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All Literary Fiction Coverage

After a break-in at her home in which she is forced to defend herself from an assassin, Marie Mitchell decides to document her life for the benefit of her children in case she is one day killed. So begins Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel, American Spy, which chronicles the life of a black woman recruited to the CIA during the height of the Cold War.

In the ensuing pages, Marie recounts her early childhood infatuation with spies, such as James Bond in Goldfinger, and her own family’s role in law enforcement, from her father’s position in the Harlem police department to her sister Helene’s work as an Army intelligence officer. Even though she proves more than adept at both physical combat techniques and mental manipulation of her own “recruits”—the kind of stuff that only the best spies are capable of—Marie is consigned to being a paper pusher for much of her career in the FBI. So she is more than surprised when she is approached to work undercover for the CIA in a high-profile case.

The CIA needs Marie to get close to and undermine Robert Sankara, the revolutionary president of the tiny West African nation of Burkina Faso. At first, Marie is reluctant to accept the job, but her desire to make something more of her life—and perhaps her despair over the mysterious death of her sister—convinces her otherwise. Taking on the task becomes more than complicated, however, when she develops a real affection for Sankara, who will eventually father her two boys, thereby causing her to question her loyalty to the U.S. and its policies.

While not as complex as a John le Carré spy thriller, Wilkinson’s debut is both emotional and poignant, and one that readers can easily get caught up in.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Behind the Book feature from Lauren Wilkinson on American Spy.

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

After a break-in at her home in which she is forced to defend herself from an assassin, Marie Mitchell decides to document her life for the benefit of her children in case she is one day killed. So begins Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel, American Spy, which chronicles the life of a black woman recruited to the CIA during the height of the Cold War.

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Every society has a founding myth that they tell themselves to explain why they came to be and what they value. The same is true for families, and it is certainly true of the Deyalsinghs of Trinidad in Claire Adam’s excellent debut novel. The overarching myth of this family—which includes Clyde, Joy and their twin sons, Peter and Paul, all descended from Indian immigrants—is that studious Peter is the golden child. Paul, born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, is a “little retarded.” In such families—and such societies—the myth is so all-encompassing that they believe that without it they will crumble. And they’re willing to sacrifice a great deal to keep it.

The tragedy is that Paul is not “retarded” at all. He’s dyslexic and may be on the spectrum, but he’s also perceptive, observant, brave and even bold. But even though his family loves him, those qualities don’t matter much.

One night, Paul runs away after an argument with his father. That scene opens the book, and the rest of the novel describes what led up to the day when Paul went missing in the bush and what happens after.

Adam was born in Trinidad and has a razor-sharp understanding of its society. If you’ve been to the Caribbean, you’ve seen a house like the Deyalsinghs’: low to the ground, faced with cinder blocks or stucco, with a roof of corrugated metal or tile, protected—imperfectly—by grates painted a lovely pastel color. Adam allows us to share in Joy’s resignation when the water pressure in the tiny house goes out, to know what it feels like to slosh through a monsoon and to imagine food that ranges from traditional rotis, curries and melongene choka to packets of Chee Zees. The author shows how American culture has infiltrated the island nation, from Kentucky Fried Chicken joints to movies and TV. And then there are the Deyalsinghs themselves, their neighbors and their somewhat nutty extended family. They are good and generous people—but the Deyalsinghs, especially Clyde, believe what they believe, and they’re sticking to it.

Golden Child is one of those uncommon debut novels that makes you eager to see what its author does next.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Every society has a founding myth that they tell themselves to explain why they came to be and what they value. The same is true for families, and it is certainly true of the Deyalsinghs of Trinidad in Claire Adam’s excellent debut novel.

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BookPage starred review, February 2019

Valeria Luiselli’s fourth novel takes readers on a contemplative road trip from New York City to the American Southwest. A blended family of four—parents and their two children, a boy, 10, and a girl, 5—is relocating so the father can research Apache history for a new project. The mother is going on the thin hope of locating the daughters of a friend, two young girls who attempted to cross the border from Mexico in search of asylum. But both parents know the marriage is winding down, and the mother and her daughter will return to the city after the summer is over.

