There is no institution in the United States more powerful, more mysterious, more impenetrable than the Supreme Court. It’s rare when we get to see the nine sitting justices as mere mortals—whether in moments of horror and disappointment, such as the sexual misconduct case against Brett Kavanaugh, or in moments of levity, as when Ruth Bader Ginsburg dozed off during the 2015 State of the Union.
In Elizabeth L. Silver’s engrossing and thought-provoking novel The Majority, we meet Justice Sylvia Olin Bernstein, aka “the Contemptuous S.O.B.” A flinty and aging justice, she decides it’s time to tell her life story—messy relationships, heartbreak and all. While The Majority is a clear homage to Ginsburg, Silver (The Execution of Noa P. Singleton) paints a full portrait of Sylvia, whose life unfolds during some of the most consequential events in American history.
Sylvia’s mother dies when she is young, leaving her in a loving but bleak home in New York with her devout Jewish father and a cousin who fled the Nazis after her entire family was killed. Sylvia gets her chance to move on when she’s one of only nine women admitted in 1959 to Harvard Law School. With her vast intelligence and force of will, Sylvia ascends to the highest levels of the United States legal system.
As is so often the case for trailblazers, her success comes with significant sacrifice, both personally and professionally. When she takes on a landmark case involving a woman who lost her job when she became pregnant, Sylvia realizes she has been preparing for this case for most of her life. “My mother told me when I was twelve years old that we—women—were close to being the larger group in America,” she tells the plaintiff. “Well, now women are the majority, and yet we hold almost no power at all. In some small way, perhaps this is a slight chiseling away at that. And if successful, it’s a legacy you can pass on to more than [your child]. It’s a legacy to pass on to an entire country.”
The Majority is more than an entertaining read, although it is certainly that. It’s a profound contemplation of how women are treated by the law and how they administer the law. The Contemptuous S.O.B. is both a brilliant jurist and an all-too-human woman fighting against a system stacked against her.
While The Majority is a clear homage to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elizabeth L. Silver paints a full portrait of Sylvia, whose life unfolds during some of the most consequential events in American history.
The Ray Carney saga is Colson Whitehead’s first series, and just like his readers, he feels passionately about the man at its center: a respectable, upwardly mobile furniture salesman by day, and fence of stolen goods by night. “I love him too. He’s been a great source of pleasure and inspiration,” says the author. But that affection doesn’t stop Whitehead from mercilessly putting Ray through the wringer.
Picking up four years after the close of Harlem Shuffle, Crook Manifesto heightens the dangers and stakes for the prosperous Harlem merchant and former hustler, and Ray soon gets sucked back into life on the seamier side. After all, as Whitehead writes, “crooked stays crooked and bent hates straight.”
In truth, the author may love Ray now, but the character was born out of a kind of hate—the distaste Whitehead felt for a ubiquitous trope in heist movies. “The character of the fence is always a travesty,” he says. “The team does all the work, and half the crew’s dead—they’re crawling or bloody, the cops are after them. And then some random guy you haven’t even seen before in the whole movie is like ‘10 cents on the dollar.’”
“I hated the fence so much that I started thinking, who is that? Who is that guy?”
Whitehead was incensed by the patterns he observed on-screen, but that ire gave way to curiosity: “I hated the fence so much that I started thinking, who is that? Who is that guy?” And from this interrogation came the driving force of the Ray Carney trilogy: “the psychology of the fence. . . . Having a front business and having your illegal stuff in the back provided the divided nature of Ray Carney.”
Although Whitehead kept his cards close to the vest, he knew almost from the start that he had a series on his hands. While the initial instinct was “to do a heist book and just have fun with that genre,” once started, the ideas kept flowing. There was just too much material, and he was having too much fun to stop at one book. “I was halfway through [Harlem Shuffle], and I was coming up with more capers that obviously would not fit,” he says.
