We remember some books because they remind us not to take life too seriously, and others because they overwhelm us with unforgettable portrayals of life’s darkest moments. A wonderful example of the latter is When You Get to the Other Side, written by Mariana Osorio Gumá and translated to English by Cecilia Weddell. It’s a story of great poignancy that was originally published in Mexico in 2019.

Siblings Emilia and Gregorio are raised by their grandmother, Mamá Lochi, a curandera (psychic healer) who teaches them all about the spiritual world as they travel up and down the mountains of Amatlán, Mexico. When Mamá Lochi dies, her grandchildren are left with nothing but a metal box full of cash and contact information for their father and uncles, who all live in the United States. Emilia and Gregorio use the money to pay smugglers, known as coyotes, to take them to the U.S. They begin to trek across the vast, merciless desert, encountering a human trafficking operation along the way. 

Gumá’s language is beautiful, her writing style unceasingly bold, but her novel’s literary merit is best embodied by its introspective imagery and symbolism. The chapters alternate between memories of Mamá Lochi’s life and the present story of Gregorio and Emilia’s journey, building a lovely, lyrical congruence between the two narratives. Weddell’s translation is excellent as well, her attention to detail evident in every sentence.

Mamá Lochi’s teachings manifest in her grandchildren’s behavior: Emilia foresees future events, and Gregorio becomes invisible to avoid his pursuers. It can be a challenge to incorporate magic into a story without unbalancing it, but Gumá does so magnificently, blending in the paranormal so seamlessly that the novel’s world feels neither wholly different from ours nor quite the same. The characters aren’t always so realistically wrought—sometimes acting inconsistently with their age or prior behavior—but Gregorio’s and Emilia’s experiences are so horrific that even the most subtle moments of magic are striking. 

When You Get to the Other Side is a short but dense read, best suited for readers with the patience for a slow-moving plot. They’ll be rewarded with a breath of fresh air and new perspectives on immigration and the supernatural.

In his third novel, Brooklyn-based Cuban translator and author Ernesto Mestre-Reed delves into Fidel Castro-era Cuba in a beguiling, meandering story that unfolds in dense and dizzying prose. Though challenging at times, Sacrificio is an invitation to slow down and pay attention. The rewards are plentiful for readers willing to give themselves over to a narrative that twists through Havana’s streets, churches, hotels, backyard restaurants and many secrets.

In the mid-1990s, Rafa, a Cuban teenager from the countryside, makes his way to Havana, where he finds a job at a tiny restaurant run by middle-aged Cecilia and her two sons. Rafa falls in love with the older son, Nicolás, though his intimate conversations with the younger son, Renato, have a more profound effect on Rafa’s life. 

In the aftermath of Nicolás’ death, Renato goes missing from the state-run “AIDS sanitarium” where he’s been sent, and Rafa sets out to find him. He soon becomes entangled in a complicated web of government agents, counterrevolutionaries and the mysterious workings of a secret city-within-the-city. He discovers the brothers’ connection to “los injected ones,” a group of radical counterrevolutionaries determined to overthrow the Castro government via a delusional plan to spread HIV across the island.

That’s a lot of plot, but it’s only the beginning, as Sacrificio is Dickensian in both scope and feel. Observant Rafa narrates in the first person, but he is long-winded and unreliable, often drifting into discursive stories told to him by others. The historical backdrop—including the 1997 hotel bombings throughout Havana and Pope John Paul II’s 1998 visit to Cuba—looms large, and these events have cosmic consequences. Rafa recounts his own involvement with mild detachment, like someone looking back on experiences they’re not yet sure how to interpret. Fear, betrayal, longing, confusion, love, the desire for justice, the need to be seen, despair and determination—these emotions run beneath Rafa’s surface, ready to be excavated by attentive readers.

Contemporary literature often feels like it’s moving as fast as contemporary society, as if our culture of instant gratification has changed not only the way we read but also the way we write. While there’s certainly a place for that kind of literature, Sacrificio is a reminder that other kinds of books are worthwhile as well: slow stories, disorienting yet compelling books that require work, old-school dramas that nevertheless speak to the fraught complexities of our current political reality.

Some people never learn, or so history would suggest. One doesn’t have to look hard to find repeated patterns that can cause lingering trauma, from interpersonal cruelties to larger events such as wars and other human-made disasters. This is just the sort of material that Ian McEwan—that eloquent virtuoso at mining life’s barbarities—likes to exploit for narrative effect, and he does so yet again in Lessons, a scathing novel about the ways brutality, intentional or otherwise, can shape a life.

The life at the center of this exceptional work is that of Roland Baines. At the start of the novel, it’s the late 1950s, when Roland is n 11. His parents, a tough-love father who was an infantryman in Scotland and a mother who betrayed her first husband, have sent him 2,000 miles away from their home in North Africa to attend boarding school in England.

Among Roland’s formative experiences are the overtures, musical as well as physical, of a piano teacher in her 20s. “This was insomniac memory, not a dream,” Roland says of his adult recollections of those days, among them the time she pinched his bare thigh after he made a mistake while performing a piece from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, leaving a “secret oval mark.”

Young Roland’s relationship with his teacher progresses in unsettling ways, but an equally disfiguring scar appears later. His wife, Alissa, whom he met in 1977 after enrolling in her German language class, abandons him and their 7-month-old son because, as she puts it (with shades of Doris Lessing), motherhood “would’ve sunk me” and kept her from becoming “the greatest novelist of her generation.”

McEwan’s novel moves back and forth in time to record the salient events of Roland’s life: adapting to single parenthood, eking out a living as a lounge pianist, learning of his and Alissa’s families’ pasts and more. As McEwan recounts seven decades of Roland’s life, the author places his character’s personal events in a global context and focuses on such international milestones as the Cuban missile crisis, the disaster at Chernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lessons is designed to unsettle, which is nothing new for McEwan. Although some readers may disagree, the novel posits that knaves and heroes come in all guises, and that everyone is capable of lies, predation and selfishness. The book has moments of warmth that are surprising in a work from McEwan, but there’s plenty of his classic cruelty, too, perpetrated by men and women alike. Lessons may not be optimistic, but as Roland notes, “Only the backward look, the well-researched history could tell peaks and troughs from portals.” Which is another way of saying that, with enough hindsight and sentience, there’s a chance that mistakes can be corrected and lessons learned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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