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Cliche tells us that reading a work in translation is like taking a shower in a raincoat. Some stories, however, are powerful enough to permeate that language barrier, to bypass the cliche and completely pierce us. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s The Silence of the Choir, translated by Alison Anderson, is one such powerful book. Taking place in a small town in Sicily, this story lives up to its title, bringing together a rich and varied group of voices. This polyvocality allows Sarr to explore the main issue of the book, immigration, without becoming either heavy-handed or diminishing: In an increasingly metropolitan world, immigration is an issue that impacts everyone, and all voices have something to say about it, whether we want to hear them or not.

The story centers around the ragazzi (Italian for “guys”), a group of 72 immigrant men who have arrived in a small town in the Sicilian countryside called Altino. A group of workers from the Santa Marta Association has taken them in, though each worker has different feelings about the ragazzi and their fate. For one, Dr. Salvatore Pessoto is a cynic who finds it hard to have empathy for the ragazzi, especially considering how unlikely it is that any of them will be allowed to stay in the country. The doctor is chastised by his coworkers: a nun, Sister Maria, and her childhood friend, a lawyer named Sabrina, both of whom have devoted their lives to helping people, though in different and sometimes conflicting ways. Meanwhile, we also hear from the ragazzi themselves, like Fousseyni Traoré, who, upon first awakening in Altino, is unsure whether he is actually alive. Once the ragazzi realize they have reached safety, they rejoice, having completed the arduous, deadly journey across the Mediterranean.

There are many other characters in Altino whom Sarr introduces us to, each adding to The Silence of the Choir’s complex diorama of immigration. One of the most enjoyable is old Giuseppe Fantini, a retired, reclusive poet who hasn’t written in over a decade. From Giuseppe, we get a beautiful, delicate view of Altino and its people, reminding us that no matter who currently calls a certain place home, no one and nothing is ever fixed. Sarr delivers a moving, dynamic story, shedding light on the joys and consequences of contemporary immigration.

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s The Silence of the Choir sheds light on the joys and consequences of contemporary immigration as it follows a group of immigrant men in a small town in Sicily.
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Caoilinn Hughes’ third novel, The Alternatives, follows four sisters, all doctors of various sorts. When one of the four goes missing, the others set out across the Irish countryside to find her.

With the COVID-19 pandemic and general global instability in the background, the Flattery sisters have a lot to navigate. Haunted by their childhood and the early death of their parents, they all feel isolated and alone, each finding her way in the world as a single woman in her 30s. When the oldest sister, Olwen, goes missing, the other three come together on a quest to find her. In the process, they discover more of who they are, the values they share and how they can connect.

While all four sisters are concerned with the future of the Earth, each has her own particular sphere of expertise: cooking, philosophy, geology and politics. They also share a concern about the patterns within their family history. Each sister’s voice is clear, purposeful, realistic and hopeful. When the sisters come together, The Alternatives becomes even more engaging as their stories overlap, growing increasingly complex and intertwined.

The prose is strong, with narrative shifts that allow the reader both internal and external access to these women and their concerns. A true strength of the novel is the way Hughes balances ordinary details with those that surprise and raise the stakes, keeping the reader hooked.

In Caoilinn Hughes’ The Alternatives, the Flattery sisters have a lot to navigate. When the oldest, Olwen, goes missing, the other three come together on a quest to find her.
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Celebrated children’s and young adult author Renée Watson’s first novel for adults is set in Portland, Oregon. skin & bones follows 40-year-old protagonist Lena Baker, who wears many hats as the daughter of a pastor; a priceless friend to Aspen and Kendra; the Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the county library system and the loving mother of 8-year-old Aaliyah.

We first meet Lena at a doctor’s appointment. Ignoring the symptoms she came to them about, the medical staff insist on taking her blood sugar and blood pressure. Even after the tests come back normal, they keep returning to her weight instead of the issue she needs help with. As a Black woman with a large body, Lena has been through similar situations countless times before, where peoples’ assumptions about her overshadow everything else.