Doing the math, he figured: six adventures, two books. But also, “if you do two, might as well do three. You know, I’m definitely a rule-of-three guy.” Still, he proceeded cautiously in terms of commitment. He didn’t want to be held to a third book, just in case he got bored—but that never happened. Now he’s deep in the writing of Ray’s third and presumably final set of adventures.
Along with the series being a trilogy, each individual book has a three-act structure. Harlem Shuffle tells of three separate misadventures for Ray at three pivotal moments during the 1960s, and this structure continues in Crook Manifesto, which evokes the ’70s down to the sight, feel and smell of a crumbling New York City. In the first book, Ray is in his 30s; second book, 40s; third book, 50s. Ray’s experiences with aging and all its attendant challenges are essential to the series, and it also means that initially, “his kids are babies; in the second book, they’re teenagers of varying degrees of annoyingness; and in the third book, they’ll be in college and out of the house.”
Three decades is, as Whitehead says, “a long stretch of time.” But in addition to the capers and misadventures that flow from the heist narrative, he found something compelling about the mystery surrounding the fence, and with great finesse he explores the dichotomy between Ray’s straight-and-narrow life and “the call of the street.” We witness Ray’s wrestling with his criminal nature—“bending toward it, embracing it, rejecting it,” Whitehead says—and by shifting our focus to this internal tug of war, we are invited to think beyond the usual markers of time and success.
In the four-year interregnum between Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto, Ray has kept his nose clean, built a prosperous business and bought both a commercial building for his store and a home for his family, moving uptown to the much storied if fraying Strivers’ Row. It’s a laudable, remarkable rise for the son of a failed career criminal, and yet it’s not enough.
In 1971, the year Crook Manifesto kicks off, Ray’s sabbatical from crime ends abruptly in an almost ironic way, considering the innocence of the inciting incident in comparison to the refuse he must wade through after. Ray calls on an old contact to get tickets to a sold-out (and history-making) Jackson 5 concert for his 15-year-old daughter—although as Whitehead points out, this fatherly duty is a cover to give in to an itch that’s been nagging at him for years.
The world around Ray is also evolving. In Harlem Shuffle, Whitehead allowed the pull of crucial—though not necessarily widely remembered—events in New York City history to guide him in shaping Ray’s story. In pursuit of key moments to “exploit,” he arrived upon the anti-police Harlem riots in 1943 and 1964. Whitehead decided that Invisible Man had portrayed the former in such an iconic, indelible manner that “I’ll let Ralph [Ellison] keep the 1940s one. I haven’t read a lot of stuff about the 1960s one. So it was open territory.”
The tension between the public and the police escalates to a palpable and deadly fever pitch in Crook Manifesto. The New York Police Department wages war against Black power activists, and a police corruption scandal widens, putting cops in the hot seat. And yet, in a way that matches the dualism of the novel’s leading man, Ray’s story also shows how normal life goes on alongside such events.
In keeping with that, the movie- and music-obsessed author takes the opportunity to throw his love of pop culture history into the mix, something that gives him great pleasure. “I was very taken with that idea that I could get my pop culture fixation and bring Ray along,” he says. So in addition to the Jackson 5 concert, which provides a soundtrack and momentum for Crook Manifesto’s first movement, the second section weaves in the rise of Blaxploitation cinema. It’s a heady and riveting mashup of politics, culture, family life and crime that only a talent of Whitehead’s stature could so seamlessly blend.
Photo of Colson Whitehead by Chris Close.
As the Ray Carney series steps into the 1970s, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead continues to explore history through propulsive heist narratives that go far beyond crimes and cover-ups.
Our top 10 books for August 2023 include Colson Whitehead's riotous sequel to Harlem Shuffle, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's latest horror novel and an engrossing look at race in Shakespeare’s works.
Remy Lai juxtaposes serious topics with charming humor in Ghost Book, a lushly illustrated folkloric contemporary fantasy that will inspire readers to learn more about
Crook Manifesto more than matches the finely hewn psychological tensions that haunted Colson Whitehead’s main character in Harlem Shuffle. The interplay between context and character
Nicola Dinan’s debut is a vulnerable, moving, riotously funny and deeply honest story about trans life, first love, art-making, friendship, grief and the hard, slow
It’s a genuine treat to follow along as the talented, hardworking tweens in Take It From the Top strive to understand others’ perspectives and translate their onstage performances into how they address real life.