As they wend their way through the Appalachians, across Oklahoma and into the desert, the father tells stories of the Apaches’ civilization and its eventual exile and defeat, while the mother frets over the fates of migrant children and dreads her separation from the boy in the back seat. During the drive, the children read books and learn all the words to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” seemingly ignorant of their parents’ burdens.

Lost Children Archive isn’t a stream-of-consciousness story, but it reads almost like a memory. It unfolds in short, vignettelike scenes and takes you deep into the head space of its narrators. The first half, told by the mother, is meandering, the current-day journey interspersed with sketches from her earlier life and scenes from a book called Elegies, which tells the stories of migrant children. In the second half, told through the boy’s eyes, the stakes become higher and the action ramps up. Luiselli is a deliberate yet imaginative writer, and her work as an advocate for asylum-seekers informs the novel’s skillful blend of family story and issue-driven themes.

The characters join a long line of people forced to face separation and relocation to unfamiliar territory, their current situation an echo of so many others, from enslaved Africans to Apaches and today’s child refugees. These echoes will remain in the mind of the reader as well.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Valeria Luiselli for Lost Children Archive.

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Valeria Luiselli’s fourth novel takes readers on a contemplative road trip from New York City to the American Southwest.

Elsey once had a strong sense of self. She was an artist, an American expat in Ireland whose paintings drew acclaim. But she’s now lost in marriage, motherhood and alcohol. Elsey moved from Ireland to China to settle in with Lukas, the Danish DJ she met at a rave. Two children later, Elsey knows who is supposed to take precedence in her life—and it’s no longer herself. When Lukas suggests Elsey participate in a weeklong yoga retreat in the mountains, Elsey sees it as an ultimatum. If she doesn’t take this time away, their marriage will unravel. So she accepts.

The retreat is a challenge. Elsey struggles to be vulnerable during the regular Talking Circles, and her mind is constantly focused on drinking—or not drinking. Elsey thinks, “I had two small girls. I would stop drinking. I know this is what Lukas thought. But drinking doesn’t work like that, and my need for it was stronger than I realized.”

Throughout the retreat, Elsey reflects on her sense of self and the people around her. They become touchstones of sorts, pointing Elsey back to herself. One of the women, Mei, is also wrestling with a marriage that isn’t what she’d hoped. “I want to be the heroine of my story. And you, too, Elsey. You, too, be the heroine,” Mei says. “Not the victim. Understand? Because the heroine is the one who owns the story.”

Susan Conley’s Elsey Come Home is a quiet, contemplative portrait of a woman searching for herself in the midst of the mundane.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Elsey once had a strong sense of self. She was an artist, an American expat in Ireland whose paintings drew acclaim. But she’s now lost in marriage, motherhood and alcohol. Elsey moved from Ireland to China to settle in with Lukas, the Danish DJ she met at a rave. Two children later, Elsey knows who is supposed to take precedence in her life—and it’s no longer herself. When Lukas suggests Elsey participate in a weeklong yoga retreat in the mountains, Elsey sees it as an ultimatum. If she doesn’t take this time away, their marriage will unravel. So she accepts.

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BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, January 2019

The 30-year bond between two couples is irrevocably broken when one of the friends abruptly dies in Tessa Hadley’s Late in the Day. This well-drawn and absorbing character study bears all the hallmarks of Hadley’s best work: It’s perceptive, intelligent and written with astonishing emotional depth.

Serious but artistic Christine and dreamy, sensuous Lydia have been friends since school. During college, Lydia nursed an unrequited crush on their married French teacher, Alexandr, and Christine began a romance with his friend Zachary. Over the years, the relationships slowly shifted, and the women reallocated their affections without any apparent bitterness or jealousies. Lydia and Zachary eventually married and had a daughter; shortly after, Alex and Christine did the same. The two couples remained active in each other’s lives, socializing, traveling together and eventually working together when Christine began to show her art in Zachary’s gallery. Even their daughters became good friends.

