Instagram Facebook X-twitter Linkedin
FictionPopular FictionDebut Fiction

Definitely Better Now

Nuanced, hopeful and insightful, Ava Robinson’s Definitely Better Now is an endearing portrayal of a young woman redefining herself after one year of sobriety.
Nuanced, hopeful and insightful, Ava Robinson’s Definitely Better Now is an endearing portrayal of a young woman redefining herself after one year of sobriety.
FictionPopular FictionDebut Fiction

I Made It Out of Clay

Though entertaining in the vein of Bridget Jones’s Diary, I Made It Out of Clay is darker and more complex, following a Jewish woman grieving the loss of her father who creates a golem when she can’t secure a date for her sister’s wedding.
Though entertaining in the vein of Bridget Jones’s Diary, I Made It Out of Clay is darker and more complex, following a Jewish woman grieving the loss of her father who creates a golem when she can’t secure a date for her sister’s wedding.
Previous
Next

All Fiction Coverage

Filter by genre
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.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

The God of the Woods

Review by Arlene McKanic

The most delicious thing about a mystery like Liz Moore’s spellbinding The God of the Woods is finding out who did it. There’s the thrill of suspecting this character, then suspecting that one a few pages later, then being absolutely sure that the other one did it—only to have your certainty upended when you find out the real culprit. Of course there are red herrings, like the sounds of footsteps in an abandoned slaughterhouse that turn out to be a family of squirrels. (Or were they?)

The story begins in the summer of 1975, at a sleepaway camp in upstate New York operated by the fabulously wealthy Van Laar family. Barbara Van Laar is a camper that year, even though her home’s a short walk from the cabins. Barbara wants to get away from her family, and as you come to know them, you can’t blame her. The only things colder than this lot are possibly freshly dead fish on beds of ice. Then, Barbara goes missing. Fourteen years earlier, her older brother, Bear, also went missing and was never found. Foul play is suspected in both cases.

Though full of nerve-shredding suspense, Moore’s novel is really about families: good families, bad families, birth families and chosen families, rich families and poor families. Living among the frosty Van Laars as a mere ornament has destroyed Barbara’s mother, Alice, in mind and body. Meanwhile, though she is considered an eccentric loner by most people, camp director T.J. Hewitt has a devotion to her blood and chosen kin that is deeper than anyone, including the reader, suspects. And investigator Judyta Luptack’s Polish Catholic family is so conservative that she, a 26-year-old woman who’s making a good living, is scared to move into her own place. Much like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, Judy has to put up with condescension and sexism, and there’s even a local serial killer for her to do the quid pro quo business with. But you’ll be turning pages fast enough to forgive the unneeded resemblance. The God of the Woods is a beautifully written, devilishly clever work.

Set in the summer of 1975 at a sleepaway camp in upstate New York, Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods is a devilishly clever work full of nerve-shredding suspense.
FictionPopular FictionHistorical Fiction

Teddy

Review by Chika Gujarathi

Set in Rome in the summer of 1969, Emily Dunlay’s debut novel is a thrilling whirl of suspense, romance and glamour. Born and raised in Dallas in a wealthy, conservative and politically powerful dynasty of Huntleys (imagine Texas’ Kennedys), 35-year-old Teddy has never quite been able to escape her family’s influence. But after a setup turns into a marriage proposal from David Shepard, an American diplomat in Italy, Teddy is ready for her transformation from an old maid into a trophy wife: to step into a glamorous world of fashion and embassy parties, and more importantly, to finally find independence from her family’s name and legacy.

Alas, it’s the ‘60s and even in Italy, it’s still a man’s world. Lonely and desperate, Teddy soon finds herself slipping into some unsavory pursuits. Narrated in the first person, Teddy unravels in a series of flashbacks as our protagonist tries to set the record straight to Italian detectives in the aftermath of an embassy party gone wrong. In her smeared makeup, with a bloody dress stashed under her bed, and clutching one more of too many whiskeys on ice, Teddy is keeping her cool, and trying very hard not to give anything away. 

