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Leah Hager Cohen’s new novel, No Book but the World, takes its title from a quote by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Ava and her younger brother, Fred, were raised by progressive parents who followed Rousseau’s “free” education and parenting model, letting their children discover the world on their own and without inhibitions or formal constrictions. Memories of their imaginative childhood in the woods flood forth as an adult Ava visits the town where her brother is now in jail. Ava recollects Fred’s oddities—his broken speech, his raging tantrums, his aversion to eye contact and touch—but also his focus, his empathy, his innocence. With a 12-year-old boy dead and news accounts suggesting her brother is responsible, Ava races to piece together a story that she feels only she can tell—one of misunderstanding, but also of deep fraternal love.

Amid the suspense, Cohen’s new novel is also a coming-of-age story that examines the pressures of following in familial footsteps. Though Fred lives out his father’s experiment in the woods with almost no formal schooling, Ava begs to attend school—the first of many decisions that eventually estrange her from her father. Yet Ava can’t fully separate herself from her upbringing, and is not wholly of one world or the other.

No Book but the World gives readers ideas to chew on every step of the way, questioning the obligations we have to our families, the struggle to love people who are difficult to love, the ways the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences affect our understanding of other people’s actions, and the tension between freedom and societal norms. A captivating look at the unwavering focus and innocence of children and the capacity of memory, No Book but the World is the work of a masterful storyteller.

Leah Hager Cohen’s new novel, No Book but the World, takes its title from a quote by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Ava and her younger brother, Fred, were raised by progressive parents who followed Rousseau’s “free” education and parenting model, letting their children discover the world on their own and without inhibitions or formal constrictions. Memories of their imaginative childhood in the woods flood forth as an adult Ava visits the town where her brother is now in jail.

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Who risks the most when a literary lion well into his ninth decade writes a novel? The legend, who is putting his legacy on the line, or the longtime reader, who shoulders the load of vicarious shame in the event the book is a mess?

With In Paradise, readers can rest assured the risk is worthwhile. In fact, it feels that Peter Matthiessen’s more than 60 years of professional writing has led to this, his most deft exploration into that crimped, fallible piece of meat called the human heart. In a dark, powerful and relevant novel, Matthiessen takes on Auschwitz and its legacy.

Polish-born Clements Olin is a middle-aged American poet. His family fled Poland as the Nazis were invading. In 1996, he returns, joining scores of other visitors at the notorious death camp. For a week, they will pray, meditate and bear witness to the atrocities that took place there. They will sleep in the barracks where the guards once slept. They will try, ultimately, to make sense of the unknowable horror that affected their own lives.

Clements is a self-proclaimed observer. He listens to the arguments about good and bad Germans, the complicity of the Polish citizenry, the guilt and responsibility Jews have in their own annihilation. He strikes up a dangerously close-to-improper friendship with a Catholic novitiate, a joyless young woman whose outspoken condemnation of her church’s passive role in the Holocaust gets her into trouble.

But Clements is a sham. A gradual reveal shows us he has more ties to the camp than first thought. He is even more of a searcher than the others. He is looking for his past, and for answers to questions he knows he should have asked long ago.
It may be in dubious taste to refer to an 86-year-old as among the last of a dying breed, but Matthiessen, a three-time National Book Award winner—twice for the same book, The Snow Leopard—self-confessed spy and co-founder of the prestigious Paris Review, has made a career of following his curiosity around the globe. A naturalist as much as a novelist, he’s explored the animal kingdom in places so remote the fauna outnumbered the people. That is especially pertinent now, when a whole generation of authors considers the L train from Brooklyn into Manhattan a schlep.

This powerful, necessary novel is hard to take, yet impossible to turn away from. It doesn’t shy away from questioning the depths of human depravity, nor is it ashamed to admit that there are no real answers.

Who risks the most when a literary lion well into his ninth decade writes a novel? The legend, who is putting his legacy on the line, or the longtime reader, who shoulders the load of vicarious shame in the event the book is a mess?

