Worlds blend rapidly in Daniel Loedel’s debut, Hades, Argentina. As the novel opens in 1986, Tomás Orilla, living as Thomas Shore in New York City, has “spent eight years officially disappeared.” But his world begins to crack open when he is called back to Argentina for the first time since 1976, the year of his torture and escape.

He travels to Buenos Aires for a funeral that yields to a search for a lost love and the desire to revisit and reexamine the past. Like Orpheus seeking Eurydice, Tomás accepts a challenge from his old mentor, the Colonel, and returns to the places and events of 1976 to see what could have been, and how one choice could change fates.

As Tomás reenters the world of Argentina’s dirty war, time blurs, and the surreal blends with reality. As he relives trauma and torture, readers experience it with him, seeing a slice of history that is rarely talked about and feeling immersed in the ways that love, guilt and regret drive so many decisions.

Loedel’s prose is clean, tight and engaging, with a rhythm that invites you to keep reading and to see where the story goes and what sense you can make of it. Most interesting, perhaps, are the questions posed: What does it mean to be a hero or to be complicit in a dangerous regime? What choices do we really have? Who are we, and who did we imagine we would become?

Even as the novel invites questions and focuses on language rather than answers, the reader won’t be able to look away. They will bear witness to human choice and compunction, to love and loss, to the fantasy that helps make sense of what is real.

It sometimes feels like romantic relationships are becoming harder and harder to navigate. Meeting someone, getting to know them, constantly finding ways to communicate about everything, searching for common ground, trying and failing to move forward or take a leap of faith—it’s all exhausting. The routine isn’t entirely disheartening, though, and to the most curious of minds, it can be fertile ground for analysis and creation. So it is with Bryan Washington’s debut novel, Memorial, a celebratory lamentation of modern love.

The novel follows two men who are in love with each other. Through a major miscommunication, Benson, a Black day care worker in Houston, ends up living with his boyfriend Mike’s Japanese mother, who doesn’t seem all too happy to be the guest of someone she has never met before. Mike, on the other hand, is a chef who must travel to Japan to help his father, who is dying of cancer, through his final days.

As the novel begins just before Mike’s departure, the two men are unsure of their path forward together. This classic will-they-won’t-they scenario gives Memorial a timeless feel, but by placing two gay men at the center of this familiar setup, Washington poses fresh questions about contemporary romantic relationships with quiet grace. From the intermittent use of text messages and shared photographs to the mastery of a decade of slang, his writing is invigorating, reminding the reader of the realities every human must face and how we’ve all learned to communicate them.

Memorial is more than just a love story—though it is a very good love story. It’s this generation’s response to centuries of love stories, to a whole history of them. It’s what is coming; it’s what is here.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Short story maestro Bryan Washington discusses his game-changing new novel.

Don’t be deceived by the brevity of Sigrid Nunez’s new novel, What Are You Going Through. Like its National Book Award-winning predecessor, The Friend, this exquisite portrait of female friendship, aging and loss packs more insight into its barely 200 pages than many serious novels twice that length.

The novel’s unnamed narrator is a writer whose middle-aged friend, dying of cancer (“fatal,” as she prefers to say instead of “terminal”), asks her to serve as a companion in the New England rental house where she plans to end her life with a “euthanasia drug”—even as she confesses that “you weren’t my first choice” for this challenging assignment. Over the course of the succeeding weeks, with a “new intimacy that made secrets and lies intolerable,” and that at various moments is touching, profound and even wryly humorous, the women bond over shared stories of their lives, old movies, music and fairy tales, in something the narrator’s ex-partner observes “does sound a little like a sitcom. Lucy and Ethel Do Euthanasia.”

Borrowing the opening line of Ford Madox Ford’s novel The Good Soldier—“This is the saddest story I have ever heard”—Nunez confronts the reality of death without succumbing to despair. Whether she’s summarizing the improbable plot of a serial killer potboiler or recounting a conversation between the narrator and a “once beautiful woman” at the gym, she’s an economical, graceful storyteller. She also touches lightly but provocatively on subjects like climate change, the #MeToo movement and the malign influence of Fox News on one elderly woman’s psyche, then eases her story along almost before we realize it.

Sooner than she would like, the narrator faces the reality that what she’s come to think of as a “fairy tale” will end, and that, paradoxically, “the saddest time that has also been one of the happiest times in my life will pass. And I’ll be alone.” It’s a good bet that most readers will share that same wistful feeling when they reach the novel’s final page.

