Chronic City

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January Pure Wit by Francesca Peacock [NF] I first learned about the life and work of seventeenth-century writer and philosopher Margaret Cavendish in Regan Penaluna's stellar study of women thinkers, and I've been dying to read a biography of Cavendish ever since. And I'm in luck (all of us are) thanks to biographer Peacock. A proto-feminist, science-fiction pioneer, and divisive public figure, Cavendish is endlessly fascinating, and Peacock's debut gives her the rigorous, in-depth treatment that she deserves. —Sophia M. Stewart Nonfiction by Julie Myerson [F] A blurb from Rachel Cusk is just about all it takes to get me excited about a book, so when I saw that Cusk called Myerson's latest novel "glitteringly painful," "steady and clear," and "the book [Myerson] was intended to write," I was sold. A tale of art, addiction, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters, Nonfiction promises to devastate. —SMS Immediacy by Anna Kornbluh [NF] Did the pandemic kill postmodernism? And what comes after the end of history? University of Illinois–Chicago professor Kornbluh dubs our contemporary style “immediacy,” characterized by same-day delivery, bingeable multimedia, and real-time news updates that spin the economic flywheel ever faster. Kornbluh names this state of emergence and emergency, and suggests potential off-ramps in the direction of calm reflection, measured art-making, and, just maybe, collective wisdom. —Nathalie op de Beeck Slow Down by Kōhei Saitō, tr. Brian Bergstrom [NF] In this internationally-bestselling treatise, Japanese philosopher Saitō argues against "sustainable growth" in favor of degrowth—the slowing of economic activity—which he sees at the only way to address the twinned crises of inequality and climate change. Saitō's proposal is simple, salient, and adapts Marx for the modern day. —SMS Relic by Ed Simon [NF] From Millions alum Simon comes a slim study of the objects we imbue with religious (or quasi-religious) meaning, from the bone of a Catholic martyr to Jimi Hendrix's guitar pick. Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series never misses, and Relic is one of the series' most unconventional—and compelling—entries yet. —SMS Filterworld by Kyle Chayka [NF] The outline of reality has become increasingly blurry as the real world melds with the digital one, becoming what Chayka, staff writer at the New Yorker, calls “Filterworld,” a society built on a foundation of ever-evolving algorithms. In his book of the same name, Chayka calls out the all-powerful algorithm, which he argues is the driving force behind current and accelerating trends in art, consumption, and ethics. —Daniella Fishman Portrait of a Body by Julie Delporte, tr. Helge Dascher and Karen Houle [NF] A gripping narrative of coming to terms with her queer identity, Canadian cartoonist Delporte's latest graphic memoir—praised by Eileen Myles and Fariha Róisín—sees Delporte learning to embrace herself in both physical and metaphysical ways. Dreamy colored pencil illustrations and gently flowing storytelling capture the beauty, trauma, and ultimate tranquility that comes with learning to exist on your own terms. —DF Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino [F] In Bertino’s latest novel, following 2020's Parakeet, the launch of Voyager 1 into space coincides with the birth of Adina Giorno, who, much like the solitary satellite, is in search of something she can't yet see. As a child, she senses that she is not of this world and struggles to make a life for herself amid the drudgery of human existence. Playing on Adina's alienness as both a metaphor and a reality, Bertino asks, “Are we really alone?” —DF The Last Fire Season by Manjula Martin [NF] Martin returns ablaze in her latest memoir, pitched as "H Is for Hawk meets Joan Didion in the Pyrocene." Following an anguishing chronic pain diagnosis, Martin attempts to reconnect with her beloved Northern California wilderness in order to escape not only her deteriorating health but a deteriorating world, which has ignited around her in the worst fire season California has ever seen. Devastating and ambivalent, The Last Fire Season tries to sift through the ashes of climate change. —DF The Furies by Elizabeth Flock [NF] Violence by women—its role, its potential righteousness—is the focus of Flock's latest. Following the real-life cases of a young rape survivor in Alabama, a predator-punishing gang leader in India, and an anti-ISIS militia fighter in Syria, Flock considers how women have used lethal force as a means to power, safety, and freedom amid misogynistic threats and oppression. Is violence ever the answer? Flock looks to three parallel lives for guidance. —SMS Imagining the Method by Justin Owen Rawlins [NF] University of Tulsa professor Rawlins demystifies that most celebrated (and controversial) acting school, challenging our contemporary conceptions of screen performance. I was sold the moment I saw Rawlins received the ultimate stamp of approval from Isaac Butler, author of the definitive account of method acting: "If you care about the evolution of twentieth-century screen performance, you should read this book." —SMS We Are Free to Change the World by Lyndsey Stonebridge [NF] Famed twentieth-century philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote passionately about power, freedom, and inequality against the backdrop of fascism—a project as relevant today as it ever was. Stonebridge, a professor of humanities and human rights, revisits the lessons of Arendt's writings and applies them to the twenty-first century, creating a dialogue between past, present, and