Power Metal sounds the alarm on the environmental and social consequences of electronic and digital energy—and how the ways we are combating climate change come at a cost.
Our top 10 books for August 2023 include Colson Whitehead's riotous sequel to Harlem Shuffle, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's latest horror novel and an engrossing look at race in Shakespeare’s works.
Kim Coleman Foote’s debut, Coleman Hill, is a sweeping family epic—an accomplished and assured intergenerational story that feels fresh but remains deeply steeped in Black American literary traditions and history. Foote describes the project as a biomythography, a word coined by writer and scholar Audre Lorde to describe her memoir, Zami. And like Lorde, Foote invokes literal ancestors alongside literary ones; the novel is a fictionalized account of her own family history. As this vivid novel navigates the rich texture of everyday Black life throughout the 20th century, Foote’s emotional investment in telling complicated stories truthfully and openly is apparent in every scene.
The novel begins in 1916 with an exodus. Like so many other Black people during the Great Migration, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes leave their homes in the South, intent on escaping racism and poverty. Both women settle in the small community of Vauxhall, New Jersey, but soon find that life in the North, though different, is not always better. Over the following decades, the Colemans and the Grimeses experience shattering losses, form surprising friendships, get into heated arguments, hold grudges and keep secrets from each other—all while trying to stay alive in a world that often treats them like they don’t matter.
Three generations come alive in poignant, beautifully rendered scenes. The narrative moves quickly through time, jumping from the 1920s to the ’40s to the ’70s. Each section begins with a photograph, which lends the book a powerful immediacy and makes it feel even more like a living history. The point of view also shifts quickly from person to person, as mothers and then sons, daughters, aunts and cousins add their memories to the tapestry of the two families’ lives. The result is a polyvocal symphony that highlights the complex and often contradictory experiences of characters who—even if unintentionally—perpetuate cycles of abuse. Foote zooms in and out with breathtaking skill, which allows her to illuminate her characters’ deeply personal choices as well as the long aftereffects of slavery and the insidious ways that trauma moves through generations.
Coleman Hill is not an easy read, rife as it is with violence, racism and abuse, but it never becomes maudlin. Foote’s prose is effortlessly poetic, yet it feels conversational and direct. Even the characters who only take center stage for a few pages are wonderfully drawn. This remarkable debut is a reminder that sometimes the best stories don’t have an answer at the end but, instead, unflinchingly tell the truths of human lives—even, and maybe especially, when the telling hurts.
Kim Coleman Foote’s remarkable debut is a reminder that sometimes the best stories don’t have an answer at the end but, instead, unflinchingly tell the truths of human lives—even, and maybe especially, when the telling hurts.
Any new novel by the acclaimed British writer Zadie Smith (Swing Time) is cause for celebration, but her first foray into historical fiction will garner fresh admirers with its detailed 19th-century narrative, while also satisfying fans who have long enjoyed her on-target observations and richly drawn characters.
Witty and incisive, The Fraud is based on actual events in Victorian England surrounding the Tichborne trial, in which a lowly butcher claimed to be the heir to a wealthy English family. The case quickly divided British citizens over the very notions of truth and entitlement.
Scottish housekeeper Eliza Touchet is cousin and employee of William Ainsworth, a prolific novelist whose books once outsold Charles Dickens’ but who, by 1868, is wallowing in obscurity. William recently married a housemaid named Sarah Wells, who is obsessed with the man claiming to be Sir Tichborne, inheritor of a family fortune who reportedly drowned in a shipwreck. Quite likely a local butcher from East London, the “Claimant,” as he is called, is passionately defended by many working-class Londoners who regard him as a true man of the people being treated poorly by the elite.