With In Paradise, readers can rest assured the risk is worthwhile.

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Australian-born author Evie Wyld’s novels ask tough questions without seeking easy answers. In her debut, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, she explored the impact of World War II and the Vietnam War on a single Australian family. Her new book, All the Birds, Singing, follows Jake Whyte, a young Australian woman living on a remote sheep farm on an island off the coast of England. When someone—or something—attacks her sheep, Jake is plunged into paranoia, brought on in part by her isolation, but also because of the secrets she carries about her childhood.

All the Birds, Singing has two narrative strands. The first follows Jake as she tries to track down the beast that threatens her livelihood. The second moves back in time, slowly piecing together—in reverse—what led her from family and friends to the lonely English outpost.

Where the English side of the story is fueled by disembodied fears and perhaps even a ghostly creature, the Australian side is rooted in clear memory and the kind of cause-and-effect storytelling made more powerful because it is told in reverse. It is to Wyld’s credit that she can maintain the mystery until the final pages.

Wyld excels in the intimate details that make up the relationship between humans and animals. Both continents are rich with flora and fauna—sheep, of course, but also blowflies, spiders and the singing birds of the title. Best of all are Jake’s interactions with the dogs in the novel, her faithful companion Dog and the decidedly creepy Kelly, a four-legged Mrs. Danvers.

Despite Jake’s gruff exterior, this is not a book about loneliness or even isolation. There are moments of connection and human kindness, from her fellow sheep shearers in Australia to her crusty English neighbor, Don. When a stranger named Lloyd shows up on her farm, he is less a menace than a fellow wounded soul, and the novel suggests that theirs is a friendship that could deepen. Wyld once again creates a complex character who may find recovery in small acts of kindness.

Australian-born author Evie Wyld’s novels ask tough questions without seeking easy answers. In her debut, After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, she explored the impact of World War II and the Vietnam War on a single Australian family. Her new book, All the Birds, Singing, follows Jake Whyte, a young Australian woman living on a remote sheep farm on an island off the coast of England. When someone—or something—attacks her sheep, Jake is plunged into paranoia, brought on in part by her isolation, but also because of the secrets she carries about her childhood.

BookPage Fiction Top Pick, April 2014

The title of Maggie Shipstead’s second novel, Astonish Me, is a fitting one indeed. It’s a request, a demand, a dare, all wrapped up in two little words, heavy with promise. And like the prima ballerina at the heart of the novel itself, Shipstead delivers a glorious story that does exactly what it says it will.

Superficially, Astonish Me is about the world of professional ballet: It is the story of Joan, a woman whose life is first shaped by her love of dance, and then by her love for an extraordinary Russian dancer (and defector). We follow Joan back and forth through time, from girl to grown woman, watching as passion propels her forward, heedless of the consequences and pain that are the ultimate fallout from such explosive affaires de coeur. As Joan’s pirouettes slowly morph into downward spirals both on and off the stage, the novel becomes a deeply thoughtful meditation on the relentless pursuit of perfection and just how far we’re willing to go for love.

Astonish Me is an awful lot of fun to read—the plot moves at a quick clip and is deeply engrossing—but it has a satisfying weight and delicious darkness that undercuts the sudsier elements. Shipstead’s writing isn’t showy, but dazzles nonetheless with vivid imagery and startling turns of phrase. Given that her last novel, Seating Arrangements, won the Dylan Thomas prize, there is a lot riding on this follow-up; far from a sophomore slump, this novel proves that Shipstead’s star is still on the rise as she pushes herself to exhilarating new heights. For those who might dismiss the book as “chick lit” masquerading as serious fiction, rest assured that Astonish Me is as nuanced and delightful as any reader could ever hope for a book to be.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Maggie Shipstead for Astonish Me.

BookPage Fiction Top Pick, April 2014

The title of Maggie Shipstead’s second novel, Astonish Me, is a fitting one indeed. It’s a request, a demand, a dare, all wrapped up in two little words, heavy with promise.