future. —DF Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea by C.D. Rose [F] In these 19 short stories, Rose meditates on philosophy, photography, and literature. Blending erudition and entertainment, Rose's fables follow writers, teachers, and artists through various situations—and in a standout story, imagines how St. Augustine would fare on Twitter. —DF Black Women Taught Us by Jenn M. Jackson [NF] Jackson's debut book foregrounds the work of Black feminist writers and leaders—from Ida B. Wells and Harriet Jacobs to Shirley Chisholm and bell hooks—throughout American history, revealing the centuries-long role that Black women have played in imagining and fighting for a more just society. Imani Perry calls Jackson "a beautiful writer and excellent scholar." —SMS The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James [F] Pitched as Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel García Márquez (yeesh!), The Bullet Swallower is the second novel (after Mona at Sea) from Elizabeth Gonzalez James, who also wrote the weird and wonderful essay/play Five Conversations About Peter Sellers. Infusing the spaghetti western with magical realism, the novel follows a Mexican bandito on a cosmic journey generations in the making. —SMS Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino [F] In Sammartino's debut novel, the owner of a gun store hatches a plan to resurrect his struggling business following his son's near-death experience. George Saunders, Mary Karr, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah have all heaped on praise, and Jenny Offill finds it "hard to believe Last Acts is a first novel." —SMS I Sing to Use the Waiting by Zachary Pace [NF] Pace fuses memoir and criticism (my favorite combination) to explore the emotional and cultural impacts of women singers across time, from Cat Power and Rihanna to Kim Gordon and Whitney Houston. A queer coming-of-age story that centers the power of music and the legacies of women artists. —SMS Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn [F] Blackburn, the author of the stellar story collections Black Jesus and Other Superheroes and How to Wrestle a Girl, delivers a debut novel about storytelling and unreality, centering on a successful novelist who gets hold of her dead brother's phone—and starts answering texts as him. Kristen Arnett calls this one "a bonafide knockout" that "rewired my brain." —SMS Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer [N] New Yorker staff writer Blitzer traces the harrowing history of the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, foregrounding the stories of Central American migrants whose lives have been threatened and upended by political tumult. A nuanced, layered, and rigorously reported portrait that Patrick Radden Keefe hails as "extraordinary." —SMS The Survivors of the Clotilda by Hannah Durkin [NF] Durkin, a British historian, explores the lives of 103 Africans who were kidnapped and transported on the last slave ship to dock in the U.S., shortly before the Civil War began in 1861. Many of these captives were children, and thus lived their lives against a dramatic backdrop, from the Civil War all the way up to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. What these people experienced and how they prevailed should intrigue anybody interested in learning more about our nation’s darkest chapter. —Claire Kirch Your Utopia by Bora Chung, tr. Anton Hur [F] Following her acclaimed sophomore novel The Cursed Bunny, Chung returns with more tales from the realm of the uncanny. Covering everything from unruly AI to the quest for immortality to the environmental destruction caused by capitalism, Chung’s story collection promises more of the mystifying, horror-filled goodness that has become her calling card. —DF The Rebel's Clinic by Adam Shatz [NF] Frantz Fanon—political philosopher, psychiatrist, and author of the trailblazing Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth—is one of the most important writers and thinkers of the postcolonial era, and his work continues to inform contemporary thinking on race, capitalism, and power. In this sprawling biography, Shatz affirms Fanon's place as a towering intellect and groundbreaking activist. —SMS You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, tr. Natasha Wimmer [F] Enrigue's latest novel, following Sudden Death, reimagines the fateful 1519 invasion of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. With exuberant style, and in a lively translation by Wimmer, Enrigue brings the Aztec capital and the emperor Moctezuma to vibrant life—and rewrites their destinies. —SMS February Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, tr. by Mima Simić [F] Croatian literature may lag behind its Russian, Hungarian, Polish, and Ukrainian counterparts—roughly in that order—as far as stateside recognition goes, but we all make mistakes. Just like couples do in love and under capitalism. “A war between kitchen and bedroom,” as the liner notes read, would have been enough to sell me, but that war’s combatants, “an unemployed Dante scholar” and “a passable actress,” really sealed the deal. —John H. Maher The Unforgivable by Cristina Campo, tr. Alex Andriesse [NF] This new NYRB edition, introduced by Kathryn Davis, brings together all of the essays Campo published in her lifetime, plus a selection of additional essays and autofiction. The result is a robust introduction to a stylish—but largely forgotten—Italian writer whose "creativity was a vocation in the truest sense," per Jhumpa Lahiri. —SMS Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti [NF] Last year, I was enraptured by Heti's limited-run New York Times newsletter in