Eliza’s interest in the trial is piqued by Andrew Bogle, who was formerly enslaved by the Tichborne family in Jamaica and is called to testify. A Catholic and an abolitionist (and the secret lover of William’s first wife), Eliza relates to Andrew as a fellow outsider, although she is often unable to see beyond her privilege.
Smith writes eloquent, powerful and often quite humorous novels with social issues at the fore, and The Fraud is no exception. As with Lauren Groff’s Matrix or Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait, the novel’s firm grounding in the past offers a rich reflection of the present—and the ways race and class impact our understanding of ourselves and our complicated history.
Zadie Smith writes eloquent, powerful and often quite humorous novels with social issues at the fore, and The Fraud is no exception.
After Matrix, her vivid feminist novel starring a medieval nun, Lauren Groff returns with another historical novel, The Vaster Wilds, about a young Colonial-era woman’s journey out of a sick and starving Jamestown, Virginia.
As the novel opens, the girl (the narrative refers to this teenage main character only as “the girl”) has fled the Jamestown fort for the wilderness, aiming north to find a French colony that she’s heard about. She’s managed to steal a few key items—an ax, a pewter cup, two coverlets, leather boots, gloves—and now she runs through the late-winter night, aware of danger from wild animals, the Jamestown men sent out to find her and “the people of this place,” her phrase for Native Americans.
The novel’s omniscient narration recounts the girl’s journey in language that’s by turns earthy and visceral (she suffers repeated bouts of “hot liquid shits” after eating whatever she can gather), and poetic and visionary. Groff closely follows the girl’s intrepid, remarkable efforts to stay alive—building fires, hunting for food, creating makeshift shelters. As the girl travels, she remembers scraps of her past: her childhood in the London poorhouse where she was called Lamentations; the years with her wealthy mistress, who named her Zed; the hair-raising voyage across the Atlantic Ocean; and days spent with the mistress’s mentally disabled little daughter, Bess, the one person who ever loved and was loved by the girl. The girl is illiterate, but she knows her Bible, and her existential questions about the world run deep as she walks and ponders. The narration also lets us in on the stories of the few people the girl passes, like a hermit who fled his colony years before, and two Native American girls.
The Vaster Wilds is propelled by the girl’s struggle to survive, but also by her interiority and what her memories reveal about her previous life in London and that dreadful year in the Jamestown colony. Groff romanticizes neither English colonists nor Native Americans, and the brutality that the girl remembers and encounters can make for hard reading. But there’s also natural beauty at almost every turn, and the novel’s descriptions of rivers, ice storms, waterfalls and vistas are gorgeous and haunting, sometimes almost hallucinatory.
Though brief (272 pages), The Vaster Wilds is a layered, dense novel, one that can be read as an allegory about the follies of the American experiment and humans’ planetary depredations. While it’s often a dark story with only slivers of hope, Groff’s inimitable style and language makes it a memorable, immersive reading experience.
While The Vaster Wilds is often a dark story with only slivers of hope, Lauren Groff’s inimitable style and language make it a memorable, immersive novel.
With novels like The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars and Haven, Emma Donoghue has proven herself a masterful storyteller of historical worlds populated with deeply imagined characters. Though the universes she creates seem like they could expand infinitely, she builds small, confined spaces at the center from which grow rich possibilities. This is all especially true of her latest biographical novel, Learned by Heart, a story of risk, love and two young women discovering themselves by way of each other.
In 19th-century York, England, Eliza Raine is an orphan heiress living at an all-girls boarding school. When Anne Lister becomes her roommate, Eliza’s world shifts—and along with it, her understanding of herself and who she might become. The story moves between the year they meet at school and a series of letters that Eliza writes to Anne some years later. In these shifts, the reader witnesses the ways that the past shapes and haunts the present, that stories are made and unmade, and that love surprises and overwhelms.
