her identity as the kids grow up and leave the house, but father Robin is left confused; he has always been content with his home and family exactly as they were.
Each chapter is as well-crafted as a short story and reveals the heart of its central character. Tyler weaves these individual tales together to build something even greater, and like the braid of the novel’s title, this interpersonal family drama becomes more substantial as its pieces combine.
“That’s how families work, too,” says David, reflecting on the lasting effect of a French braid. “You think you’re free of them, but you’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever.” (His wife laughs and asks, “You are finding this out just now?”)
French Braid is a case study of the circumstances and interactions that shape the lives of one family.
Anne Tyler is a master of interpersonal drama, and her skilled storytelling takes center stage in French Braid.
Reeling from loss, a woman takes the trip of a lifetime in One Italian Summer by bestselling author Rebecca Serle (In Five Years).
Thirty-year-old Katy Silver used to have it all: an adoring husband, a comfortable home near her family in Los Angeles and a rock-solid friendship with her mother, Carol. But her mother’s death turned everything upside down. Suddenly nothing makes sense or feels right for Katy, not even her marriage. After the funeral, she wonders, “If your mother is the love of your life, what does that make your husband?” Katy doesn’t have an answer, but she knows she needs change.
So Katy leaves all her commitments behind and travels to Positano, Italy—a place her mother spent the summer 30 years ago, and where Carol and Katy had dreamed of visiting together. There, Katy stays at the gorgeous (and very real) Hotel Poseidon, and she immerses herself in the Amalfi Coast.
That may sound capricious, but to Katy these choices are necessary, even if she can’t quite explain why. What Katy doesn’t count on is running into a woman who looks and sounds exactly like Carol would have at 30—and even shares both her mother’s name and profession. Without understanding how it’s possible, Katy gets to know a different side of her mother as a young woman, and One Italian Summer becomes a sumptuous and sensuous feast of a book.
On a deeper level, Serle’s novel is a savvy meditation on the necessity of change and how roles shape what we see of each other. Carol was always stylish, beautiful and strong-willed, but marriage and motherhood made her cautious. The woman whom Katy befriends on the Amalfi Coast is free and adventurous, and this spirit rubs off on Katy.
One Italian Summer isn’t just about wild oats and adventure either—it’s about knowing yourself. Carol made some mistakes along the way: She was almost an idol to her daughter instead of a teacher, and now Katy doesn’t know how to function without her. In Italy, Katy is sunnier and more willing to experiment, even getting to know an older real estate investor who could be a potential love interest, while her marriage hangs in limbo.
For readers open to moral complexities, One Italian Summer is a thoughtful, fun escape, blending contemplations of love and loss with a touch of adventure. It’s also a beautiful tribute to the pleasures of Italian culture.
For readers open to moral complexities, One Italian Summer is a thoughtful, fun escape, blending contemplations of love and loss with a touch of adventure.
Every 10 years, the secretive Alexandrian Society, inheritors of the lost knowledge from its namesake library, recruits six of the most powerful young magic users, or medeians, to join their ranks. The half-dozen potential initiates are brought to the Society’s headquarters, where they study and learn from the greatest compendium of magical knowledge that has ever existed. This year, Caretaker Atlas Blakely has selected a sextet of particularly ambitious young medeians: three physical mediums, who specialize in manipulating external forces and energies for purposes as varied as deflecting bullets and obtaining midnight snacks; and three nascent masters of the mental, emotional and perceptual magics of reading minds and concealing acne. But these newest residents are confronted with even darker secrets than the arcane knowledge they all covet, for they are the linchpins in a conspiracy that could either save the world or utterly destroy it.
For a book with such a melodramatic premise (think “Big Brother,” but half the cast can read their companions’ minds and the other half can conjure actual black holes), Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six is curiously matter-of-fact, dispensing with on-page relationship drama and coasting through tense fight scenes with brevity. Likewise, instead of providing flowing backstory, Blake communicates personalities through lighthearted conversations and depicts the world outside the Library’s magically warded walls entirely through the scars it left on her protagonists. The Atlas Six is stingy with its exposition, with the lengthiest passages being debates between characters on topics such as the nature of time and the conservation of magical energy. But in Blake’s hands, these tracts are engaging and often very, very funny. This duality—an extremely pulpy plot married with smart and nimble writing—is the core of The Atlas Six’s appeal.