which she alphabetized sentences from 10 years' worth of her diary entries—and this year, we can finally enjoy the sublime results of that experiment in book form. This is my favorite work of Heti's, full stop. —SMS Dinner on Monster Island by Tania De Rozario [NF] Blending film criticism, social commentary, and personal narrative, De Rozario (most recently the author of the Lambda Literary Award–nominated And the Walls Came Crumbling Down) explores her experience growing up queer, brown, and fat in Singapore, from suffering through a "gay-exorcism" to finding solace in horror films like Carrie. —SMS Wrong Norma by Anne Carson [NF] Everyone shut up—Anne Carson is speaking! This glistening new collection of drawings and musings from Carson is her first original work since the 2016 poetry collection Float. In Carson's own words, the collection touches on such disparate topics (she stresses they are "not linked") as Joseph Conrad, Roget's Thesaurus, snow, Guantánamo, and "my Dad." —DF Self-Portraits: Stories by Osamu Dazai, tr. Ralph McCarthy [F] Japanese writer Dazai had quite the moment in 2023, and that moment looks likely to continue into the new year. Self-Portraits is a collection of short autofiction in the signature melancholic cadence which so many Anglophone readers have come to love. Meditating on themes of hypocrisy, irony, nihilism—all with a touch of self-deprecating humor—Dazai’s work will either pull you out of a deep depression or crack your rose-colored glasses; there is no in-between. —DF Imagination by Ruha Benjamin [NF] Visionary imagination is essential for justice and a sustainable future, argues Benjamin, a Princeton professor of African American studies and founder of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab. In her treatise, she reminds readers of the human capacity for creativity, and she believes failures of imagination that lead to inequity can be remedied. In place of quasi-utopian gambles that widen wealth gaps and prop up the surveillance state, Benjamin recommends dreaming collective and anti-racist social arrangements into being—a message to galvanize readers of adrienne marie brown and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. —SMS Literary Theory for Robots by Dennis Yi Tenen [NF] Artificial intelligence and machine-generated writing are nothing new, and perhaps nothing to fear, argues Tenen, a Columbia English professor and former software engineer. Traveling through time and across the world, Tenen reveals the labor and collaboration behind AI, complicating the knee-jerk (and, frankly, well-founded!) reactions many of us have to programs like ChatGPT. —SMS A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh [F] Alexander Graham Bell is best known as the inventor of the telephone, but what he considered his life's work was the education of deaf children—specifically, the harmful practice of oralism, or the suppression of sign language. Marsh's wonderful debut novel unearths this little-known history and follows a deaf pupil of Bell's as she questions his teachings and reclaims her voice. —SMS Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker [NF] Journalist Bosker, who took readers behind the scenes with oenophiles in her 2017 Cork Dork, turns to avid artists, collectors, and curators for this sensory deep dive. Bosker relies on experiential reporting, and her quest to understand the human passion for visual art finds her apprenticing with creators, schmoozing with galleristas, and minding canonical pieces as a museum guard. —NodB Columbo by Amelie Hastie [NF] Columbo experienced something of a renaissance during the pandemic, with a new generation falling for the rugged, irresistible charms of Peter Falk. Hastie revisits the series, a staple of 70s-era TV, with refreshing rigor and appreciation, tackling questions of stardom, authorship, and the role of television in the process. —SMS Acts of Forgiveness by Maura Cheeks [F] Cheeks's debut novel sounds amazing and so au courant. A woman is elected U.S. president and promises Black Americans that they will receive reparations if they can prove they are descended from slaves. You’d think people would jump on achieving some social justice in the form of cold cash, right? Not Willie Revel’s family, who’d rather she not delve into the family history. This promises to be a provocative read on how the past really isn’t past, no matter how much you run from it. —CK The Sentence by Matthew Baker [F] I minored in Spanish linguistics in college and, as a result, came to love that most useless and rewarding of syntactic exercises, diagramming sentences. So I'm very excited to read Baker's The Sentence, a graphic novel set in an alternate America and comprising single, 6,732-word sentence, diagrammed in full. Syntax wonks, assemble! —SMS Neighbors by Diane Oliver [F] Before her untimely death in 1966 at the age of 22, Oliver wrote stories of race and racism in Jim Crow America characterized by what Dawnie Walton calls "audacity, wit, and wisdom beyond her years." Only four of the 14 stories in Neighbors were published in Oliver's lifetime, and Jamel Brinkley calls the publication of her posthumous debut collection "an important event in African American and American letters." —SMS The Weird Sister Collection by Marisa Crawford [NF] Essayist, poet, and All Our Pretty Songs podcaster Crawford founded the Weird Sister blog in 2014, covering books and pop culture from contemporary young feminists’ and queer perspectives. The now-defunct blog offered literary reviews, Q&As with indie authors, and think pieces on film and music. For this collection, whose foreword comes from Michelle Tea, Crawford gathers favorite pieces