Lena knows she is brilliant and radiant. However, her power to push through the noise of others’ biases finally falters when heartbreak from a serious romance makes her second-guess her beauty and self-worth. When these negative feelings start affecting her daughter too, Lena gets a wake-up call. But how do you mend a broken heart? And more importantly, how do you mend a broken system in which standards for beauty and success are so narrowly defined?

Narrated in the first person, Lena’s journey unfolds in short chapters that are lyrical and poetic. The intertwining of Portland’s Black history, thanks to Lena’s job as the Director of DEI, adds tremendous depth to the story. Watson’s supporting characters build a strong sense of family and community, collectively showcasing the importance of passing down knowledge from one generation to the next. For anyone intrigued by stories that highlight experiences with race, gender, self-love, family and friendship, skin & bones will resonate in more ways than one.

For anyone intrigued by stories that highlight experiences with race, gender, self-love, family and friendship, skin & bones will resonate in more ways than one.
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A violent crime threatens the stability of the middle-class wife and mother at the center of Ethel Rohan’s Sing, I, a thoughtful novel about self-discovery and new beginnings.

Ester Prynn’s mother chose her name in the hopes of making her unforgettable. Ester lives with her husband, Simon, and their two teenage boys in coastal Northern California. Though amicable, the marriage has lost whatever spark it once had, and their younger son is so obsessed with video games he barely comes out of his room. On top of that, Ester’s father has advanced dementia, and she is estranged from her brothers, who remained in Montana after their mother’s death.

When a masked gunman robs the convenience store where Ester works, assaulting both her and her coworker, Crystal, Ester is badly shaken. She quits the store and gets another job as a hostess in an upscale hotel restaurant. Friends encourage her to pursue forgotten interests like singing, but she is haunted by her frustration that the gunman is still free and continuing to commit acts of violence. She’s also troubled by her unexpected attraction to Allie, a manager at the restaurant. Though Ester has long fantasized about an escape, are these feelings worth imploding her life over?

The strength of Sing, I is its focus on the ordinary and the relatable. Ester is a middle-class woman with close friends, but also beholden to her family and trapped in a low wage job. The robbery jumpstarts her out of her stupor and into the role of an active participant in her life. Other characters also struggle with the hardships of starting over, addiction and life’s disappointments.

Though it treads a predictable path, Sing, I nonetheless offers a gentle reminder of the hard-earned growth that can emerge from disruption and change.

In Ethel Rohan’s Sing, I, when a masked gunman robs the convenience store where Ester works, she is pushed to reexamine what she wants from life.

It’s 2040 and Leo Yang has just left his wife, Eko, at the Shanghai airport with their two oldest daughters. The girls are returning to school in Boston, but they’re confident travelers. This route isn’t new to them. This time, though, Eko insisted on accompanying them on the journey halfway around the world. Leo can’t understand why. “What was she hiding, then, the true motivation for going away?” he wonders. “She was always dancing around the truth, yet Leo would fish it out, dig it up from deep below.”

In Shanghailanders, debut novelist Juli Min methodically unspools the strands of the Yang family story, beginning with Leo’s questions about Eko. Each family member has their own secrets, moments that define who they’ve become. Geography influences the characters, and Min explores their Pan-Asian identities. Eko is of Japanese descent but was raised in France. Leo is Chinese. As the story expands their backgrounds, their cultural differences and values become visible.

With each chapter, Min shifts to another character’s perspective and moves backward in time. Readers see Leo and Eko’s perspectives, which are the heart of the story. But they also meet the three Yang daughters and tertiary characters important to the family. The ways that the girls view their parents don’t always align with how their parents see themselves. Still, this is really a story about Eko and Leo. The tension in their relationship that’s evident as Eko accompanies her daughters to America, several decades into their marriage, has its roots in the couple’s early days together. 

As she crafts a journey that stretches from 2040 back to 2014, Min shows us the breadth of Leo and Eko’s relationship and many of its defining moments. The chapters of Shanghailanders appear akin to short stories. Each offers a glimpse into a key moment, such as a special understanding between father and daughter, or mom’s overspending tendencies. Taken together, these vignettes become a portrait of a marriage. Min deftly deploys this atypical structure to reveal how many small moments and secrets can shape who a couple—and a family—become. 