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One of the more piquant pleasures of Porter Shreve’s The End of the Book—a novel that offers the attentive reader a surfeit of pleasure—are the contrasting sensory details of Chicago near the turn of two centuries.

There is the stench of the city’s “hog butcher to the world” stockyards and the aspirational buzz of amateur actors and musicians at Jane Addam’s progressive Hull House that George Willard, recently arrived from Winesburg, Ohio, experiences in the early 20th century. And there is the sleek, high-tech cool of the iconic Harbor City towers where Adam Clary and his wife Dhara Patel settle at the beginning of the 21st century.

In the contemporary story line, Clary works for a Google-like tech company in a unit responsible for digitizing books. Adam, an aspiring novelist with a moldering MFA in his background, cannot really disguise the fact that he despises the job. This creates a kind of bad-vibe, not-a-team-player judgment about him that his wife, a rising star in the same company and the daughter of hard-working Indian immigrant motel operators in Dayton, Ohio, tries to shield him from. But this is not actually the beginning of Adam’s problems. He has also become responsible for his erratic, estranged, ailing father, a thrice-married former English professor once considered the leading authority on the writer Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio, one of the great works of American fiction. Adam’s life is further complicated by the appearance of a former girlfriend seeking to reconnect.

In the novel’s early-20th-century story line, George Willard steps out of the pages of Winesburg, Ohio, and off a train in Chicago and moves forward with his life, pursuing his dream of becoming a writer. It is soon apparent that dream is not to be realized. In an episode that brings to mind the rags-to-riches novels of Horatio Alger, George is struck by an automobile owned by a wealthy advertising magnate who ends up employing George in his firm. George eventually marries the boss’ daughter. Like Clary, he must take in his feckless father who has lost his hotel to bankruptcy. He reconnects with the girl he loved as a teenager back in Winesburg, who has also come to Chicago to follow her ideals.

In other words, parallels between these two storylines abound. Each story develops enough tension and velocity to make it compelling in its own right. But in the end the trajectories of George and Adam also diverge, especially when it comes to love. In the widening gap between the stories, a reader is encouraged, yes, to think of the parallels, but also to consider the differences: cultural differences between this century and the last; shifting American business mythologies; changes in our notions about filial piety, romantic love and the romance—and financial dependency—of being a starving writer.

Shreve’s first novel was the highly acclaimed The Obituary Writer. Until he and his wife, the novelist Bich Minh Nguyen, moved with their children to the San Francisco Bay area last summer, he headed the creative writing program at Purdue University. He is clearly a fan and a student of Winesburg, Ohio.

But The End of the Book is not merely a tribute to Sherwood Anderson and his best book. The novel leads readers to suspect that Adam Clary might just be the author of George Willard’s continuing story. Thus Shreve’s novel becomes—in addition to everything else—a playful and intelligent exploration of how a writer takes experiences from life and spins them into a work of fiction.

The End of the Book is a wonderful read, and Shreve has written it with an economy and grace of style in which Sherwood Anderson would surely recognize a kindred spirit.

One of the more piquant pleasures of Porter Shreve’s The End of the Book—a novel that offers the attentive reader a surfeit of pleasure—are the contrasting sensory details of Chicago near the turn of two centuries.
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Is there anyone who hasn’t wondered which actions and incidents most gave shape to their lives? In Tessa Hadley’s Clever Girl, Stella is the author of her own life, recounting her story in a series of gracefully drawn but honestly expressed episodes starting in the 1960s and running to the present day.

Told in a series of perfectly observed moments, Clever Girl is not about what you want your life to be, but what you do with what life hands you.

We first encounter Stella as a 10-year-old girl living with her mother in a small apartment in Bristol on the west coast of England. Though her mother alleges she is a widow, Stella comes to other conclusions about her absent father’s real whereabouts. A bright and dreamy girl, she spends time reading and riding at the local stables. When her mother remarries, Stella finds herself chafing against her stepfather’s conventional household, drawn instead to the freedoms promised by the more permissive 1970s and the opportunities brought by a scholarship to a prestigious school.