from contributors, plus original work with a Weird Sister edge. —NodB Smoke and Ashes by Amitav Ghosh [NF] As research for his Ibis trilogy, Ghosh mapped the opium trade around the world and across centuries. This global and personal history revisits the British Empire’s dependence on Indian opium as a trade good, and how the cultivation of and profits from opium shaped today’s global economy. In his nonfiction The Great Derangement, Ghosh employs personal anecdotes to make sense of larger-scale developments, and Smoke and Ashes promises to connect his own family and identity to today’s corporate, institutional, and environmental realities. —NodB Private Equity by Carrie Sun [NF] In her debut memoir, Sun recounts her time on Wall Street, where she worked as an assistant to a billionaire hedge-fund founder and was forced to rethink everything she thought she knew about work, money, sacrifice, and living a meaningful life. This one sounds like a great read for fans of Anna Wiener's Uncanny Valley (e.g. me). —SMS I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall [F] When Khaki Oliver receives a letter from her estranged former best friend, she isn’t ready for the onslaught of memories that soon cause her to unravel. A Black Bildungsroman about friendship, fandom, and sanity, I Love You So Much It's Killing Us Both is an unflinching look at "what it means to be young in a hard, and nonetheless beautiful, world," per Vauhini Vara. —Liv Albright Dreaming of Ramadi in Detroit by Aisha Sabatini Sloan [NF] I know from personal experience that anything published by Graywolf Press is going to open my eyes and make me look at the world in a completely different way, so I have high expectations for Sloan’s essays. In this clever collection, a Black creative reflects upon race, art, and pedagogy, and how they relate to one’s life in this crazy country of ours during the time period between the 2016 election and the onset of the pandemic. —CK Language City by Ross Perlin [NF] Perlin travels throughout the most linguistically diverse city on the planet—New York—to chronicle the sounds and speakers of six endangered languages before they die out. A linguist and co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, Perlin argues for the importance of little-known languages and celebrates the panoply of languages that exists in New York City. —SMS Monkey Grip by Helen Garner [F] A tale as old as time and/or patriarchal sociocultural constructs: a debut novel by a woman is published and the critics don't appreciate it—until later, at least. This proto-autofictional 1977 novel is now considered a classic of Australian "grunge lit," but at the time, it divided critics, probably because it had depictions of drug addiction and sex in it. But Lauren Groff liked it enough to write a foreword, so perhaps the second time really is the charm. —JHM Ours by Phillip B. Williams [F] A conjuror wreaks magical havoc across plantations in antebellum Arkansas and sets up a Brigadoon for the enslaved people she frees before finding that even a mystic haven isn't truly safe from the horrors of the world. What a concept! And a flexible one to boot: if this isn't adapted as a TV series, it would work just as well as an RPG. —JHM Violent Faculties by Charlotte Elsby [F] A philosophy professor influenced by the Marquis de Sade designs a series of experiments to prove its relevance as a discipline, specifically with regard to life and death, a.k.a. Philip Zimbardo (Chopped and Screwed Remix): The Novel. If you ever trusted a philosophy professor with your inner self before—and you probably shouldn't have?—you probably won't after reading this. —JHM American Abductions by Mauro Javier Cárdenas [F] Plagued by data harvesting, constant surveillance, mass deportation, and incarceration, the society at the heart of Cárdenas's new novel is less speculative dystopia than realist reflection. Channeling Philp K. Dick and Samuel Delaney, Cárdenas imagines a society where Latin Americans are systematically expunged. Following the lives of two Columbian-American sisters, one who was deported and one who stayed in the U.S., American Abduction tells a new kind of immigrant story, suffused with mysticism and philosophical rigor. —DF Closures: Heterosexuality and the American Sitcom by Grace Lavery [NF] I took Lavery's class on heterosexuality and sitcoms as an undergrad, and I'm thrilled to see the course's teachings collected in book form. Lavery argues that since its inception the sitcom has depicted heterosexuality as constantly on the verge of collapse, only to be reconstituted at the end of each half-hour episode. A fascinating argument about the cultural project of straightness. —SMS Whiskey Tender by Deborah Taffa [NF] Almost a decade in the making, this memoir from Taffa details generations of Southwest Native history and the legacies of assimilationist efforts. Taffa—a citizen of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe, and director of the MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts—was born on the California Yuma reservation and grew up in Navajo territory in New Mexico in the 1970s and 1980s. She reflects on tribal identity and attitudes toward off-reservation education she learned from her parents’ and grandparents’ fraught formative experiences. —NodB Normal Women by Philippa Gregory [NF] This is exciting news for Anglophiles and history nerds like me: Philippa Gregory is moving from historical fiction (my guilty pleasure) about royal women and aristocrats in medieval and early modern England to focus on the lives of common women during that same time period, as gleaned from the scraps of information on them she has unearthed in