Dunlay does an exceptional job of keeping the reader guessing about Teddy’s true intentions. Is she to be pitied for her circumstances, or blamed for her inability to stand up for herself? Add to this enigma some fantastic side characters like David, Uncle Hal, Aunt Sister and the Wolf—all equally complex and full of layers. Dunlay also uses the Cold War political tensions of the ‘60s to their full potential for plot twists. 

While this well-executed and cleverly plotted story is a win in itself, there are also overarching explorations of patriarchy, privilege and freedom that will resonate long after the end. Teddy is an instantly arresting and electrifying read that’s not to be missed.

This cleverly plotted story unravels in a series of flashbacks as our protagonist, Teddy, tries to set the record straight to Italian detectives in the aftermath of an embassy party gone wrong.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Same as It Ever Was

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Julia Ames is shopping for her husband’s 60th birthday party, on the hunt for ingredients that were out of stock at her regular grocery store. It seems like an ordinary task, traveling two towns over for crab meat—until Julia spots in the aisles the one woman whom she intended to avoid for the rest of her life.

Helen Russo was a volunteer at the botanic garden when the two women met about 20 years earlier. At the time, Julia was struggling to find ways to fill the days with her young son. She had never felt completely at ease in life, although meeting her husband made her feel tethered in a way she didn’t feel with her mother, who had raised Julia on her own. After becoming a mother herself, Julia  loved her son madly, but she felt the impact of her early loneliness: “She’d never had a proper set of tools, but it had mattered less before; now there were others involved.”

Since giving birth, Julia had been adrift, and everything seemed too much. Helen—older than Julia by two decades, more experienced as the mother of five grown sons—recognized what the younger woman needed and quickly befriended her.

Now, running into Helen in the grocery store sends Julia’s mind racing back to those early days of motherhood and decisions that nearly destroyed her marriage. Told in chapters alternating past and present, Same as It Ever Was explores the challenges of motherhood and of being mothered. As in her New York Times bestselling debut, The Most Fun We Ever Had, novelist Claire Lombardo dives deeply into her characters’ lives to mine the family dynamics that shaped them.

Lombardo peels away years of secrecy to reveal the choices that led Julia to—and then away from—her defining friendship with Helen. The reader gets to know Julia not only as a nearly 60-year-old mother of adult children and earlier as a struggling new mother, but also as a teenager with her own difficult, tumultuous mother. As Lombardo draws back the curtain on Julia’s past, the parallels to her present life become clear. Same as It Ever Was is an engrossing story of maternal complexity and a reminder of the myriad ways the past can quietly inform the present.

Claire Lombardo finds “difficult characters much more interesting”: Read our Q&A with the author about Same as It Ever Was.

As in her New York Times bestselling debut, The Most Fun We Ever Had, novelist Claire Lombardo dives deeply into her characters’ lives to mine the family dynamics that shaped them, delivering an engrossing story of the challenges of motherhood.
FictionPopular Fiction

Little Rot

Review by Cat Acree

Like any metropolis where the excessively wealthy think they’re untouchable, Nigeria’s most populated city, Lagos, has a reputation for corruption and a swollen wealth gap. Bestselling author Akwaeke Emezi’s sixth novel for adults, Little Rot, is set in a city called New Lagos, a very different place from the southeastern Nigerian village of The Death of Vivek Oji (2020). When the Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s ravaged Igbo villages with lynchings and riots, the privileged urbanites of Lagos found life largely undisturbed. New Lagos shares this high-rise mentality—as if tinted windows are enough to keep one safe.

Little Rot begins with a breakup, as religious Aima leaves her longtime boyfriend, Kalu, because he won’t marry her. Aima seeks comfort in her friend Ijendu, who takes her out dancing, which leads to a night of queer pleasure and then a morning of anguish. Meanwhile, Kalu attends an exclusive underground sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, and stumbles upon a nauseating scene: a group of masked partygoers with an underage sex worker. In a rage, Kalu attacks one of the men, who turns out to be the kind of man who can and will enact his own retribution. Glamorous sex workers Ola and Souraya soon become members of this tangled mess as well.