Clever Girl is less about what you want your life to be than what you do with what life hands you. By the time she is in her early 20s, Stella is a single mother with two children. School is an impossibility, and she makes ends meet by keeping house for an English professor and later working in an art gallery.

Stella reveals her story as a series of moments, almost like a picaresque novel. The connecting thread is her cleverness, here translated as intellectual capabilities as well as curiosity about life. Though at one point she feels as though books “have let her down,” it is still her acumen that allows her to provide the links between one incident and the next.

Hadley is a consummate writer who excels at the kind of honest material details that fully round every scene. As someone who was born at roughly the same time as Stella, I can assure you Hadley’s recreation of the decades from 1960 to 2000 is deliciously accurate. Clever Girl is an elegant and accomplished novel that will entertain but also make you contemplate the trajectory of your own life.

Is there anyone who hasn’t wondered which actions and incidents most gave shape to their lives? In Tessa Hadley’s Clever Girl, Stella is the author of her own life, recounting her story in a series of gracefully drawn but honestly expressed episodes starting in the 1960s and running to the present day.

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The death that launches Yiyun Li’s second novel, Kinder Than Solitude, has been a long time coming. Twenty years before, Shaoai was mysteriously poisoned by someone close to her, leaving her crippled and diminished. Her death comes as a great relief for the novel’s three main characters, Moran, Ruyu and Boyang—once childhood friends in China, but now estranged. But with that sigh of relief comes the truth.

The story unfolds in flashes of past and present, dipping between the storylines of the three distant friends to reveal how they have been transformed by the poisoning of Shaoai. Orphan Ruyu, who “defied being known” and avoids interpersonal connections, now lives in California and works as a glorified assistant for a local woman. Moran, who lives in Wisconsin, goes from relishing life’s ideal moments to removing herself from all moments, past or present. Solitude is clarity; connection is clutter. But it is a tenuous insouciance, and news of Shaoai’s death, immediately followed by her ex-husband’s own terminal illness, sends her out of the shadows. “Sugar daddy” Boyang, the only one still living in Beijing, cared for Shaoai up until the end. He is the only one able to recognize the existence of the past, but even then, his recollection is lacking any sense of nostalgia.

Chinese-American Li, who was born in Beijing and moved to the U.S. in 1996, is a MacArthur Fellow and was named one of the New Yorker’s top 20 writers under 40. Her new novel is penetrating and emotionally tasking, but there’s something compulsive about it—something that hooks a nerve and tugs again and again.

Kinder Than Solitude promises a mystery at its heart, but solving the crime is far from this story’s point. It’s about forcing memory to the surface. The greatest reprieve from all this repression and melancholy is the subdued prose, which unfolds with immense grace and astonishing insight. This is an intense and elegant book, a dark tale with great reverence for the depth of the human heart.

This is an intense and elegant book, a dark tale with great reverence for the depth of the human heart.

Even if your religious education didn’t extend beyond Sunday school, you’re probably at least vaguely familiar with the biblical book of Jonah, the reluctant prophet who visits the belly of a big fish. Loosely building on that spare and enigmatic narrative, debut novelist Joshua Max Feldman has produced an affecting contemporary retelling of the tale, plausibly revealing what it might be like for a thoroughly modern man to find himself touched by the hand of God.

Jonah Daniel Jacobstein is an ambitious midlevel associate at a large New York law firm, just tapped to work on a major case patent case that likely will cement his admission to a lucrative partnership. But Jonah starts to come unglued when visions—including one of himself surrounded by naked people as well as the destruction of New York City—descend upon him. Jonah’s career and personal life both soon are in freefall, and it’s only when he meets Judith Klein Bulbrook, a young woman whose own life has been cleaved by tragedy, that he’s able to take the first, faltering steps on the road to redemption.