This macabre romp of a magical reality show nevertheless revolves around one weighty question: Is there knowledge that should not be shared? Blake draws heavily on the structures and practices of academia, which in our world is in the midst of a push for greater transparency and democratization of knowledge. Analyzing the costs and benefits of advanced technology or abilities has been central to speculative fiction since its inception. That Blake is using academia as a vehicle for it, adding her agile and cutting voice to the likes of Neal Stephenson and Cixin Liu, feels particularly relevant to the present moment. And if she happens to suggest some legitimately wholesome uses for small wormholes along the way, all the better.
Olivie Blake marries an extremely pulpy plot with smart and nimble writing in her debut fantasy, The Atlas Six.
Several years ago, in Ford’s Theatre Museum in Washington, D.C., I found myself staring at the Deringer pistol that John Wilkes Booth used to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. I stood there, transfixed, amazed that this small, surprisingly delicate and decorative weapon could change the course of American history. I felt similarly mesmerized as I devoured the 480 pages of Karen Joy Fowler’s triumph of a historical novel, Booth. I was torn by conflicting urges: to race ahead to see what happens next, or to read slowly and savor Fowler’s exquisite language and fascinating rendering of the various members of this legendary American family.
Many readers will begin Booth with the basic knowledge that John Wilkes Booth came from a famous theatrical family, but it’s unlikely that they’ll know just how celebrated and fascinating the Booths were, or that their lives were full of drama well before John Wilkes picked up that pistol. Think of Louisa May Alcott and her storied New England upbringing, and then pivot to something darker.
Fowler has previously written several short stories about the Booths and explains in an author’s note that she decided to write about them in novel form “during one of our American spates of horrific mass shootings.” She wondered about “their own culpability, all the if-onlys” and “what happens to love when the person you love is a monster.”
The Booths’ lives play out on their 150 acres of farmland in Bel Air, Maryland, in a mixture of 19th-century horror and family drama. John Wilkes was born in 1838, the ninth of 10 children, four of whom would die before reaching adulthood. They faced poverty, hunger and disease while patriarch Junius Booth, a famous Shakespearian actor, was on tour much of the year. He was an alcoholic with deep, dark secrets, which Fowler hints at with one simple sentence early on: “A secret family moves into the secret cabin.”
The story is told primarily by three of John Wilkes’ siblings—Rosalie, Edwin and Asia—all of whom are equally fascinating and well voiced. Early scenes narrated by Rosalie are particularly powerful and memorable. Fowler includes short passages about Lincoln and his family, ratcheting up the tension of what’s to come. With a master’s touch, she also incorporates vital depictions of racism through the lives of an enslaved family that works on the Booth farm, and shows how the issue of enslavement divides the Booth family through the years.
Like the very best historical novels, Booth is a literary feast, offering much more than a riveting story and richly drawn characters. It offers a wealth of commentary about not only our past but also where we are today, and where we may be headed.
Amy Bloom is known for examining the dynamics of intimate relationships in her fiction (White Houses, Lucky Us), yet never has she gotten closer to the flame than in this memoir of her marriage. In Love begins, as Blooms puts it, with a “not quite normal” trip to Zurich. She traveled there with her husband, Brian, in January 2020, but the plan was for her to return without him. This is because her husband was pursuing a medically assisted suicide following his diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
In the compressed, gripping pages that follow, scenes alternate between the couple’s grim journey and the strenuous months that led up to it. “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees,” Brian commented within days of his diagnosis. Because he was already experiencing mild dementia, it fell to Bloom, who had always been strong and resourceful, to figure out the logistics of what came next. The window of opportunity was small: A key criterion of an accompanied suicide is that the patient should be capable of making an independent and firm decision. With pressure mounting, Bloom explored options on the dark web, wept with friends and therapists, and received deep, unshakable support from the people she loves, including her sister, who gave her $30,000 to cover the next few months’ costs. (Medically assisted suicide is not inexpensive.)