As she crafts a journey that stretches from 2040 back to 2014, debut novelist Juli Min reveals how many small moments and secrets can shape who a couple—and a family—become.
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It’s the mid-1960s, right at the start of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, and the Red Guards are methodically upending—many would say demolishing—the cultural heritage of China. Books are burned, artifacts are smashed, history is erased. But two plucky biology students, Mei and Peng, are determined to rescue a lotus seed from the university library. 

This isn’t just any seed. It is a seed from thousands of years ago, allegedly dropped from the sky by a dragon as a gift for a long-ago emperor, with the power to confer a wish on its recipient.  But the emperor died before getting to make that wish. Mei, a scientist by nature, is skeptical of the legend, but she wants to protect the seed from the Red Guards, so she takes it.

Here, Rachel Khong’s multigenerational saga Real Americans splits into three narratives, following Mei, her daughter and her grandson through 60-odd tumultuous years after she immigrates to America. The narration isn’t linear; Mei, who plays the pivotal role at the book’s brief outset, largely recedes into the background until the final third of the book, when, as an elderly retired geneticist, she reflects on her life choices and how they have affected her family: “Aren’t we lucky? Our DNA encodes for innumerable possible people, and yet it’s you and I who are here. . . . In this place, on this small blue rock, innumerable miracles: redwoods, computers, stingrays, pianos, you and me.” 

Through intervening events and discoveries, Khong implicitly asks a very pertinent question: What does it mean to be a “real American”? Is it enough to be born in the U.S.? Can you assimilate from a foreign country, a foreign culture? Is there something in our genetics that binds us inevitably to the lands of our ancestral origins? Real Americans’ answers are at once complex and compelling, as science and philosophy sit cheek by jowl with history and elements of magic. As the three narrative strands merge, their denouement is unexpected yet perhaps predestined: the fruit of a seed planted long ago. 

In Rachel Khong’s multigenerational saga, Real Americans, science and philosophy sit cheek by jowl with history and elements of magic.
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A knock at the door can change everything. Such a small, everyday act can have enormous power to set off a chain of events one would never have considered possible.

Long Island by Colm Toibin revisits Eilis Lacey more than 20 years after the events of his 2009 novel, Brooklyn, which introduced readers to this self-possessed, elusive young woman. She now has a daughter and a son who are almost grown, and sends their pictures to her mother in monthly letters. Then, a knock at the door upends Eilis’ marriage to Tony Fiorello. The revelation of his indiscretions drives her back to Enniscorthy, Ireland, to avoid the coming fallout and also to celebrate her mother’s 80th birthday. While there, she inevitably crosses paths again with Jim Farrell, the love she left behind all those years before. Jim is still unmarried, though he is secretly courting Eilis’s friend Nancy, who is now a widow. The last time Eilis left Brooklyn for Ireland, after her sister Rose’s death, Tony was so worried she wouldn’t return that they married before she sailed away. Now, Tony must wonder again if she’ll come back to him. As in Brooklyn, Eilis makes her own decisions and thus makes her own life.

A close observer of human nature, Toibin writes with great depth of longing, teasing out even the smallest interactions so that the reader feels the moment’s wistfulness or indecision keenly. No gesture or sigh escapes his notice. Toibin’s dialogue captures a wealth of feeling, but often it is what is unsaid, contained in the pauses, that grips the reader’s attention. We hold our breath as Eilis and Jim and Nancy make their plans and promises. Long Island is purely character driven, which may not thrill readers who prefer a faster pace. In its compelling interiority, though, there is plenty of beauty to savor.

Long Island revisits Eilis Lacey more than 20 years after the events of Colm Toibin’s 2009 novel, Brooklyn, which introduced readers to this self-possessed, elusive young woman.
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A well-stocked bookstore would have no trouble filling an entire section with novels about art and artists, from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray to Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. Even connoisseurs of art-themed fiction, however, are unlikely to have encountered a protagonist like Jay Gates, the down-on-his-luck artist at the center of Hari Kunzru’s brilliant new novel, Blue Ruin. For anyone who has tried their hand at creating art, Blue Ruin offers satisfying criticisms of the capricious industry’s spotty record of anointing winners and losers.