Feldman succeeds at capturing Jonah’s conflicted response to the notion that he may, for reasons he can’t possibly fathom, be in contact with the divine. After his first vision, Jonah brings his lawyerly intellect to bear in crafting a set of “Logical Explanations” that range from “smoked bad weed” to “schizophrenia.” Only when he has declared each of these theories sorely lacking does Jonah, who “understood divinity the way most people understood Wi-Fi,” admit of the possibility that “there was something—Biblical—going on.” Feldman foregoes any scenes of Jonah as a wild-eyed, bearded street corner preacher, opting for authenticity, not parody, as his protagonist finally asks: “Why not just give up, and do good?”

The Book of Jonah is as up-to-date as an iPhone 5S and as timeless as the question it asks: How do we live a righteous life? For all the ironic cool of his novel’s slick, modern surface, like writers of the best moral fiction, Joshua Max Feldman touches us in ways that are anything but superficial. 

Even if your religious education didn’t extend beyond Sunday school, you’re probably at least vaguely familiar with the biblical book of Jonah, the reluctant prophet who visits the belly of a big fish. Loosely building on that spare and enigmatic narrative, debut novelist Joshua Max Feldman has produced an affecting contemporary retelling of the tale, plausibly revealing what it might be like for a thoroughly modern man to find himself touched by the hand of God.

A Kafkaesque premise rests at the center of Jesse Ball’s intriguing fourth novel, Silence Once Begun. Oda Sotatsu, a 29-year-old man, is arrested in Osaka for his involvement in the disappearance of eight elderly people. The police have a signed confession from Oda, and he refuses to speak in his own defense. Indeed, he refuses to speak at all. But, as readers, we know that Oda did not commit the crime: He has signed the confession having lost a wager made with another man, Sato Kakuzo, and the man’s girlfriend, Jito Joo. Why has Oda admitted to something he didn’t do, and why is he willing to die for it?

Like any unsolved crime, this novel haunts us.

A journalist, named Jesse Ball in the postmodern fashion, is haunted by this long forgotten incident and sets out to discover the truth. In a series of interviews—with Oda’s disgraced family, a prison guard, the sensationalist newspaper reporter who covered the trial and, in the end, Joo and Kakuzo themselves—he pieces together the strange series of events. Unfolding like a documentary film, the narrative “truth” changes with each person’s version of things, which, of course, often reflects the teller in the best light. The reader is left to determine which story is closest to what really occurred.

By setting the novel in Japan, the American writer is inviting comparison to Kurosawa’s classic film, Rashomon, and Ball has acknowledged his debt to Kobo Abe and Shusaku Endo as well. Japanese notions of family honor and public shame are central, although the underlying themes are universal. An epigraph stating that it is a work of fiction partially based on fact adds a tantalizing element to a story about the nature of truth-telling—is it derived from an actual miscarriage of justice, one wonders, or is Ball manipulating us here, too? Even at its close, when everything has been (mostly) explained, the reader is intentionally left with unanswered questions about Oda’s  somewhat inexplicable sense of honor and Joo’s complicated declarations of love, among other things. Ball’s calculated use of silence is masterful, and the novel haunts us, like any unsolved crime.

A Kafkaesque premise rests at the center of Jesse Ball’s intriguing fourth novel, Silence Once Begun. Oda Sotatsu, a 29-year-old man, is arrested in Osaka for his involvement in the disappearance of eight elderly people. The police have a signed confession from Oda, and he refuses to speak in his own defense. Indeed, he refuses to speak at all. But, as readers, we know that Oda did not commit the crime: He has signed the confession having lost a wager made with another man, Sato Kakuzo, and the man’s girlfriend, Jito Joo. Why has Oda admitted to something he didn’t do, and why is he willing to die for it?

If you knew the world was going to end in less than a week, how would you spend your final days? Though few people would likely answer that question by piling into a car and taking a road trip across the country, in Mary Miller’s The Last Days of California, that’s exactly what the Metcalfs choose to do. Believing they will soon ascend to their rightful home in the kingdom of heaven, this family of four sets out from Alabama with the goal of reaching California by the end of the week so that they might be among the last people on Earth to witness the impending Rapture.