various archives. I love history “from the bottom up” that puts women at the center, and Gregory is a compelling storyteller, so my expectations are high. —CK Blue Lard by Vladimir Sorokin, tr. Max Lawton [F] Upon its publication in 1999, Sorokin's sci-fi satire Blue Lard sparked protests across Russia. One aspect of it particularly rankled: the torrid, sexual affair it depicts between Stalin and Khruschev. All to say, the novel is bizarre, biting, and utterly irreverent. Translated into English for the first time by Lawton, Sorokin's masterwork is a must-read for anyone with an iconoclastic streak. —SMS Piglet by Lottie Hazell [F] Hazell's debut novel follows the eponymous Piglet, a successful cookbook editor identified only by her unfortunate childhood nickname, as she rethinks questions of ambition and appetite following her fiancé's betrayal. Per Marlowe Granados, Hazell writes the kind of "prose Nora Ephron would be proud of." —SMS Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley [NF] Crosley enlivens the grief memoir genre with the signature sense of humor that helped put her on the literary map. In Grief Is for People, she eulogizes the quirks and complexities of her friendship with Russell Perreault, former publicity director at Vintage Books, who died by suicide in 2019. Dani Shapiro hails Crosley’s memoir—her first full-length book of nonfiction—as “both a provocation and a balm to the soul.” —LA The Freaks Came Out to Write by Tricia Romano [NF] The freaks came out to write, and you better believe the freaks will come out in droves to read! In this history of the legendary alt-weekly the Village Voice, Romano (a former writer for the Voice) interviews some 200 members the paper’s most esteemed staff and subjects. A sweeping chronicle of the most exciting era in New York City journalism promises to galvanize burgeoning writers in the deflating age of digital media. —DF Burn Book by Kara Swisher [NF] Swisher has been reporting on the tech industry for 30 years, tracing its explosive growth from the dawn of the internet to the advent of AI. She's interviewed every tech titan alive and has chronicled their foibles and failures in excruciating detail. Her new book combines memoir and reportage to tell a comprehensive history of a troubled industry and its shortsighted leaders. —SMS Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange [F] Orange returns with a poignant multi-generational tale that follows the Bear Shield-Red Feather family as they struggle to combat racist violence. Picking up where Orange's hit debut novel, There There, left off, Wandering Stars explores memory, inheritance, and identity through the lens of Native American life and history. Per Louise Erdrich, “No one knows how to express tenderness and yearning like Tommy Orange." —LA March The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan [F] Callahan's debut novel follows a young artist as she faces sudden hearing loss, forcing to reevaluate her orientation to her senses, her art, and the world around her. Amina Cain, Moyra Davey, and Kate Zambreno are all fans (also a dream blunt rotation), with the latter recommending this one be "read alongside the novels of W.G. Sebald, Rachel Cusk, and Maria Gainza." —SMS The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft [F] When a group of translators arrive at the home of renowned novelist Irena Rey, they expect to get to work translating her latest book—instead, they get caught up in an all-consuming mystery. Irena vanishes shortly after the translators arrive, and as they search for clues to the author's disappearance, the group is swept up by isolation-fueled psychosis and obsession. A “mischievous and intellectually provocative” debut novel, per Megha Majumdar. —LA Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk, tr. Heather Cleary [F] This isn’t your typical meet-cute. When two women—one grieving, the other a vampire, both of them alienated and yearning for more—cross paths in a Buenos Aires cemetery, romance blooms. Channelling Carmen Maria Machado and Anne Rice, Yuszczuk reimagines the vampire novel, with a distinctly Latin American feminist Gothic twist. —LA The Great Divide by Cristina Henríquez [F] I'm a sucker for meticulously researched and well-written historical fiction, and this one—a sweeping story about the interconnected lives of the unsung people who lived and labored at the site of the Panama Canal—fits the bill. I heard Henríquez speak about this novel and her writing processes at a booksellers conference, and, like the 300 booksellers present, was impressed by her presentation and fascinated at the idea of such a sweeping tale set against a backdrop so larger-than-life and dramatic as the construction of the Panama Canal. —CK Bite Your Friends by Fernanda Eberstadt [NF] Melding memoir and history, Eberstadt's Bite Your Friends looks at the lives of saints, philosophers, and artists—including the author and her mother—whose abberant bodies became sites of subversion and rebellion. From Diogenes to Pussy Riot, Eberstadt asks what it means to put our bodies on the line, and how our bodies can liberate us. —SMS Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez [F] When Raquel Toro, an art history student, stumbles on the story of Anita de Monte, a once prominent artist from the '80s whose mysterious death cut short her meteoric rise, her world is turned upside down. Gonzalez's sophomore novel (after her hit debut Olga Dies Dreaming) toggles between the perspectives of Raquel and Anita (who is based on the late Ana Mendieta) to explore questions of power, justice, race, beauty, and art. Robert Jones, Jr. calls this one "rollicking, melodic, tender, and