The language here—of deep friendship and longing, text and subtext—is captivating. Sentences sing, and details shine. Donoghue has a remarkable ability to hold you in a moment, allowing you to see as a character does, knowing the questions each breath contains. Throughout, she keeps the narrative intimate while still allowing for commentary on wider considerations of societal constraints and expectations.
After reading this wonderful story with its countless discoveries, perhaps the greatest surprise of all is in the author’s note, in which Donoghue shares how she meticulously researched and reimagined this true tale. While Anne Lister’s story has been brought into our contemporary awareness, most recently through the HBO series “Gentleman Jack,” Eliza Raine’s story—and their story together—has not. Donoghue investigated their personal histories for years, focusing on Lister’s secret journal and Raine’s letters (the ones she was able to find). This rich saga gets its bold and dazzling moment at last.
A masterful storyteller, Emma Donoghue brings her dazzling talent and imagination to this historical novel based on a true story of risk, love and two young women discovering themselves by way of each other.
There’s a bit of the trickster in William Boyd’s delightfully engrossing 17th novel, The Romantic, which purports to be the biography of a real man named Cashel Greville Ross (1799–1882), drawn from an oddment of journals, letters, sketches and maps (some of them reproduced herein). With a wink, Boyd writes in his author’s note that Cashel’s story is best told as fiction.
And what a story it is! Orphaned as an infant when his parents’ ship sank, Cashel is raised by his loving aunt, a governess in County Cork, Ireland. He leads a downstairs childhood until the revelation of his true parentage so upsets him that he runs away from home. At 15, he becomes a drummer boy and is gravely wounded in the Battle of Waterloo. That experience gives Cashel cachet with the infamous Romantic poet and wannabe soldier Lord Byron, with whom Cashel strikes up a friendship some years later in Italy, along with Percy and Mary Shelley. The sharp-eyed chapters about this poetical crowd—their privilege, dalliances and tragedies—are some of the novel’s greatest pleasures.
When the self-regarding Byron throws a party for Cashel (a fete that turns out to be a celebration for Byron himself), Cashel meets Contessa Raphaella Rezzo. They share a this-is-the-one moment, but unfortunately, she is married to a wealthy man almost 50 years her senior. With the help of a conniving servant, Cashel and Raphaella carry on an affair, which is eventually brought up short by a lie Cashel is foolish enough to believe. For him, she is the touchstone of love, but he will not see Raphaella again for 40 years. Cashel, it turns out, is unlucky in love but mostly fortunate in adventure.
Cashel goes on to live a Zelig-like existence, standing at the edges or unseen in the midst of historical moments. A sprightly comic element recurs: For every success, there is a disaster, and after every disaster, Cashel eventually lands upright. When Cashel writes two bestsellers—a travel book and an anonymous roman a clef—his publisher steals his royalties. Cashel ends up in debtor’s prison, out of which grows an idea to found a Utopian colony in Massachusetts. And so it goes.
Cashel’s life spans most of the 19th century, and Boyd is both interested in and very knowledgeable about the period. Humming beneath the exuberant plot are fascinating details ranging from the life of a military drummer boy to the class privileges available in debtor’s prison. Issues of money, power and privilege also reverberate. And of course there is Cashel, a good-hearted innocent whose luck and haplessness make The Romantic such an enjoyable read.
The Romantic spans most of the 19th century, and William Boyd is both interested in and very knowledgeable about the period. Fascinating details hum beneath the exuberant plot.
Roseanna M. White begins her Imposters series, set in Edwardian London, with the soul-stirring historical romance A Beautiful Disguise, which features a gentle, engrossing love, an eccentric cast and many surprises.
Known for her exaggerated gowns, Lady Marigold Fairfax manages to convince her peers that she is just another member of the elite. But behind her facade is a brave woman who is desperate to save her family’s impecunious estate, so she and her brother, Yates, are working as anonymous private investigators known as the Imposters. Years ago, the Fairfax mansion was host to a traveling circus, and retired circus lions and monkeys still roam the grounds. The circus performers also now live with the Fairfax siblings and are considered part of the family. Lady Marigold and Yates incorporate circus skills gained from this found family into their investigative work.