As with all epic pilgrimages, there are plenty of bumps along the way. For 15-year-old Jess, the end of the world might be a welcome relief given the host of worries she’s juggling. From her exasperated parents, whom she just can’t understand (and what’s worse, they don’t have a clue about what to do with her either) to her beautiful but rebellious older sister, Elise, who smokes and drinks and is also secretly pregnant, Jess has more than her fair share of earthly problems. As the family weaves through the Midwest, each day offers Jess new questions to ponder and new temptations to resist or surrender to. Jess begins to wonder how many other people she can ultimately save if it means losing herself in the process.

The Last Days of California tells a traditional coming-of-age tale within an apocalyptic framework, a narrative marriage that works beautifully. Witnessing Jess’ despair and wonder as she awkwardly lurches through an increasingly foreign world feels like being right back in the middle of one’s own raw, aching teenage years, where confusion and hormones rule and every blunder feels fatal. 

Reveling in the dysfunction of its characters, The Last Days of California is no fairy tale, but it is timely, true and—at times—even a little bit tender. Miller is a talent to watch.

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Don't miss our Q&A with Mary Miller about The Last Days of California.

If you knew the world was going to end in less than a week, how would you spend your final days? Though few people would likely answer that question by piling into a car and taking a road trip across the country, in Mary Miller’s The Last Days of California, that’s exactly what the Metcalfs choose to do. Believing they will soon ascend to their rightful home in the kingdom of heaven, this family of four sets out from Alabama with the goal of reaching California by the end of the week so that they might be among the last people on Earth to witness the impending Rapture.

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An unnamed, ingenue heroine. A dramatic location by the sea. A wealthy and cultured older gentleman. If this sounds like the plot of the beloved mystery Rebecca, it is—but Rachel Pastan’s third novel pays homage to the Daphne du Maurier classic while adding a few new twists. Alena’s young heroine is a curator at a small art museum in the Midwest. Visiting the Venice Biennale with her employer, she is introduced to Bernard Augustin, the wealthy and enigmatic founder of the Nauquasset, a museum on Cape Cod that specializes in cutting-edge work. The Nauk has been closed for two years, ever since the disappearance of the chief curator, Alena. When Augustin offers the position to our narrator, she is eager to prove herself, but she is soon drawn into deep emotional and ethical entanglements at the museum. 

The remaining staff at the Nauk is fiercely loyal to Alena’s memory, to the point of keeping her private office like a shrine. A performance artist whose violent imagery references the first Gulf War turns up, claiming Alena promised him the next exhibition, but the young curator finds herself drawn instead to the work of a local ceramicist—a conflict that leads to rifts among the museum staff. It is to Pastan’s credit that she makes the curatorial arguments as compelling as the mystery of Alena’s disappearance. 

For people who love Rebecca, there are all kind of allusions and asides—names, locations and plot points. The transformation of Mrs. Danvers to Agnes, the Nauk’s creepy bookkeeper and business manager, is especially clever. But Alena stands on its own, and Pastan’s experience working in a contemporary art museum brings a grounded reality to the running of a museum and the complex questions of identity, aesthetics and originality in contemporary art.

An unnamed, ingenue heroine. A dramatic location by the sea. A wealthy and cultured older gentleman. If this sounds like the plot of the beloved mystery Rebecca, it is—but Rachel Pastan’s third novel pays homage to the Daphne du Maurier classic while adding a few new twists. Alena’s young heroine is a curator at a small art museum in the Midwest. Visiting the Venice Biennale with her employer, she is introduced to Bernard Augustin, the wealthy and enigmatic founder of the Nauquasset, a museum on Cape Cod that specializes in cutting-edge work.

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Patrick Ness has made a well-deserved name for himself in the realm of young adult fiction, where he’s crafted magical tales full of sensitivity and raw emotional energy. With The Crane Wife, he brings all of those talents to a story for adults, and the result is a viscerally beautiful, subtly magical and instantly memorable realistic fairy tale that will linger in your brain.