true—and oh so very wise." —LA My Heavenly Favorite by Lucas Rijneveld, tr. Michele Hutchison [F] Rijneveld, author of the International Booker Prize-winning novel The Discomfort of Evening, returns with a new take on the Lolita story, transpiring between a veterinarian and a farmer's daughter on the verge of adolescence. "This book unsettled me even as it made me laugh and gasp," gushes Brandon Taylor. "I'm in awe." Radiant by Brad Gooch [NF] Lauded biographer Gooch propels us through Keith Haring’s early days as an anonymous sidewalk chalk artist to his ascent as a vigilante muralist, pop-art savant, AIDS activist, and pop-culture icon. Fans of Haring's will not want to miss this definitive account of the artist's life, which Pulitzer-winner biographer Stacy Schiff calls "a keen-eyed, beautifully written biography, atmospheric, exuberant, and as radiant as they come." —DF The Riddles of the Sphinx by Anna Shechtman [NF] Sometimes you encounter a book that seems to have been written specifically for you; this was the feeling I had when I first saw the deal announcement for Shechtman's debut book back in January 2022. A feminist history of the crossword puzzle? Are you kidding me? I'm as passionate a cruciverbalist as I am a feminist, so you can imagine how ravenously I read this book. The Riddles of the Sphinx is one of the best books of 2024, hands down, and I can't wait for everyone else—puzzlers and laymen alike—to fall in love with it too. —SMS The Silver Bone by Andrey Kurkov, tr. Boris Drayluk [F] Kurkov is one of Ukraine's most celebrated novelists, and his latest book is a murder mystery set against the backdrop of WWI-era Kyiv. I'll admit what particularly excites me about The Silver Bone, though, is that it is translated by Dralyuk, who's one of the best literary translators working today (not to mention a superb writer, editor, and poet). In Drayluk's hands, Kurkov's signature humor and sparkling style come alive. —SMS Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls [NF] This multigenerational graphic memoir follows Hull, alongside her mother and grandmother, both of whom hail from China, across time and space as the delicate line between nature and nurture is strained by the forces of trauma, duty, and mental illness. Manjula Martin calls Feeding Ghosts “one of the best stories I’ve read about the tension between family, history, and self.” —DF It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken [F] Haunting prose and a pithy crow guide readers through Marcken's novel of life after death. In a realm between reality and eternity, the undead traverse westward through their end-of-life highlight reel, dissecting memories, feelings, and devotions while slowly coming to terms with what it means to have lived once all that remains is love. Alexandra Kleeman admits that she "was absolute putty in this book's hands." —DF Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi [F] When I visited Prague, a year after the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the Czech capital struck me as a magical place, where anything is possible, and Oyeyemi captures the essence of Prague in Parasol Against the Axe, the story of a woman who attends her estranged friend's bachelorette weekend in the city. A tale in which reality constantly shifts for the characters and there is a thin line between the factual and the imagined in their relationships, this is definitely my kind of a read. —CK Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet [F] Crucet's latest novel centers on a failed Pitbull impersonator who embarks on a quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana—a quest that leads him to cross paths with Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquariam. Winking at both Scarface and Moby-Dick, Say Hello to My Little Friend is "a masterclass in pace and precision," per Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. —SMS But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu [F] Girl, a Malaysian-Australian who leaves home for the U.K. to study Sylvia Plath and write a postcolonial novel, finds herself unable to shake home—or to figure out what a "postcolonial novel" even is. Blurbs are untrustworthy, but anything blurbed by Brandon Taylor is almost certainly worth checking out. —JHM Wrong Is Not My Name by Erica N. Cardwell [NF] Cardwell blends memoir, criticism, and theory to place her own Künstlerroman in conversation with the work of Black visual artists like Lorna Simpson, Lorraine O'Grady, and Kara Walker. In interconnected essays, Cardwell celebrates the brilliant Black women who use art and storytelling to claim their place in the world. —SMS Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham [F] A theater critic at the New Yorker, Cunningham is one of my favorite writers working today, so I was thrilled to learn of his debut novel, which cheekily steals its title from the Dickens classic. Following a young Black man as he works on a historic presidential campaign, Great Expectations tackles questions of politics, race, religion, and family with Cunningham's characteristic poise and insight. —SMS The Future of Songwriting by Kristin Hersh [NF] In this slim volume, Throwing Muses frontwoman and singer-songwriter Hersh considers the future of her craft. Talking to friends and colleagues, visiting museums and acupuncturists, Hersh threads together eclectic perspectives on how songs get made and how the music industry can (and should) change. —SMS You Get What You Pay For by Morgan Parker [NF] Parker, a brilliant poet and author of the stellar There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce, debuts as an essayist with this candid, keen-eyed collection