But Zachary’s sudden death from a massive heart attack disturbs the equilibrium. At first, the remaining three are committed to providing comfort and solace for each other. Lydia moves in with Alex and Christine, and Alex goes to Glasgow to bring Lydia and Zachary’s daughter home from college. But without Zachary to stabilize the quartet, old grievances rise up and unhealed wounds are opened. For Christine, Zachary’s death means that she can no longer find a reason to make art. She locks the door to her studio and grows quietly resentful of her husband and best friend. On the other hand, Lydia finds new strength, deciding to be more involved in the business of the gallery and her departed husband’s family trust.

As in Hadley’s earlier novels (The Past and Clever Girl), sexual desire proves an overwhelming force that shapes decisions and actions, but Late in the Day is also about the remaking of an artist and the emergence of self, even in middle age. A master of interpersonal dynamics, Hadley captures the complexity of loss, grief and friendship with a clarity of vision that brings the natural and material worlds into sharp focus.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Tessa Hadley for Late in the Day.

The 30-year bond between two couples is irrevocably broken when one of the friends abruptly dies in Tessa Hadley’s Late in the Day. This well-drawn and absorbing character study bears all the hallmarks of Hadley’s best work: It’s perceptive, intelligent and written with astonishing emotional depth.

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The best retellings of myths and legends create an atmosphere like a dreamscape, faintly familiar in a way you can’t quite place. If you didn’t know it was a retelling to begin with, you might not piece it together until you’ve read the end, but a certain hypnotic sense memory sweeps you along in a way that feels very close to magic.

Everything Under, Daisy Johnson’s spellbinding debut novel, is a magical book in exactly that way. Using the story of Oedipus as a framework, Johnson leaps into an instantly compelling world, crafting a stunning book that’s at once an emotional character study, a meditation on the nature of memory and an examination of gender fluidity.

The novel is a story pieced together by Gretel, a lexicographer who spent much of her childhood with her mother in the canals of Oxford, until one day her mother simply left, sending Gretel off into the world and vanishing. When her mother calls her unexpectedly, Gretel’s past floods her brain, and a search begins for the memories that will unlock the past. It all concerns their last winter together, a runaway boy named Marcus and a strange—possibly imaginary—creature called the bonak.

Everything Under is, first and foremost, a novel of exquisite, heartbreakingly beautiful prose. Johnson leaps confidently and nimbly between present and past, switching narrative perspectives like a master and weaving gorgeous, spooky imagery. It has the effect of bewitching the reader, captivating us until we cannot look away from the dark gifts the novel holds and the lessons it can teach us about pain, time and memory.

Fans of Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, Jeff VanderMeer and other modern speculative fiction luminaries will devour Everything Under. This brief, artful novel announces Johnson as a gifted storyteller who’s here to stay, and you’ll be craving the next book by the time you’re done.

The best retellings of myths and legends create an atmosphere like a dreamscape, faintly familiar in a way you can’t quite place. If you didn’t know it was a retelling to begin with, you might not piece it together until you’ve read the end, but a certain hypnotic sense memory sweeps you along in a way that feels very close to magic.

Review by

It’s often said that there are two types of stories: A person goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. In her debut novel, Sarah St. Vincent goes with option two: Ways to Hide in Winter opens with the arrival of a mysterious man in the Pennsylvania wilderness.

Both hunting season and tourism season are well over when the man, Daniil, stumbles over the snowy threshold of the hostel where Kathleen works. It’s obvious he’s not from the region, but Kathleen, who has chosen her job partly for its isolation, isn’t interested in prying into someone’s past. At 26, she’s been a widow for more than four years and is still recovering from the car accident that killed her husband. She also holds secrets about their marriage that she’s unwilling to reveal.