As in their 2022 romance novel, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty, Emezi writes a killer sex scene and is always willing to slip into the taboo corners of intimacy. But in Nigeria, queerness is illicit enough to get you killed, and this threat borders the whole narrative. Even in the gilded strata of New Lagos, there’s always someone more powerful than you, and everyone is touched by the hypocritical political power of Christianity, whether in the form of an evil pastor called “Daddy O,” Aima’s marriage obsession or the self-flagellation of queer characters.

Little Rot hurtles toward devastation, but even as you anticipate the horrors ahead, the escapist thriller-style pacing will keep you pushing on. Chapters rotate through this cast of beautiful people, who are all endangered and empowered by their entanglements. “You think you’ll never be a part of things you hate,” a woman says to Kalu at Ahmed’s party. “You think you’re protected somehow, like the rot won’t ever get to you. Then you wake up one day and you’re chest deep in it.”

These characters are plunged well past their chests, submerged in realities we might prefer to avoid. With their previous books, Emezi has been heralded for courting duality in stories that are described as unapologetic, visceral and radical. But if You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty tipped over into the light, Little Rot tumbles into shadow. For every arousal, there is violence; for every moment of love, there is ruin.

Akwaeke Emezi’s sixth novel for adults, Little Rot, hurtles toward devastation, but even as you anticipate the horrors ahead, the escapist thriller-style pacing will keep you pushing on.
FictionPopular FictionComing of Age

Humor Me

Review by Thane Tierney

The British poet Philip Larkin once famously opined that parents “fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.” Protagonist Presley Fry in Cat Shook’s sophomore novel, Humor Me, could find many faults with her alcoholic mother and their toxic relationship. But after suddenly losing her, 20-something Presley is a bit of an emotional wreck. 

On the surface, it would seem that Presley’s well on her way to having it all: After moving from a small town in Georgia to New York City, she’s landed a gig as a production assistant on Gary Madden’s Late Night Show, with a supportive boss and an imminent promotion to talent booker. Like many city-dwelling professionals her age, Presley has a roommate, Izzy, who acts by turns as agony aunt and partner in crime. 

Much like the women of Sex and the City—she identifies as a Miranda—Presley breezes through a frothy sequence of confusing connections with near-boyfriends, drinks with gal pals at local nightspots and career-enhancing forays into the lower rungs of the entertainment industry, where she hopes to discover the unpolished gem upon whom she can hitch her own star. But the specter of her late mother haunts her at every step. 

And Presley is not the only one mourning her mother’s death. Susan Clark, her mother’s childhood best friend, is also working through her grief, with a side of distress over her wealthy and influential husband having been named in a #MeToo-era sexual misconduct scandal. After a couple of semi-awkward interactions (which seem to be the only type of interaction Presley has), Susan asks to be friends, and Presley somewhat reluctantly accepts. The relationship turns out to be fortuitous for both of them: Susan gets to spoil the daughter she never had, and Presley gains some valuable insight into her mother’s formative years. 

Though it certainly has rom-com-esque appeal, Humor Me goes beyond that, navigating the complexities of breaking old patterns, forging new connections and establishing one’s identity. It’s also a bit of a love letter to the City That Never Sleeps, even if its inhabitants do, occasionally to their detriment . . . and sometimes to their delight.

Like the women of Sex and the City, Humor Me’s protagonist Presley Fry breezes through connections with near-boyfriends, drinks with gal pals and career-enhancing forays in NYC, but the specter of her late mother haunts her at every step.

Trending Fiction

FictionDebut Fiction

Two turtledoves

Francesca Hornak, Samantha Silva

more info

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.

read more
FictionSpeculative Fiction

Megan Angelo

Cursive, privacy and other things worth saving

more info

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.

read more
All Fiction

Author Interviews

More Interviews

Recent Features

All Features