The liminal space between art, artist and audience takes an unexpected, beautiful and haunting form in Scott O’Connor’s masterful Zero Zone, which brings to light the intangible thoughts and feelings swirling around an interactive art installation in the desert.

Jess wasn’t always the artist in her family; her brother, Zack, was. But after their parents’ deaths, their California aunt teaches Jess to use art as a way to navigate and contain her emotions. Jess goes to art school and falls in love with a fellow student, while Zack retreats into an underground film scene. Jess’ art explores light and space, and as she attempts to create an ambiance for her internal struggles, she discovers room to empathize with others’ troubles, too.

Then one of Jess’ installations, titled “Zero Zone,” becomes the setting for a showdown between viewers who refuse to leave. Police are called to the scene. Similar circumstances threaten to repeat themselves two years later, and Jess must decide whether to act as a distant artist or in a new, more involved manner.

The chapters shift like a camera lens focusing for the shot. Early chapters take a panoramic view of Jess’ troubled past. Middle chapters zero in on her artworks and follow the stories of the young people involved in the standoff at Zero Zone. Final chapters click past, rapid-fire, as Jess’ story collides with those of the Zero Zone audience.

Zero Zone celebrates burgeoning female relationships, such as the ones between Jess and her aunt and between the women who see Zero Zone as a haven. In contrast, dangerous relationships with charismatic men tint the story with an eerie hue. An intimate experience of art from the inside out, Zero Zone raises questions about to whom art belongs: its creator or its recipients. Untangling the web of answers makes for a tantalizing inquiry.

The pain of long-held secrets and the lies necessary to preserve them are the subject of Bill Clegg’s intricately plotted second novel, The End of the Day. Narrated from six points of view, the novel spans the late 1960s to the present day for a group of characters disparate in social class but united by their connections to the circumstances by which one of them entered the world.

After newspaper journalist Hap Foster becomes a new father, his joy quickly turns to grief when the man he believes is his own father dies in an accidental fall. Christopher Foster’s sudden demise precipitates the unlocking of a vault concealing the trove of secrets that is the story of Hap’s birth and upbringing.

That story links three women: Dana Goss, an upper-class New Yorker whose family once inhabited an estate in rural Connecticut; Jackie, a working-class girl who was Dana’s close childhood friend before settling down to raise her family in the same small town; and Lupita Lopez, now living in Hawaii, who emigrated from Mexico as a 4-year-old and whose family has served Dana’s for many years.

The events that shadow the rest of their lives occur at a picnic on the night of July 4, 1969, a date Dana comes to think of as “the last day of what she would imprecisely call her youth, a period where her actions didn’t yet have consequences, or if they had, they hadn’t mattered very much.” Clegg discloses those consequences, and Dana’s flawed perception, at a measured pace, slipping smoothly from the life of one character to another and from present to past, revealing how entire lives have been marked indelibly by teenage impulses and mistakes. Though Lupita believes at one point that she is “safe from the truth,” The End of the Day explains with painful clarity why, in some lives, that can never be.

A long time ago, amid circumstances that no one seems so sure about anymore, a small Jewish village in Poland fell off the map of the world. Surrounded by thick forests, Kreskol has existed in a self-sustained bubble of peaceful isolation for decades, thereby missing the best of human civilization—like electricity, indoor plumbing and the internet—as well as the worst, namely the Holocaust and the Cold War. It is surprising, then, that what brings this peace crashing down isn’t an epic catastrophe but rather something as mundane as a marital dispute.

When young Pesha Lindauer disappears, everyone suspects foul play by her husband, Ishmael, who is also nowhere to be found. Having no means to further investigate the scandal, the rabbis convince young Yankel Lewinkopf, an outcast and an orphan, to find his way to the nearest town and inform the authorities of the suspected crime. Yankel leaves reluctantly, only to return three months later in a helicopter with gentiles who are less interested in solving the crime than in immediately thrusting Kreskol into the 21st century.

First-time novelist Max Gross is funny, insightful and mysterious in sharing what is essentially a coming-of-age story not only for Pesha, Ishmael and Yankel, each of whom realizes that they can choose to lead a different life, but also for an entire village that’s at once suspicious of and fascinated by the inundation of money and modern conveniences.

The Lost Shtetl is a fascinating combination of adventure, laughs and heartache, perfect for fans of Michael Chabon.