As she gets to know Daniil, Kathleen grows curious about what caused him to leave Uzbekistan. As she learns about the country’s troubled history, she finds herself unable to continue to compartmentalize her own past. Both Daniil and Kathleen carry the guilt of secrets and betrayal—but do they deserve to? Can you move on from your past after causing or enduring suffering?

St. Vincent, a lawyer who has worked with the Human Rights Watch, has vast experience with these questions, and readers unfamiliar with Uzbekistan’s human rights history (likely most of them) will find this novel especially eye-opening. Ways to Hide in Winter makes it clear that you can hide for a season, but spring thaw will catch up to you eventually.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s often said that there are two types of stories: A person goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. In her debut novel, Sarah St. Vincent goes with option two: Ways to Hide in Winter opens with the arrival of a mysterious man in the Pennsylvania wilderness.

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To learn facts about one’s parents from their younger days can be a sobering experience. But discoveries might be especially painful if the facts concern a mother who abandoned her child. Anuradha Roy explores this dynamic in her perceptive new novel, All the Lives We Never Lived.

In 1992, Myshkin Chand Rozario is in his mid-60s. He still lives in his childhood home in the Indian town of Muntazir, where he works as the superintendent of horticulture, “a glorified gardener,” as he puts it.

Myshkin has received a large envelope from someone in Vancouver. The contents of the package pertain to his mother, Gayatri, which prompts Myshkin to recall the events of his childhood in 1937, when India was still under British rule and his mother yearned for a more fulfilling life. Into this picture come two real-life figures: Walter Spies, a German painter who met Gayatri years earlier, and Beryl de Zoete, an English dancer who horrifies young Myshkin with pronouncements like, “I eat little boys baked in the oven. With extra salt.” Inspired by Spies’ philosophy that “there is music in everything, beauty everywhere,” Gayatri leaves her family for what she hopes will be a more exciting and artistic life.

If the novel goes off on too many tangents, Roy is nonetheless a thoughtful writer who creates beguiling scenes, such as the emergence of women holding candles at nighttime, “a wavering line of fireflies,” as they sing a Muslim mourning chant. All the Lives We Never Lived is an affecting tale of loss, remarriage and rediscovery.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

To learn facts about one’s parents from their younger days can be a sobering experience. But discoveries might be especially painful if the facts concern a mother who abandoned her child. Anuradha Roy explores this dynamic in her perceptive new novel, All the Lives We Never Lived.

Review by

Tom Barbash surveys the New York City of The Dakota Winters through 23-year-old Anton’s eyes. We glimpse the country during the transitional moment of 1979, with Ted Kennedy’s bid for the Democratic nomination, the transit and sanitation strikes, the serial killers and the underground clubs. We also get an inside view of celebrity culture through Anton’s father, Buddy Winter, a late-night talk show host who recently snapped and walked off set during his monologue.

As the book opens, Anton has just returned home from the Peace Corps to heal from a case of malaria. Inadvertently joining his father’s attempt to re-enter the late-night game, Anton serves as Buddy’s “second brain” as he begins to prepare new material for an upcoming show. This role validates Anton professionally and troubles him personally, fueling a line of questions that will lead him to step into adulthood outside his father’s exuberant shadow.

Barbash at times leans too heavily on the specifics of his richly drawn New York setting, and ultimately, Anton’s story is eclipsed by references to the era’s celebrity culture. Anton operates behind the scenes of this culture, and because he exists neither within nor outside of it, he’s able to disappear at will. His moments of growth happen away from the city, such as when he takes a sailing trip with family friend John Lennon and tests his mettle during a wicked storm in the Gulf Stream. Even then, Anton’s sense of self takes second chair to his adoration of Lennon.

Throughout this colorful novel, questions loom of where Anton fits into the picture and how he can build a life apart from his father without rejecting the vibrant city he grew up in.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read a Q&A with Tom Barbash for The Dakota Winters.