Bloom, in turn, was steadfastly present to Brian, though the couple’s emotional connection, she makes clear, flickered unevenly. The mundane was still inescapable. Words spoken hastily were regretted for months afterward. Suffering simply hurts, but Bloom shares the details without flinching. “Please write about this,” Brian exhorted her.
Just as Bloom found comfort in watching videos made by families navigating this impossible situation, In Love now offers comfort to those who follow in her footsteps. People who are disturbed by the way death in the United States seems increasingly impersonal, or passionate about giving the people they love agency to do what they want to do, will strongly connect to this book—but so will anyone interested in deep stories of human connection.
Amy Bloom is known for examining the dynamics of intimacy in her fiction, but she has never gotten closer to the flame than in this memoir of her marriage.
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In The Candy House, Jennifer Egan revisits some of the characters from her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Visit From the Good Squad. But The Candy House is less a sequel than a continuation of themes, offering a bold imagining of the lures and drawbacks of technology through a lively assortment of narrative styles.
Bix Bouton, a minor character in Goon Squad, emerges in The Candy House as a staggeringly brilliant tech guru whose casual interest in animal consciousness leads to the creation of his social media company, Mandala. Bix’s groundbreaking product, Own Your Unconscious, allows users to externalize their consciousness to a cubelike device. Taking the concept a step further, his invention Collective Consciousness offers the option of uploading memories to an online database, where they can be shared. This hugely seductive innovation inspires a backlash movement, in which “eluders” wipe their digital footprints or even hide behind false avatars.
From Bix’s life-altering inventions, the novel spirals outward in subsequent chapters, tracking families and friends over decades, digging deeply into the emotional and psychological effects of their private memories being made public. The novel even takes a dystopian turn through the story of Lily, a former spy whose brain has been infiltrated by a government-implanted “weevil.” But for the most part, Egan keeps the novel moving through relatable territory, as universal access to personal memories proves, unsurprisingly, to be as disruptive as it is tantalizing.
Egan’s bold appropriation of narrative styles, like the use of first-person plural and chapters written in tweets and text messages, gives the novel a glittering, kaleidoscopic quality. But Egan’s empathetic interest in human behavior is what drives The Candy House, making it more than just a literary experiment. As Bix’s son Greg points out, you don’t need access to Collective Consciousness to fully experience another person’s memories, thoughts and perceptions; fiction can do the same thing.
A startling novel written by an author at the top of her game, The Candy House never loses sight of fiction’s superpowers.
Jennifer Egan’s empathetic interest in human behavior is what drives The Candy House, making her companion novel to A Visit From the Goon Squad more than just a literary experiment!.
Poet and former attorney Tara M. Stringfellow makes her fiction debut with Memphis, drawing inspiration from her own family history to craft a wonder of a novel. Stringfellow’s grandfather was the first Black homicide detective in Memphis, Tennessee, and her grandmother was the first Black nurse at Mount Zion Baptist Hospital. Through her poignant and heartfelt prose, Stringfellow honors the spirit of her city as she brings three generations of a Black matriarchal family—and their resilience, determination and endless capacity for love and joy—into the spotlight.
The novel begins in 1995, when Miriam North, her children in tow, flees her husband’s violent outbursts and returns to her ancestral home in Memphis, a change that offers the possibility of spiritually reuniting with Miriam’s maternal roots. The North women have lived in the historically Black neighborhood of Douglass for generations, and despite the devastating scars left by segregation, anti-Black terrorism and domestic violence, these women are unconquerable.
Miriam’s stubborn and loyal sister, August, runs a hair salon attached to the North house, and Miriam’s oldest daughter, Joan, is an exceptionally talented artist with a close bond with her younger sister, Mya. Over the course of the novel, the voices of Miriam, August and Joan intertwine, later incorporating the additional voice of Miriam and August’s mother, Hazel, an activist and adept quilter. Together their stories span nearly 70 years in a nonlinear narrative that reveals the impact and eternality of ancestry.