about life as a Black woman in America. Casting her gaze both inward and onto popular culture, Parker sees everything and holds back nothing. —SMS Mother Doll by Katya Apekina [F] Following up her debut novel, The Deeper the Water, the Uglier the Fish, Apekina's Mother Doll follows Zhenia, an expectant mother adrift in Los Angeles whose world is rocked by a strange call from a psychic medium with a message from Zhenia's Russian Revolutionary great-grandmother. Elif Batuman calls this one "a rare achivement." —SMS Solidarity by Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix [NF] What does "solidarity" mean in a stratified society and fractured world? Organizers and activists Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor look at the history of the concept—from its origins in Ancient Rome to its invocation during the Black Live Matter movement—to envision a future in which calls for solidarity can produce tangible political change. —SMS The Manicurist's Daughter by Susan Lieu [NF] After her mother, a refugee of the Vietnam war and the owner of two nail salons, dies from a botched cosmetic surgery, Lieu goes looking for answers about her mother's mysterious life and untimely death. Springing from her hit one-woman show 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother, Lieu's debut memoir explores immigration, beauty, and the American Dream. —SMS Through the Night Like a Snake ed. Sarah Coolidge [F] There's no horror quite like Latin American horror, as any revering reader of Cristina Rivera Garza—is there any other kind?—could tell you. Two Lines Press consistently puts out some of the best literature in translation that one can come by in the U.S., and this story collection looks like another banger. —JHM Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel [F] Bullwinkel's debut collection, Belly Up, was a canful of the uncanny. Her debut novel, on the other hand, sounds gritty and grounded, following the stories of eight teenage girls boxing in a tournament in Reno. Boxing stories often manage to punch above their weight (sorry) in pretty much any medium, even if you're not versed enough in the sport to know how hackneyed and clichéd that previous clause's idiomatic usage was. —JHM Choose This Now by Nicole Haroutunian [F] Haroutunian's novel-in-stories, part of Noemi Press's Prose Series, follows a pair of inseparable friends over the years as they embark on careers, make art, fall in and out of love, and become mothers. Lydia Kiesling calls this one "a sparkling, intimate look at women's lives" that makes "for a lovely reading experience." —SMS Death by Laughter by Maggie Hennefeld [NF] Hennefeld's scholarly study explores the forgotten history and politics of women's "hysterical laughter," drawing on silent films, affect theory, feminist film theory, and more. Hennefeld, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature, offers a unique take on women's pleasure and repression—and how the advent of cinema allowed women to laugh as never before. —SMS James by Percival Everett [F] In James, the once-secondary character of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn narrates his version of life on the Mississippi. Jim, who escapes enslavement only to end up in adventures with white runaway Huck, gives his account of well-known events from Mark Twain’s 1880s novel (and departs from the record to say what happened next). Everett makes readers hyperaware of code-switching—his 2001 novel Erasure was about a Black novelist whose career skyrockets when he doubles down on cynical stereotypes of Blackness—and Jim, in James, will have readers talking about written vernacular, self-awareness, and autonomy. —NodB A Chance Meeting by Rachel Cohen [NF] Chronicling 36 fateful encounters among 30 writers and artists—from Henry James to Gertrude Stein, Mark Twain to Zora Neal Hurston—Cohen paints a vast and sparkling portrait of a century's worth of American culture. First published in 2004, and reissued by NYRB, A Chance Meeting captures the spark of artistic serendipity, and the revived edition features a new afterword by the author. —SMS Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler [NF] Butler has had an outsized impact on how we think and talk about gender and sexuality ever since the 1990 publication of Gender Trouble, which theorized the way gender is performed and constructed. Butler's latest is a polemic that takes on the advent of "anti-gender ideology movements," arguing that "gender" has become a bogeyman for authoritarian regimes. —SMS Green Frog by Gina Chung [F] Chung, author of the acclaimed debut novel Sea Change, returns with a story collection about daughters and ghosts, divorcees and demons, praying mantises and the titular verdant amphibians. Morgan Talty calls these 15 stories "remarkable." —SMS No Judgment by Lauren Oyler [NF] Oyler is one of our sharpest and most fearless cultural critics, and No Judgement is her first essay collection, following up her debut novel Fake Accounts. Opining on gossip and anxiety, autofiction and vulnerability, and much, much more, Oyler's caustic wit and penetrating voice shine through every essay. —SMS Memory Piece by Lisa Ko [F] Following up her National Book Award–nominated debut novel The Leavers, Ko's latest follows three lifelong friends from the 1990s to the 2040s. A meditation on the meaning of a "meaningful life" and how to adapt to an increasingly inhospitable world, Memory Piece has earned praise from Jacqueline Woodson and C Pam Zhang, who calls the novel "bright with defiance, intelligence, and stubborn love." —SMS On Giving Up by Adam Phillips [NF] Psychoanalyst Phillips—whose previous subjects include getting