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Tom Barbash surveys the New York City of The Dakota Winters through 23-year-old Anton’s eyes. We glimpse the country during the transitional moment of 1979, with Ted Kennedy’s bid for the Democratic nomination, the transit and sanitation strikes, the serial killers and the underground clubs. We also get an inside view of celebrity culture through Anton’s father, Buddy Winter, a late-night talk show host who recently snapped and walked off set during his monologue.

Review by

Samantha Harvey’s new novel is a carefully paced mystery that takes place during the four days before Lent in the small medieval British village of Oakham. When the town’s wealthiest and most worldly resident, Tom Newman, is reported missing, rumors fly. Was it murder, a suicide or an accidental drowning? The townspeople share their theories in the makeshift confession box of Oakham’s resident priest, John Reve, who balances his own grief with the growing discontent around him. He is not helped by the prying ears and eyes of the local dean, who is determined to uncover village secrets and find the person responsible for Newman’s disappearance—or is he a spy for the local monastery, whose monks would like nothing better than to swallow up Oakham and take the land for their own?

Harvey plots her story in reverse, a chapter per day, beginning on Shrove (Pancake) Tuesday and working back to the previous Saturday. With each day, the reader learns more about the villagers, the clergy and the intriguing Newman, whose continental travels and interests threatened Reve’s established order. Though Oakham is described as a dump of a town populated by outcasts and exiles and cut off from the surrounding countryside by an unbridgeable river, Reve believes in his role as shepherd of his flock, however wayward they may seem.

The Western Wind is filled with the rich details of rural medieval life, but the unique structure of the story gives the novel a fresh and modern sensibility. In addition, Oakham’s remoteness and parochial village church is contrasted with the spiritual changes coming to both England and the rest of Europe, bringing to mind contemporary issues such as Brexit and the refugee crisis.

Harvey, whose previous novels have been nominated for a range of prizes including the Man Booker, has written a densely packed historical novel that never seems dusty or precious, relishing in the psychological intricacies of power and faith but still crackling with suspense and intrigue.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Samantha Harvey’s new novel is a carefully paced mystery that takes place during the four days before Lent in the small medieval British village of Oakham.

Review by

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, December 2018

Arky Levin, a 50-year-old film score composer, has reached a strange moment in his life. Recently separated from his wife under disconcerting circumstances and estranged from his only child, Arky finds himself alone in a new apartment in New York and purposefully cut off from friends. This should provide the silence he craves to write his latest film score, but instead he just feels lost. In this frame of mind, he visits the Museum of Modern Art and discovers a performance piece called The Artist Is Present, based on a real 2010 performance by renowned artist Marina Abramović. In this piece, Abramović sits for 75 days at a table as throngs of visitors stand for hours to take turns sitting across from her, still and silent.

Using Abramović’s seven steps for creative projects—awareness, resistance, submission, work, reflection, courage and the gift—as an organizational device for her novel, author Heather Rose details the performance’s almost mystical effect on Arky and an array of other characters as they return to the piece day after day. Other characters include Abramović herself, a young Ph.D. student from Amsterdam, a recent widow from the South, a radio personality and even Abramović’s late mother, each of whom brings his or her own unique experiences and responses to the piece.

Already a winner of several literary prizes in Australia and short-listed for the Australian Literary Society’s 2017 Gold Medal, The Museum of Modern Love is an engaging, multifaceted meditation on the meaning of life and art. Rose sets this exploration in the context of one man’s compelling midlife search for direction as he observes Abramović’s fleeting art, which the novel intriguingly brings back to life. This is a brilliant find for any reader who enjoys grappling with the larger questions of life and literature, and it is an excellent choice for book clubs seeking thought-provoking discussion.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Arky Levin, a 50-year-old film score composer, has reached a strange moment in his life. Recently separated from his wife under disconcerting circumstances and estranged from his only child, Arky finds himself alone in a new apartment in New York and purposefully cut off from friends. This should provide the silence he craves to write his latest film score, but instead he just feels lost.