Stringfellow’s intricately developed details are unrivaled, and the simplest moments make the North family instinctively relatable. It’s not the parties, calamities or deaths that hold a reader’s attention in Memphis, but rather a walk to buy butter pecan ice cream on a Friday afternoon, or a quiet afternoon spent with Joan and her sketchbook. With honesty and genuine affection, Stringfellow captures each of her characters’ unique personalities while preserving their uncanny familial resemblances. Furthermore, Memphis establishes a new standard for the role of a setting in a novel; Memphis is celebrated not only as a place but also as a people, a culture and, most importantly, a community.
Stringfellow has created an irresistible family in the Norths, who are sure to be beloved by readers for the ways in which they persevere.
First-time novelist Tara M. Stringfellow celebrates the city of Memphis as not only a place but also a people, a culture and, most importantly, a community.
In her second novel, Rachel Barenbaum (A Bend in the Stars) presents a 450-page epic spanning Philadelphia, Berlin, Moscow and the doomed nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. At times, the novel is experimental, mixing imaginative science fiction with history, family drama, romance and political intrigue in a narrative structure as complex as the science in its backdrop. The story could’ve easily been told in graphic form (and indeed, comics play a large part in the story) and would make quite a film.
Atomic Anna moves among three generations of Soviet and American women, beginning at the moment when the Chernobyl reactor misfires on April 26, 1986. Scientist Anna Berkova, who seems to be asleep at the scene of the disaster, is caught in a time-travel ripple that sends her hurtling into the future. Anna’s genius-level scientific knowledge allows her to recognize the future world’s capabilities for devising a way of reversing time and remedying the man-made disaster in Chernobyl, but she is also given a horrifying look into the future.
In a parallel storyline—and there are many—Anna’s daughter, Molly, is on an odyssey through time, sent by Anna to 1950s Philadelphia as part of the exodus of Russian Jews fleeing the repressive Soviet system. Molly has no scientific abilities but is a born artist, and in a graphic series titled “Atomic Anna,” she tells a story based on the experiences of her mother and other researchers working on the nuclear program. Molly becomes a “wasted child” of the ’60s, falling prey to alcohol and drug abuse. She eventually gives birth to a gifted daughter, Raisa, who inherits her grandmother’s enormous scientific genius.
Anna is a constant presence throughout the book. She constructs an actual time machine that enables her to journey between lives and decades in a frantic race to stop destruction and hold the generations of her family together. As her female descendants careen through time and space and across continents, deep and abiding love for family connections sustains them all.
Atomic Anna ultimately offers a utopian vision of salvation, but it does require slow and careful reading to get there. Big chunks of the novel fit together and then split apart. Hold on tight, as the space-time ride is challenging.
In light of recent events, namely Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and occupation of the infamous Chernobyl nuclear site, there will be some evaluation of Atomic Anna for its “timeliness.” But readers should keep in mind the words of 19th-century American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne that, long ago, provided a template for reading Barenbaum’s innovative book. Hawthorne’s preface to The House of Seven Gables (1851) famously set up the distinction between “novels,” which depict probable true events from the “ordinary” human experience, and “romances,” which “present the truth under circumstances . . . of the writer’s own choosing or creation.” Romances were Hawthorne’s aim, as his stories intended to reveal universal truths through crafted circumstances and an intensified atmosphere—often symbolic, and always beyond the ordinary.
Just as the romance of epic literature is timeless, Atomic Anna’s demonstration of what may be learned about the human heart is also outside of time, and certainly beyond the ordinary.
Hold on tight, as the space-time ride in Rachel Barenbaum’s second novel is far beyond the ordinary.
Jenny Tinghui Zhang, a Texas-based Chinese American writer, holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Wyoming, and she is now a prose editor at The Adroit Journal. Her first novel, Four Treasures of the Sky, reveals storytelling skills both vast and specific, bringing shadowy history to light while also displaying a remarkable talent for sensory detail.