A mysterious woman brings romance into the life of a staid shopkeeper in this magical new novel.

George Duncan has carved out a sensible if predictable life for himself as an American in London. He owns a small print shop, stays close to his adult daughter Amanda and her young son, and has an amicable relationship with his ex-wife. George’s world is stable and unremarkable, until the night a large crane with an arrow through its wing shows up in his back garden. When the crane is freed of the weapon that wounded it and flies away, George thinks he’s experienced a momentary upset, but he’s about to experience so much more. The very next day, a woman named Kumiko appears in his shop asking for help with her art: a series of beautiful tiles covered in images that seem to be made from delicately woven feathers. What begins as a curious attraction blossoms into a romance, and George and his entire family are forever changed by Kumiko’s presence, even as the lingering mystery of who she really is persists in George’s mind.

Ness’ way of constructing a story on a sentence level is particularly fascinating in this novel. He lets whole pages go by with nothing but brisk and believable dialogue, using narration and internal monologue only when necessary. The result is a character-driven book that never feels slow or overstuffed with personal detail. The same technique also serves to almost instantly immerse the reader in these characters, and that creates a special kind of magic.

While The Crane Wife never dives headlong into the supernatural, there is a spell that Ness is casting here, a sense of romance and myth and life-altering circumstance that other realistic novelists just don’t have. This is the story of a group of people transformed by their connections to each other, and in his own particular way, Ness transforms the reader, too. 

Patrick Ness has made a well-deserved name for himself in the realm of young adult fiction, where he’s crafted magical tales full of sensitivity and raw emotional energy. With The Crane Wife, he brings all of those talents to a story for adults, and the result is a viscerally beautiful, subtly magical and instantly memorable realistic fairy tale that will linger in your brain.

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In Richard Powers' latest novel, Orfeo, the last great problem for Peter Els begins when his old, beloved dog kicks the bucket. The poor dog’s death is messy—killed by his ex-wife, in his amateur biology lab. It’s present-day America, and a layperson messing with Petri dishes of weird bacteria is a no-no. Before Els knows it, men in hazmat suits come and confiscate some of his stuff. He goes out for his morning run, and when he comes back folks from what looks like Homeland Security have come to confiscate the rest of it. In response, Els does what he’s been doing most of his life—he runs.

Orfeo takes its title from the Latinized version of Orpheus, a character from ancient Greek mythology who was said to be the greatest musician who ever lived. When his wife died, he went down to Hades to rescue her, but lost her at the last minute when he turned to look at her. In comparison, Peter Els is a man driven and intoxicated by music since childhood. Even his biolab is an attempt to make a primitive, pure music. But he’s hardly the best musician who ever lived; he has exactly one notable creation to his name and disavows it even before it has a chance to premiere. But on his way to his destiny he reconnects with those he’d neglected in his mad pursuit of musical perfection. This includes the woman, another musician, who left him for the greener pastures of Europe when they were young; the big-hearted, quilt-making woman he divorced decades earlier; the snarky, infuriating, charming dancer who was his collaborator on that unfortunate opera and the middle-aged daughter whom he adores but has rarely spent time with.

In Els, Powers gives us a man like so many others: talented but not talented enough, loving but insufficiently so, decent even as his decency goes unrecognized. With prose almost as lyrical as the music that’s always in Els’ head, Powers shows us a man trying to make his peace with people he’d wronged and who had wronged him and with dreams that never quite came true. Orfeo is a haunting book.

In Richard Power’s latest novel, Orfeo, the last great problem for Peter Els begins when his old, beloved dog kicks the bucket. The poor dog’s death is messy—killed by his ex-wife, in his amateur biology lab. It’s present-day America, and a layperson messing with Petri dishes of weird bacteria is a no-no. Before Els knows it, men in hazmat suits come and confiscate some of his stuff. He goes out for his morning run, and when he comes back folks from what looks like Homeland Security have come to confiscate the rest of it. In response, Els does what he’s been doing most of his life—he runs.

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