The voice of North African novelist Meryem Alaoui is a welcome one. Her debut, Straight From the Horse’s Mouth, is a powerful character study of a lively young sex worker who meets a filmmaker seeking her expertise.

The fast-moving novel is told by quick-witted and resilient Jmiaa, who reflects on her life in a bustling working-class Casablanca neighborhood, including the small bars, the open-air markets and the women who spend their evenings alongside her, drinking and chatting as they wait for potential clients. As a prostitute, Jmiaa keeps her mother in the dark about her occupation while earning enough money to support both herself and her 7-year-old daughter. Jmiaa also pays her pimp, Houcine, for protection and helps her dead-beat ex-husband, Hamid, who forced her into sex work after his business failed.

Aspiring Dutch filmmaker Chadlia is visiting Casablanca to research a movie about Moroccan urban life, and she hires Jmiaa as a consultant to keep the plot and dialogue authentic. But when Chadlia has trouble casting the film, Jmiaa steps in to help, opening doors into a life that neither woman could have predicted.

Straight From the Horse’s Mouth follows a familiar rag-to-riches storyline, but Jmiaa’s unfaltering optimism will keep readers hooked. She is matter-of-fact about the day-to-day details of her profession, boasting of her ability to provide for her family and proudly defending the women who share the streets with her.

Alaoui is ably served by her translator, Emma Ramadan, who captures Jmiaa’s irreverent spirit and sass. A simple glossary at the end adds context to the shop names, local personalities and food that contribute to the richness of everyday details.

Let’s face it: We’re all a little delusional. We may think that we are more (or less) attractive or talented than we are. We may imagine past exploits as more epic than they really were. For the most part, though, these self-deceptions are harmless and don’t interfere with our real-world functioning. Bianca, the protagonist of Jennifer Givhan’s second novel, Jubilee, on the other hand, has amped up her fantasy to Calvin and Hobbes proportions. She believes that her lifelike, yet quite inanimate, doll named Jubilee is her baby. Her living baby.

Many people with PTSD color outside the lines of typical social behavior, and Bianca packs quite a bit of trauma in her trunk, as we see in chapters that pingpong between the eras “Before Jubilee” and “With Jubilee.” Bianca’s first love, Gabe, is abusive, and over the course of the novel, we see their relationship swing back and forth, with transgressions being met with forgiveness in ever-amplifying cycles until the relationship becomes unsustainable.

Fortunately, Bianca escapes and meets Joshua, a made-to-order Really Nice Guy who is willing to indulge her illusion (as does most of her family) in the hopes that she will reintegrate her somewhat split personality. It doesn’t hurt that he is working on his master’s degree in family counseling. But the real world intrudes on their fragile truce between reality and fantasy, ushering in potentially devastating consequences not only for their relationship but also for the family they have so tentatively forged.

Givhan, who, like her protagonist, is a poet, paints a surrealist canvas with vivid colors, even invoking images from artists such as Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo. The richness of her language and her eye for nuance animate her depictions of both the bleak exterior landscape of California’s Imperial Valley and the bleak interior landscape of Bianca’s damaged soul. Through it all, Givhan has forged a compelling tension between psychological drama and romance that makes for a riveting read.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson’s beautiful, profound novel Jack will not be for every reader.

First of all, it’s a slow read. It has fewer than 300 pages, and if it had a vigorous plot, you’d rush through it in less than a week. Instead, you’ll find yourself spending much longer in the tangled, contradictory thoughts of John Ames Boughton—the titular Jack. You’ll want to stop and consider the foolish and wise things he thinks. You’ll wonder why he seems so eager to defeat himself. If you allow yourself the time, you could easily spend a month reading and thinking about Jack, about old-time Christian debates regarding grace, redemption and love.

Second, there’s the whole moral problem of Jack. You’ve seen him and felt him in the midst and at the edges of Robinson’s previous novels in the widely hailed Gilead cycle: Gilead, Home and Lila. He is the prodigal son of Reverend Robert Boughton of Gilead, Iowa. Since boyhood, Jack has had a shameful talent and urge for petty theft. Now, much older and out of prison, he flops in a single-occupancy hotel on the white side of segregated St. Louis just after World War II. At the beginning of the novel, he finds himself locked in a whites-only cemetery after hours, where he meets a young Black woman named Della Miles who has come there because Jack once praised the place to her. In the mysterious darkness, they talk about poetry and Hamlet and the coincidence that they are both children of ministers. He is aware of the shame that will result from her being discovered there. He wants to protect her. Yet he tells her he is the Prince of Darkness. You wonder if he is joking or really believes it.