Review by

Author Louisa Hall’s third novel employs an ingenious and creative tactic to paint an image of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.” In theater, actors comb through scripts to answer the question, “What are the other characters saying about me?” It is through this Stanislavskian, indirect characterization that Hall’s Oppenheimer is revealed. A scientist who became (some would say) a mass murderer, he was a conflicted man with a varied public image who never seemed to decide how he actually felt about it all. In this staggeringly beautiful novel, he is fragmented, shown only through the eyes of people who are all struggling with their own existences.

Hall brings her seven narrators to life through rich and fascinating backstories. Their accounts span from 1943 until 1966—from two years before the Trinity test (the first detonation of a nuclear weapon) until one year before Oppenheimer’s death. We meet Oppenheimer as a potential communist sympathizer, an aloof physicist, an old friend, a mercurial boss and an insect crushed underfoot. The image Hall paints of him is in watercolor—blurry, overlapping, at odds with itself.

There are more similarities between the narrators than there are differences, despite their various backgrounds and roles in Oppenheimer’s periphery. Each grapples with the cold realization that people are infinitely separate. Shared memories often differ between those who share them. People come together for mere moments, and sometimes a flash of bright light allows us to glimpse each other’s bones.

Oppenheimer was a man obsessed with reading and quotations. Years after the Trinity test, in anticipation of an interview, he scrambled to retrieve his copy of the Bhagavad Gita to provide the famous quote, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Trinity itself is a name inspired by a John Dunne poem—but two decades after the test, Oppenheimer still could not fully explain his choice.

Hall has not captured Oppenheimer’s character, as to do so would be to lose his very essence. Instead, she brilliantly creates a fertile spot in her reader’s imagination, allowing us to draw conclusions based on our own realities. Trinity is a masterpiece.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author Louisa Hall’s third novel employs an ingenious and creative tactic to paint an image of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.” In theater, actors comb through scripts to answer the question, “What are the other characters saying about me?” It is through this Stanislavskian, indirect characterization that Hall’s Oppenheimer is revealed. A scientist who became (some would say) a mass murderer, he was a conflicted man with a varied public image who never seemed to decide how he actually felt about it all. In this staggeringly beautiful novel, he is fragmented, shown only through the eyes of people who are all struggling with their own existences.

Review by

With Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah draws a connective thread through a collection of bleak and absurd short stories set in a satirical reality based on a socially and economically collapsing America.

The book leads with a parody of the present day, in which a chainsaw-wielding mass killer is exonerated for his racially motivated hate crime by a defense attorney who swoons a jury with invectives of “freedom.” Meanwhile, teenager Emmanuel troubles over his representative blackness on a 10-point scale as he takes part in the race riots immediately following the killer’s acquittal. Adjei-Brenyah deftly interweaves these two narratives to draw a parallel between the story’s stark reality and our own, illuminating the state of emergency that is blackness in present-day America.

After the opening story, Adjei- Brenyah pivots to a dystopian future in which the government has poisoned its own water supply. In this future, “emotional truth-clouding” is looked down on in favor of intelligence, pride and truthfulness.

The tales that follow are set along the timeline that stretches between these first two stories, from the near-future capitalist decline to the ensuing societal meltdown, offering up a bleak trajectory for humanity in which pride and profit slowly usurp care. The title story sees the narrator fighting off a zombified consumerist horde in the early hours of Black Friday. Trampling deaths and bite wounds are as normalized as the narrator’s disregard for the little remaining humanity of those infected with the “Friday Black.”

Each of Adjei-Brenya’s characters deals with the numbness that comes after the shock of death wears off—and the pain that arises when that shock doesn’t fade. This is a difficult read and a twisting meditation on a world where love’s gone missing.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

With Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah draws a connective thread through a collection of bleak and absurd short stories set in a satirical reality based on a socially and economically collapsing America.

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