Zhang was inspired to write this incredible story after receiving a request from her father, a man of boundless curiosity who has explored nearly every inch of his adopted country. Once Zhang completed the book, her father returned to the site where the novel’s finale occurs.
In 2014, my father was driving through the Pacific Northwest for work. One evening, while making his way through Idaho, he passed a small town called Pierce. His headlights caught a historical marker on the side of the road. He saw, in those lights, the words “Chinese Hanging Tree.” The marker detailed an event in 1885 when five Chinese men were hanged by white vigilantes for the alleged murder of a local white store owner.
My father carried that story with him all the way back to Texas. During one of my visits home, he told me about the marker and asked if I could write it into a story so he could figure out what really happened. His research online had yielded few results, he lamented.
I took the request as a joke. My father has always entertained many curiosities. He’s an Aquarius, a perpetual fixer, a man who reads books about the universe and math and string theory for fun. When he was a child, my father had the kind of mischievous and inquisitive energy that eventually matured into a certain genius. He refused to sit and ride the bus, preferring to hang off the back and balance on the bumper. He played clever pranks on his parents. In high school, he joined the high jump team—back when the conventional jumping form was to do so headfirst.
When my parents immigrated to Oxford, Mississippi, for graduate school in the early 1990s, there was no room for that kind of man. They lived in a cramped one-bedroom apartment in the married graduate student housing section on the Ole Miss campus, just down the way from the fraternities. They attended classes and worked multiple jobs that paid as little as $2 an hour. And they tried to raise me. Our tenure in America and the fulfillment of their American dream—all of that would be hopeless without a job following my parents’ graduation, the responsibility for which rested on my father’s shoulders. At one point, he flew out to San Jose, California, for the trial period of a job that had the potential to turn into a permanent position. My mother and I waited in Oxford, hoping that this would be the one. He called and spoke about the weather, how the job was going, the mountains that braced the city. I was always worried he wouldn’t make it back home.
Jenny Tinghui Zhang
In the end, my father got that job. His company moved us to Austin, where we upgraded to a nice two-bedroom apartment right across from the Barton Creek Mall. When my mother and I visited him at his office, my father proudly showed us the break room, where we could grab handfuls of free coffee creamer and play pool. He looks unstoppable, I remember thinking as I watched my father hold court in that break room.
A few years later, that same company let my father go in a series of layoffs. I came home from school one day and was confused to see him already there. “Your dad got laid off today,” he told me, smiling wide. It was a maniacal kind of smile; there was no joy behind it. Over the next two years, my father would stay rooted at the computer, scrolling through job sites and updating his resume. When the phone rang occasionally, he would leap up to take calls from recruiters. I always felt an oppressive hope during these calls—maybe this would be the one. But things never worked out for him, whether it was because he lacked the skill set, or the English, to make the final rounds.
With our finances and my college attendance on the line, my father accepted a job at Time Warner Cable as a field technician. He spent his days driving around Austin and climbing poles, helping old ladies with their cable boxes, fixing wires and signals. It wasn’t the job he dreamed of having with his engineering degree, but it was something.
My parents moved out of Austin years ago, but I remain here. When they come visit me, my father always speaks about the city with a familiarity that can only come from having crawled every inch of it, for better or worse. Your dad did a job there, he tells me about Montopolis, Anderson Lane, Travis Heights. The gated neighborhoods of West Austin. The now-gentrified pockets of East Austin. I wonder if he is telling me, or reminding himself.
“His stories are not simply just thought experiments; they are reminders that no matter where he is, he is always thinking about us.”
Today my father has a different job, one that takes him all over the United States—places that most folks only ever pass through to reach their final destinations. His job is to seek out these forgotten, overlooked places in order to determine where the signal for his company’s radios falters.
It sounds lonely and excruciating to me, and I often worry about his safety out in these primarily rural areas, but my father loves it. His job has allowed his curiosities to grow, unrestricted by the walls of a cubicle. He makes pit stops to inspect strange roadside attractions, takes pictures of the mountains in Oregon, orders beers at steakhouses in Virginia. He shares these artifacts and stories with me and my mother, leading us down long, meandering thought experiments of what really happened and wouldn’t it be funny if. When he is out there, driving through the endless fields, hills and forests, I know that there is all the room in the world for the kind of man he is, the one who was put aside in my family’s desperation for a stable foothold in America.