Sir Merritt Livingstone, an officer working in the War Office Intelligence Division, seeks the services of the Imposters when he suspects possible espionage that could jeopardize a soon-to-be established intelligence branch and, consequently, weaken England’s position against Germany. Along with this central political mystery, A Beautiful Disguise includes many suspenseful scenes and unexpected twists as the Imposters gather information for their various clients.
Lady Marigold struggles to balance her true persona with the false image she projects to protect their secret operations. Although she wishes to show her real identity to Sir Merritt, she is aware of the risks involved in such a disclosure. With Yates’ encouragement, she learns to let down her guard and allow her real self to shine, and soon a romance develops between her and Sir Merritt. A dramatic, rewarding finale concludes this fascinating novel.
He Should Have Told the Bees
In the triumphant contemporary Christian novel He Should Have Told the Bees, Amanda Cox explores the importance of facing childhood trauma and finding family in unexpected places.
Beckett Walsh’s idyllic life is rocked by her father’s sudden death. In addition to dealing with this powerful grief, Beck discovers that her farm, including her treasured apiary, has a new co-owner—Callie Peterson, who learns she was named co-trustee of a farm by a man she never knew. Callie is determined to build her own life while supporting her mother through her substance abuse issues. Although unsure how to proceed, she believes money from selling the farm could help her avoid plunging into debt while paying for her mother’s rehabilitation process. Cox handles difficult topics—including childhood trauma from parental neglect and substance abuse—in a gentle yet realistic way. The characters’ struggles are considered in depth: For years, Callie has grappled with her mother’s broken promises and the effects of growing up in an unstable environment, and Beck has her own painful childhood memories of waiting for her mother to return. Secondary characters have moving stories too, and readers learn more about Beck’s father’s past.
For every difficult emotion in He Should Have Told the Bees, there are just as many uplifting moments. Beck builds a friendship with Fern, a young neighbor who shares Beck’s fascination with bees. Two subtle romantic relationships also infuse the story with compassion and warmth. The facts given about beekeeping are fascinating, and family secrets add a few twists.
Cox’s hopeful, heartwarming novel touches on complicated relationships, the value of friendship and the impact of trauma with great heart and kindness.
The Wings of Poppy Pendleton
Melanie Dobson’s captivating dual-timeline novel The Wings of Poppy Pendleton chronicles the disappearance of a young girl from a castle in New York’s Thousand Islands and, years later, the investigation into her disappearance.
In 1992, Chloe Ridell is determined to safeguard the privacy of her island and protect it from public scrutiny. Eighty-five years earlier, Poppy Pendleton disappeared from a castle that still stands, albeit in ruins, on the same night that her father, Leslie, mysteriously died. Both incidents remain unsolved. When a girl named Emma with connections to the Pendleton family shows up at Chloe’s doorstep, Chloe decides to look into the castle’s past. With help from a reporter named Logan, Chloe works to unravel a baffling mystery that could save Emma’s life. Chloe’s bond with Logan also helps her to navigate difficult childhood memories and financial issues that could lead to the closure of her candy shop. Meanwhile, Logan grapples with his own past experiences, some of which have been devastating, but he stays committed to doing what is right.
The 1907 island setting comes to life through evocative descriptions of Poppy’s world and that of her parents, Leslie and Amelia, who aspire to be recognized as members of New York’s gilded society. On the night of Leslie’s death and Poppy’s disappearance, the elegantly decorated castle bustles with activity as guests await President Theodore Roosevelt’s arrival. This central mystery is layered and exciting, tracing the story as far back as Amelia’s childhood in England. After Poppy disappears, Amelia tries to build a life for herself, but her past continues to haunt her.
Dobson’s characters find redemption, discover their own strength and experience the power of family relationships to pull us down—or lift us up.
You can go home again with these heartwarming novels, in which the complexities and joys of familial relationships take center stage.