Third is the question of Della. She is young, smart and from a good Christian family. She teaches English at the local Black high school. She is the beloved daughter of an esteemed Baptist bishop in Memphis. The risk to her and her family’s reputation in associating with Jack could be devastating. So why in God’s name would she fall in love with Jack? What does it even mean that she believes she has seen his holy human soul?

These are just a few of the spirit-boggling questions a reader will encounter by dipping into Robinson’s glorious new novel.

Though this book is categorized as a novel, there is little that, on the surface, appears fictional in British writer Martin Amis’ capacious “novelized memoir,” Inside Story. The book, he writes in its opening pages, “is about a life, my own, so it won’t read like a novel—more like a collection of linked short stories, with essayistic detours.” These short stories might better be called “episodes” that congeal into a metanarrative that is largely about the author’s lasting friendships with three late writers whose deaths left various scars on his personal landscape: his dear friend Christopher Hitchens, his mentor Saul Bellow and his parents’ close friend, the poet Philip Larkin.

Amis’ account sprawls back and forth across decades and continents, shifting not only in time but also in tense and voice, interrupted by a sometimes overwhelming quantity of explicating footnotes. This intentional disregard for conventional storytelling further blurs the line between truth and imagination. The reader presumes that much of the content is true at heart, with specifics morphed by the passage of time and the untrustworthiness of memory. But which parts are made up?

Readers might suspect that the character of Phoebe Phelps, a quirky, often infuriating girlfriend from the 1970s who remains Amis’ obsession for his entire adult life, is based in truth, if perhaps wildly exaggerated. But was she really a former escort turned high-class madam masquerading as a financial executive? Who knows? Amis certainly isn’t saying, nor should he. The important thing is that Phoebe drops a tantalizing, if dubious, bombshell halfway through that provides the book’s most compelling plot twist.

In one of the labyrinthine footnotes late in the book, Amis says of Bellow, “All the dead were in his custody, and he couldn’t let them go.” These elegant words might be applied to the real-life Amis as well. Now 71, this once-young buck of the British literary scene cannot help but look death, mortality and the meaning of life squarely in the face. And he does so with a singular panache and much offhanded wit, forging through upheavals past and present: 9/11, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Trump presidency, totalitarianism, Islamism, the sexual revolution, Alzheimer’s and cancer, among many other dark realities.

Most readers will likely deem Inside Story more memoir than novel. It is certainly a sui generis work either way. Early on I christened it a “kitchen sink” book (as in, “everything but the”) and had to laugh, about halfway in, when the fictional Amis actually “poured the [drink] down the kitchen sink.” Yet whatever its hybrid status suggests, it regally caps Amis’ estimable literary career with cheeky candor and more than a touch of razzle-dazzle.

Depending on one’s perspective, a work of art deemed avant-garde is either a welcome innovation or a stinging repudiation of the status quo. Few people are indifferent. And no avant-garde artist provoked more extreme reactions than Adrianne Geffel, the fictional pianist at the center, or perhaps it’s better to say the periphery, of Adrianne Geffel, music critic David Hajdu’s debut novel.

The reason periphery is a tempting word here is because the reader rarely hears directly from Geffel. Hajdu has structured this clever work as an oral history, the unnamed author of which has long known about the “idiosyncratic American pianist and composer” active in the 1970s and ’80s, whose works inspired a Sofia Coppola film and a George Saunders story and who had a neurological condition that prompted “auditory hallucinations.” She “heard music almost all the time.”

This book is an attempt to figure out what happened to the “Geyser on Grand Street,” as a SoHo newspaper dubbed her, who disappeared in the mid-1980s at age 26. A portrait of Geffel slowly emerges through interviews with people who knew her—from her parents, who fed baby Adrianne formula in part because they could buy it at a discount, to her teachers at Juilliard and a classmate who insinuated himself into Geffel’s life to latch on to her fame.

The result is the literary equivalent of negative space in art: creating a picture of a subject by focusing on surrounding details. Hajdu does this to entertaining effect, even when some of the interviewees’ stories wander and slow the narrative momentum. He has fun satirizing figures in the music world, among them teachers who think students should get into prestigious schools through connections because it’s more “convivial” that way, critics who use their interview with the author to plug their books, and prominent publications that report on trends in music long after the trends have become passé.

Adrianne Geffel is an uncommon treat: a smart parody that even detractors of the experimental are likely to welcome.