It was this exploration that led him to that historical marker in Pierce. Just another pit stop. Another curiosity along the way. My father asked me to write out the story of what happened, and I did. It turned into my debut novel, Four Treasures of the Sky. I took the story he told me and worked my way backward to an imagined beginning. What I didn’t realize was that the story was not really about what happened in Pierce. It turned out to be about a girl named Daiyu who is kidnapped from her home in China and shipped across the ocean to America before making her way back home through the American West.
This journey is not without struggle, as you can imagine. Faced with the threat of bad men and women, anti-Chinese racism and the question of fate, Daiyu pushes forward, traversing strange landscapes and lonely days. Her journey takes her to places I have never wandered, but places I imagine my father has and will. Perhaps unconsciously, I am thinking of him when I think of her.
•••
Right before the COVID-19 pandemic, my parents decided that they would start traveling more for pleasure. They went to Rome—the first trip abroad they’ve ever taken in their 30 years in America, not counting all the trips back to China to care for their parents. We were never able to travel much during the years when my father didn’t have a job, but for the first time, they could imagine Paris, London, Washington, D.C. They wanted to visit New York City, having worked there as a delivery runner and a hostess during their grad school years. This time, they would experience it as tourists, not two people trying to survive.
When the pandemic hit, all of those dreams disappeared. Instead, my mother began accompanying my father on his work trips. It’s a good deal: When my father is done with his job assignment, he turns into a tour guide of sorts, taking my mother to the roadside attractions, national forests and waterfalls he finds on Google Maps. My mother is a good adventure partner. They wander together, propelled by my father’s curiosities.
“My father overcomes hills, skips down valleys, cuts through the trees.”
Last summer, my father got another job assignment in Bend, Oregon. My mother went with him, and after the job finished, they drove over to Idaho, to Pierce. I had begged them not to—I was afraid that they would be attacked, given what was in the news lately. But my parents went anyway. They walked through the town, all 0.82 square miles of it, and documented their journey, sending me videos and pictures of the historical markers, the inns, the fire department, the old courthouse. They walked to the woods nearby, back to the historical marker that started it all.
In the videos, taken by my mother, my father walks ahead, charting the course for the Chinese Hanging Tree. The forest floor is lush and verdant. The pines shoot upward. My father overcomes hills, skips down valleys, cuts through the trees. He is wearing a pale blue polo and baseball cap. His hands are at his waist. When they reach the site of the hanging, my parents stop. The camera points upward, to the ceiling of branches and leaves, and what little sky can manage its way through. It catches my father in this shot: He is looking around, breathing hard.
“It’s just here,” he murmurs. There is no sentimentality in his voice, no grand gesture of reunion. Just acknowledgment and the respect of observation. The true pleasure of his exploration, I realize as I watch the video, is in sharing it with those he loves. His stories are not simply just thought experiments; they are reminders that no matter where he is, he is always thinking about us. In a way, Four Treasures of the Sky is my attempt to tell him a story, too.
The camera points back down, this time stopping at my father. “Now that we’ve seen it,” he says, “we can go.” He turns, plodding his way through the brush, making his way toward whatever curiosity comes next.
Zhang’s author photos by Mary Inhea Kang
Jenny Tinghui Zhang makes her debut with Four Treasures of the Sky, a spirited tale of Chinese calligraphy and one girl’s journey of self-acceptance in late 19th-century America, inspired by a request from her father.