Jay is a British man of Jamaican ancestry in his 40s, who was once a promising art student. At the start of the novel, he’s a COVID-19 survivor and undocumented immigrant in upstate New York, sleeping in his beat-up car and eking out a living by delivering groceries.

On one delivery to a craftsman cottage overlooking a lake at the end of a mile-long driveway, the masked person awaiting his arrival turns out to be Alice, a woman who was briefly Jay’s girlfriend in art school. Alice left Jay for his best friend, Rob, and Alice and Rob have now been married for 15 years. After Jay collapses from fatigue, Alice invites him to stay in a barn on the property until he recovers. Also isolating there are Marshal, Rob’s gallerist, who espouses conspiracy theories and calls COVID-19 “a Chinese bioweapon”; and Nicole, Marshal’s 20-something “trophy girlfriend.”

Coincidence is a dangerous narrative tool to mess around with, but Kunzru pulls it off in Blue Ruin thanks to the subtle characterizations and intricate layers with which he expands his premise. Buried resentments and jettisoned ambitions come to the fore as Kunzru explores themes of racism, opportunism and the inequities of privilege and hardship. The result is an exceptional work that finds new variations on the familiar chestnut that people aren’t always what they seem.

For anyone who has tried their hand at creating art, Hari Kunzru’s brilliant new novel, Blue Ruin, offers satisfying criticisms of the capricious industry’s spotty record of anointing winners and losers.
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In her first work to be translated into English, Spanish poet, playwright and author Alana S. Portero captures the complexities of trans girlhood and adolescence. Set in the working-class San Blas neighborhood of Madrid in the 1980s and 1990s, Bad Habit, is full of chaotic, messy, vibrant life. The unnamed protagonist, a trans girl who possesses an unshakable knowledge of herself but lacks a way to express it safely, has a singular first-person narrative voice. Her campy humor, biting observations and poetic musings will leave a lasting impression on readers.

Portero balances long, meaty passages of self-reflection with vivid scenes grounded in sensory detail. The resulting mix reads like a fictional memoir, a woman baring her soul with a wink. It even follows the expected beats of a coming-of-age memoir: the protagonist’s childhood and early realization that her gender is at odds with how the world sees her; her first bittersweet experience of love; her teenage exploits in Madrid’s downtown party scene; her painful attempts to blockade herself in the closet; her tentative forays into trans life.

Portero writes about the intersections of gender, sex, desire and longing—intersections that collide in the body—with incredible thoughtfulness and nuance. She also beautifully portrays trans sisterhood and found family. Many trans women play important roles in the protagonist’s life, often in surprising and unpredictable ways. These women are lonely, crass, loving, tough and each distinct. The care they give one another radiates off the page, even, and especially, when the narrative gets grim.

Sometimes Mara Faye Lethem’s translation feels a bit clunky; occasional oddly constructed sentences may take a moment to untangle. But this hardly matters, because the prose overall is so fresh. The protagonist’s ability to see herself and the people in her life both up close and from a distance is irresistible. Bad Habit is queer fiction at its painful, honest, celebratory best, rejoicing in the beauty of trans lives while simultaneously acknowledging the violence that the world too often thrusts upon them.

The campy humor, biting observations and poetic musings of Bad Habit’s heroine will leave a lasting impression on readers. This is queer fiction at its painful, honest, celebratory best.
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Menopause is profoundly misunderstood and misrepresented, in part because the generations who’ve been through it aren’t, generally speaking, inclined to talk publicly about it. Only in the last decade or two have people so openly discussed infertility and miscarriages. Perhaps we can hope that once this younger generation enters perimenopause, it will no longer feel like such a mystifying hormonal event horizon. But so far, there have been few works of contemporary fiction about menopause, and even fewer that are as erotic and funny as All Fours, the first novel from artist, filmmaker and author Miranda July in nearly a decade.