The top 10 books for September include the latest from Angie Kim & Zadie Smith, plus a compelling mystery from William Kent Kruger and a helpful guide for talking about food with kids.
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Family & Relationships
In a thoughtful attempt to reckon with the past, Meg Kissinger delivers a spellbinding account of how mental illness and addiction ripped her family apart.
Zadie Smith writes eloquent, powerful and often quite humorous novels with social issues at the fore, and The Fraud is no exception. Its firm grounding
Angie Kim’s suspenseful follow-up to Miracle Creek follows a family that lives in a quiet and even bucolic neighborhood near Washington, D.C. They try to
Lucy Parker’s breezy and winning new rom-com, Codename Charming, follows a reserved royal bodyguard and the perky personal assistant of the prince he protects.
The top 10 books for September include the latest from Angie Kim & Zadie Smith, plus a compelling mystery from William Kent Kruger and a helpful guide for talking about food with kids.
A heartwarming story about the power of books to bring us together, inspired by the true story of the underground library in WWII Warsaw, by the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London.
All her life, Zofia has found comfort in two things during times of hardship: books and her best friend, Janina. But no one could have imagined the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. As the bombs rain down and Hitler’s forces loot and destroy the city, Zofia finds that now books are also in need of saving.
With the death count rising and persecution intensifying, Zofia jumps to action to save her friend and salvage whatever books she can from the wreckage, hiding them away, and even starting a clandestine book club. She and her dearest friend never surrender their love of reading, even when Janina is forced into the newly formed ghetto.
But the closer Warsaw creeps toward liberation, the more dangerous life becomes for the women and their families – and escape may not be possible for everyone. As the destruction rages around them, Zofia must fight to save her friend and preserve her culture and community using the only weapon they have left – literature.
A heartwarming story about the power of books to bring us together, inspired by the true story of the underground library in WWII Warsaw, by the bestselling author of The Last Bookshop in London.
The protagonist of David Diop’s Beyond the Door of No Return is Michel Adanson, a real life 18th-century French botanist. In this story, beautifully translated from French by Sam Taylor, Michel bequeaths a journal telling the tale of a secret and forbidden love to the daughter he both doted on and neglected. Whether the object of his passion felt the same is uncertain—she probably didn’t—and this is where much of Diop’s novel derives its power.
As a young man, Michel goes to Senegal to study the country’s flora and fauna, and spy, a little, for the Senegal Concession, which traffics in West African commodities, including slaves. The book’s title refers to Gorée Island and its ghastly holding pens where people were kept like livestock before being forced onto ships and taken away forever to the Americas. After a couple of years in Senegal a story reaches the young Frencfhman that can’t be true.
It seems that a young woman who was sold into slavery in America has somehow returned, even though she was believed to be dead. This obsesses Michel to the point where he drops his studies and sets out to find her. After being laid low by a fever, he meets Maram and falls passionately in love with her—or thinks he does.
Diop, winner of the 2021 International Booker Prize for At Night All Blood Is Black, is such a skilled and subtle writer that he won’t let us forget that Michel is a privileged white man despite all his sympathy for and even identification with his Black hosts. Though most of the story is told through Michel’s eyes, even the minor characters are memorable. Through Taylor’s translations, Diop lets us see the condescension of Michel’s better known contemporaries; the arrogant cruelty of the men who run the Senegal Concession; and the perfidy and shame of the man who caused Maram to flee her village. Diop also makes us love Ndiak, Michel’s wonderfully cocky teenaged companion, and we come to respect both the resourceful Maram and the proud and bitter Madeleine, whose portrait reminds the elderly Michel of Maram so much that he tries, pathetically, to court her. Beyond the Door of No Return is an engrossing work from a powerful and humane writer.
Beyond the Door of No Return is an engrossing work from a powerful and humane writer, David Diop, winner of the International Booker Prize.
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Maria Ressa’s book is a political history of the Philippines and an intimate memoir, but it’s also a warning to democracies everywhere: Authoritarianism is a threat to us all.
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.