I am ready for Catherine Chung to become a household name, and I know that day is coming. Both of Chung’s novels, Forgotten Country (2012) and The Tenth Muse (2019), tell stories of female mathematicians questioning family roles and chasing down secrets. I fell especially hard for her second novel, not just because Chung is a strong storyteller (and indeed she is) but because of her narrative’s clean, chronological structure, which embodies the precision and beauty of math itself. Over the course of the novel, protagonist Katherine reflects on her childhood as the daughter of a Chinese immigrant and a white American veteran of World War II. She reckons with her place in a male-dominated field, hedges her dreams against her relationship with an charismatic older professor, attempts to solve the famed Riemann hypothesis, meets real-life scientists and mathematicians and, in the search for her family’s true history, follows the clues in an equation-filled diary. It’s quite a journey, and Chung unfurls these questions and mysteries with all the formal elegance and unequivocal truth of a perfectly balanced equation.
—Cat, Deputy Editor
The Promise Girls
One of Marie Bostwick’s novels had been on my TBR list for so long that I’d forgotten when or how it had gotten there when I finally started reading it sometime in mid-2021. By chapter five, I had downloaded the rest of Bostwick’s novels, and a new fan was born. Although I’ve loved them all, my favorite is The Promise Girls. The three Promise sisters were groomed to be artistic prodigies by their overbearing mother, Minerva. During a live televised performance, pianist sister Joanie intentionally blundered her signature piece, and Minerva slapped the girl. In the subsequent uproar, child protective services split up the family, and each sister closeted her creative pursuits and difficult childhood without much reflection. Decades later, sister Meg’s journey back from a near-fatal car crash leads all three Promise sisters to reexamine their conclusions about their upbringing and artistic abilities. Bostwick creates worlds where we can trust that, with the support of loved ones and a healthy dose of creativity, good people will prevail. Her stories have been a wonderful refuge to me during this long and arduous pandemic, and I know that many readers would find similar comfort in them.
—Sharon, Controller
Elsewhere
Gabrielle Zevin is best known for her 2015 bestseller, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, but her literary talents didn’t start there. In Zevin’s 2005 speculative novel, Elsewhere, 15-year-old Liz has been killed in a hit-and-run accident, and she wakes up on a cruise ship called the S.S. Nile that’s bound for the afterlife. When the ship arrives in Elsewhere, a place uncannily similar to Earth, Liz learns that she will age backward until infancy. Then she’ll be released into a river and sent back to Earth, where she will begin a new life. Utterly distraught, Liz spends most of her time at the Observation Decks, where one “eternim” buys her five minutes of Earth-viewing time. On the brighter side, she’s taken in by her grandmother Betty, now 34, who died before Liz was born and currently works as a seamstress in Elsewhere. As Liz comes to grips with living her new life in reverse, Zevin executes a premise that’s unique and fully realized. You won’t be able to keep Elsewhere to yourself.
I’m someone who loves to look up at the night sky, so Erika Swyler’s second novel, Light From Other Stars, stole my heart. It’s beautifully written, easy to get lost in and powerfully heartfelt. With a light-handed approach, Swyler skillfully toes the line between factual science and science fiction to tell the story of Nedda Papas, jumping between her childhood in 1980s Easter, Florida, and her adventures aboard the spaceship Chawla decades later. Nedda’s childhood scenes introduce her father, Theo Papas, a former NASA scientist who’s reeling from the death of his infant son. When Theo creates an experiment that alters the life of everyone in Easter, Nedda and her mother form an unlikely alliance, and Nedda’s recollections of these earlier events help her solve a dire problem aboard the Chawla. Throughout this tale of time and loss, Swyler explores how people (and our perceptions of them) change, how relationships evolve, what happens to us when we die and just how far we’ll go to hold on to the ones we love.
—Meagan, Brand & Production Designer
We Sang You Home
When I worked in an independent bookstore, a trend I noticed and loved was baby showers to which guests were encouraged to bring a book as a gift for the impending arrival. It’s never too early to start building a home library and sharing books with children! Board books are especially perfect for placing in the hands of the newest readers, because the thick cardboard pages are much harder to tear and can hold up to many readings (or nibblings). I loved sending folks out the door with Richard Van Camp and Julie Flett’s We Sang You Home, a spare, poetic meditation whose first-person plural narration encompasses many kinds of families and could be read by any caregiver, not just a birthing parent. I’ve read this book countless times and still choke up at author Van Camp’s beautiful benediction: “Thank you for joining us / Thank you for choosing us / Thank you for becoming / the best of all of us.” What an extraordinary way to welcome a tiny new person to the world.