July’s protagonist is an unnamed artist with intentionally clear ties to July’s own identity, and the plot is described simply enough: The artist plans to drive across the country from Los Angeles to New York City, leaving her husband and child for several weeks. Instead, she stops at a motel a mere 30 minutes from her home. Beginning with an expensive and exquisite redesign of her motel room, followed by a charged relationship with a guy who works at Hertz, she sets out on a no-holds-barred pursuit of desire, selfhood, sex and liberation.

A character arc is typically shaped by an incendiary realization, but July’s artist experiences such revelations on a weekly, if not daily, basis. She holds a misconception, she unlearns it, she reframes and continues on. This process—truly, the cyclical experience of having a curious brain—allows the artist’s mind to feel like your own. It also structures All Fours like a classic quest narrative, as new emotional and sexual adventures open up after each sequence of self-discovery.

The cover of All Fours is an image of a cliff by Albert Bierstadt, a 19th-century German American painter who’s known for his lush Western landscapes. Bierstadt’s cliff is shadowed and steep, and from the valley below bursts a golden light so intense that it washes out the trees, the clouds and anything that might be in the distance. For many women, menopause is that cliff: dangerous, distant and a bit unreal. July’s protagonist hurtles toward that cliff inelegantly and imperfectly but, as much as she possibly can, honestly—and that commitment to honesty at the expense of normalcy is what makes this book queer. The cost of the “unconventional” life she seeks is significant; look at the conversations that must be had, the choices that must be made to disrupt the status quo in favor of living truthfully. Her unmasking and remaking are incendiary, but also, look how hard she holds on to what she loves most: her family, her connections, her spark.

Because there is no end to her quest (that’d be death, the real cliff), there can be no victory, but All Fours is undeniably victorious.

There have been few works of contemporary fiction about menopause, and even fewer that are as erotic and funny as All Fours, the first novel from artist, filmmaker and author Miranda July in nearly a decade.
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On the same day each August, Ana Magdalena Bach travels by ferry to a Caribbean island, in order to lay a gladiolus bouquet on her mother’s grave. Afterwards, she spends the night in the same hotel overlooking a lagoon inhabited by blue herons. Against an evocative backdrop of jungles and beaches, this pilgrimage remains unvarying for eight years, until the opening of Gabriel García Márquez’s Until August, when Ana Magdalena makes the startling decision to have a one-night stand with a stranger. Upon each subsequent trip to the island, she seeks out a different man, embarking on a series of strange, often fraught affairs.  

García Márquez worked on Until August in his final years as dementia increasingly eroded his ability to write. Its publication comes a decade after his death, and García Márquez’s sons admit in the book’s preface that the Nobel laureate himself said, “This book doesn’t work. It must be destroyed.” But upon returning to the drafts years later, his sons believed the book to be better than García Márquez had judged, and decided that it was worthy of publication. 

Indeed, this novella, and its crisp translation by Anne McLean, avoids the disappointment of many other infamous posthumous releases from canonical authors. Part of its success can be credited to editor Cristóbal Pera’s care in piecing together García Márquez’s drafts and annotations. Although lacking the intoxicating complexity of García Márquez’s most famous works, Until August echoes the elegant mastery of time and change that propelled novels such as One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera into greatness. 

Each year brings lush depictions of change on the island—with its impoverished villages and shining tourist resorts—and in Ana Magdalena. Few novelists, even in their prime, are capable of matching the steady control and organic surprise García Márquez mixes into the evolution of Ana Magdalena’s marriage and family life back on the mainland. There is a quality of immediacy in every action in Until August, and readers will feel the thudding swings of emotion as a shout causes a silence that “remained vitrified for several days in the air of the house,” or Ana Magdalena watches a lover who sleeps looking “like an enormous orphan.” 

This brief offering delivers graceful insight into the fickle human heart, serving as an absorbing—if quiet—epilogue to García Márquez’s towering oeuvre.

This posthumous novella delivers graceful insight into the fickle human heart, serving as an absorbing—if quiet—epilogue to García Márquez’s towering oeuvre.
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“Here at the beginning it must be said the End was on everyone’s mind,” opens Leif Enger’s fourth novel, I Cheerfully Refuse. In an unspecified near-future, as civilization slowly tips off a cliff’s edge, Rainy and his bookselling wife, Lark, eke out a cautious yet relatively tranquil life in a small community on the shore of Lake Superior. “Quixotes,” Lark calls the pair. “By which she meant not always sensible.”

When Lark brings home her favorite poet’s rare, unpublished manuscript, Kellan, the fugitive who gave her the book, comes with her and becomes their attic boarder. Though Lark and Rainy grow fond of Kellan, they’re uneasy about his past. Then Kellan disappears, heralding a violent sea change in their quiet lives. Kellan had warned of a ruthless pursuer, and when Lark becomes collateral damage in the chase, Rainy’s quixotic existence shatters.

Hounded by grief and the looming shadow of whoever was after Kellan, Rainy boards a tumbledown sailboat and takes to the lake. Soon, he is alone on Lake Superior with minimal sailing knowledge, and only Lark’s beloved manuscript and primal fear for company. He becomes a sort of Great Lakes Odysseus, sailing over a wine-dark sea toward the idea of his wife, and encountering no sea monsters, but instead finding fractious kingdoms and corpses rising from warming waters.

The novel’s ruined world, marked by book burnings, anti-intellectual sentiment, environmental disruption and casual brutality, will feel entirely too plausible for readers. Yet within its dystopian landscape, Enger’s story incorporates fabulism in the most traditional sense, featuring a serpentine quest, a rare and ancient tome, and even a bridge troll. As in the most memorable fables, I Cheerfully Refuse’s fantastical elements heighten the emotional impact of its depiction of violence and grief, elevating the entire narrative.

“I think the sea has no in-between: you get either rage and wayward lightning . . . or such freehanded beauty that time contracts,” Rainy observes early in his journey. Like the turbulent lake, I Cheerfully Refuse is filled with polarities that should contradict but somehow, instead, cohere: hopeless moments infused with light and shocking acts of cruelty depicted through beautiful, memorable prose. Although the struggle to survive leaves room for little else, Rainy still finds delight in simple, ordinary things: the post-storm sun or a ripe tomato. It’s in these moments of earnest wonder that I Cheerfully Refuse is most compelling, like the brief but glorious clearing of a tempestuous sky.

It’s in moments of earnest wonder that Leif Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse is most compelling, like the brief but glorious clearing of a tempestuous sky.
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Téa Obreht’s satisfyingly unsettling new novel, The Morningside, takes place in the near future, in an East Coast city that resembles New York. Eleven-year-old Silvia and her mother have traveled to Island City after their home was destroyed by flooding. They move into a 100-year-old building called the Morningside, that, like Island City, has seen better days. Silvia and other refuge-seekers have been brought in by the federal Repopulation Program to help revitalize the place.

The building superintendent is Silvia’s Aunt Ena, a woman who is “short, loud, and incredibly ill-practiced at speaking to eleven-year-old nieces.” A marvelous character, Ena has an unfortunate tendency to share details about the farm the family once lived on, details that Silvia’s mother would prefer to keep secret. She also fills Silvia in on Bezi Duras, the mysterious resident of the 33rd floor penthouse. Silvia begins to suspect that Bezi is not just an eccentric painter with an elaborate orchard but also a Vila, a vindictive mountain spirit. Her suspicions grow when light bulbs spontaneously burst and water pipes begin “spurting sulfurously” after a curious Silvia tries to break into Bezi’s apartment.

That’s just the start of the strange dealings. With finely calibrated assurance, Obreht develops a sense of unease that is compounded by an underground radio transmission known as the Drowned City Dispatch, large animals rumored to be “men during the day and dogs at night,” a friend who lures Silvia into nighttime escapades, and the possibility that a killer may be in their midst.

The ending is too neat, but The Morningside soars in its depiction of an alternative world frighteningly similar to our own. Whether or not they ever face forcible displacement in their life, everyone at some point must confront their past. Obreht addresses this truism with startling freshness in this entertaining work.

Téa Obreht’s latest novel, The Morningside, soars in its depiction of an alternative world frighteningly similar to our own.

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