—Stephanie, Associate Editor
We love it when a great book or hardworking author cultivates a huge following, but we also love cheering for an underdog. Here are five books that we believe are deserving of the fireworks and fanfare typically reserved for the biggest blockbusters.
outhern Belle. The words conjure up thoughts of genteel, tea-sipping ladies or feisty harridans the likes of Scarlett O’Hara. But these days, Southern women are a rich combination of both sets of characteristics, and they are depicted with insight in Lois Battle’s new book, The Florabama Ladies’ Auxiliary ∧ Sewing Circle. Atlanta socialite Bonnie Duke Cullman has come to a life-altering crossroads in her life. Her husband has run out on her for a younger woman. To add insult to injury, he has also spent their life savings and filed for bankruptcy. Accustomed to a country club existence, she has never done a real day’s work in her life. So, for the first time in her life, 50-year-old Bonnie is financially strapped and facing life alone.
Hope for Bonnie comes in the form of a position at a tiny community college in Florabama, Alabama. The Cherished Lady lingerie factory is being closed down, and the college hires Bonnie to run its program for displaced homemakers and workers. In a blind-leading-the-blind proposition, Bonnie is supposed to help the factory workers, many of whom have never known another job, figure out what to do with the rest of their lives. She starts out by gathering them into a weekly group session to help everyone air their opinions and concerns, and begins to learn just how hard life is for these women.
Determined to help the ladies better their lives, Bonnie calls upon friends from her former life to help set up a cottage industry using their skills as seamstresses to design a line of unique children’s clothes. The project is a huge success, but teeters on the brink of disaster when one of their own runs off with the first big check. But with resolve that surprises even the most skeptical in the group, the women regroup and come back to prove they are capable of overcoming the odds.
Lois Battle, a South Carolina writer with seven previous novels to her credit, has gathered a delightful group of women in this heartwarming tale. There’s patient, saintly Ruth, who has always wanted to be a teacher; the hot-tempered, slightly bigoted Hilly who finds the second love of her life in a Mexican restaurant; and Roxy, the irresponsible young mother who takes any job she can get, as long as it doesn’t involve work. But the star of the story is Bonnie, who proves to herself that she is capable of overcoming her own obstacles to find a happier life and, in doing so, develops a healthy respect for herself. She even finds a little love along the way.
The Florabama Ladies’ Auxiliary ∧ Sewing Circle provides a genuine glimpse into the lives of modern-day Southern women. Don’t be surprised to find there is a little tea-sipping (and a little Scarlett) in each of these resilient ladies.
Sharon Galligar Chance is the senior book reviewer for the Times Record News in Wichita Falls, Texas.
outhern Belle. The words conjure up thoughts of genteel, tea-sipping ladies or feisty harridans the likes of Scarlett O'Hara. But these days, Southern women are a rich combination of both sets of characteristics, and they are depicted with insight in Lois Battle's new book, The…
Holiday preparations flood our hearts with the warmth of Christmases past—or the echoes of family dinners best forgotten. Wherever your memories lie, two debut works of Christmas fiction are sure to lighten your spirits.
Journalist Megan Angelo has written extensively about pop culture, motherhood, womanhood, TV and film for the New York Times, Glamour, Elle and more. Her debut novel, Followers, is a perfect intersection of her passions that delivers a curious tale of three influencers and their followers, from 2015 to 2051.
Sean Adams has dialed down the dystopian quotient from his first satirical novel, The Heap, but that element is still very much present in The Thing in the Snow.
In a novel never published in her lifetime, Zora Neale Hurston presented a new vision of the biblical King Herod. Scholar Deborah G. Plant reveals how the masterwork was saved after Hurston’s death, and what we can learn from these precious pages.
“Family vacation” takes on a new meaning for grown children without kids of their own—like the couple trying their best to keep both sets of in-laws happy in Weike Wang’s Rental House.