better, wanting to change, and missing out—takes a swing at what feels like a particularly timely impulse: giving up. Questioning our notions of sacrifice and agency, Phillips asks when giving up might be beneficial to us, and which parts of our lives might actually be worth giving up. —SMS There's Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib [NF] Abdurraqib returns (how lucky are we!) with a reflection on his lifelong love of basketball and how it's shaped him. While reconsidering his childhood, his relationship with his father, and the meaning of "making it," Abdurraqib delivers what Shea Serrano calls "the sharpest, most insightful, most poignant writing of his career." —SMS The Angel of Indian Lake by Stephen Graham Jones [F] The final installment of Jones's trilogy picks up four years after Don't Fear the Reaper. Jade Daniels is back from prison, and upon her release, she encounters serial killer-worshipping cults, the devastating effects of gentrification, and—worst of all—the curse of the Lake Witch. Horror maestro Brian Keene calls Jones's grand finale "an easy contender for Best of the Year." —LA Worry by Alexandra Tanner [F] This deadpan debut novel from Tanner follows two sisters on the cusp of adulthood as they struggle to figure out what the hell to do with their lives. Heads butt, tempers flare, and existential dread creeps in as their paths diverge amid the backdrop of Brooklyn in 2019. Limning the absurdity of our internet-addled, dread-filled moment, Tanner establishes herself as a formidable novelist, with Kiley Reid calling Worry "the best thing I've read in a very long time." —DF [millions_email]

A Year in Book Cover Design: Michael Fusco

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Here's a list of my favorite covers of 2009. The best way for me to pick some favorites was to break them up into categories. I feel that when a designer has the task of designing, say, a nonfiction book, the parameters are very different than when designing a book for one of the most popular fiction authors in the world, and so it felt most natural to split things up this way. Best Nonfiction Cover Fordlandia by Greg Grandin, Cover design: Rodrigo Corral Design: Rodrigo Corral is my favorite designer, period. I love everything he does. Fordlandia is a great example of a cover that really feels like what's inside. The painting is perfect, and the type is beautifully rendered. I love the palm frond hanging over the F. It draws your eye to the title instantly. Best Big Book Cover Under the Dome by Stephen King, Cover design: Rex Bonomelli, illustration by Ray Brown: This cover is amazing for so many reasons. First of all, even though it's a no-brainer in terms of concept, they really did a brilliant job illustrating the town. Secondly, the jacket has no flap copy. Nothing! Just barcode and title. This is something only Stephen King can pull off, but it really adds to the clarity of the cover to not have anything else on it. Thirdly, Amazon wrote a piece about the cover, describing its origins on the product page. This is something you never see. It shows that this is truly a unique jacket. Best Fiction Cover The Way Through Doors by Jesse Ball, Cover design: Helen Yentus: It's hard to pull off (or get approved) a cover where the title is obscured. In this case, however, Yemtus has done such clear work that the title reads right away, despite the fact that it never actually fully appears. Best UK Cover Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem, Cover design: Miriam Rosenbloom: My wife and I recently designed and screenprinted a poster for Jonathan and his marathon New York readings around the city last month. When we were brainstorming for the poster, I saw this cover and thought, "Damn! I wish I had thought of that." This is a cover that would never fly with an author as popular as Lethem in an American market because the type is small and the image is big. The result is powerful, toothy, and original. More from A Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Garth Risk Hallberg

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For me, 2009 was the year of Europe Central - not so much because I would wind up reading, in late November, William T. Vollmann's large novel of that name, but because a couple of chance encounters back in January (Bohumil Hrabal's I Served the King of England and Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones (reviewed here)) set me on a path toward it. In the intervening months, I found myself traipsing back and forth between literary Berlin and literary Moscow and losing myself in the territories in between. My very favorite of the books I encountered during these peregrinations - indeed, the best book I read all year - was A Book of Memories, by the Hungarian master Péter Nádas. A glib way of describing this indescribable novel would be to say that it is to postmodernism what The Magic Mountain is to modernism - rigorous, comprehensive...a classic. However, the author who kept coming to mind as I read was Harold Brodkey. Nádas' psychological and phenomenological insights are, like those of Brodkey's stories, microscopically acute. Formally, however, A Book of Memories offers more excitement. The novel unfolds like a game of three-card monte, giving us several narrators whose gradual convergence seems to encompass the entire aesthetic and political history of Central Europe in the 20th Century. A close second would have to be The Foundation Pit, by the early-Soviet-era writer Andrey Platonov. This slim novel reckons the cost of the Stalinist industrial program, but in the process reveals an ecstatic vision of the human soul. I agree with Edwin Frank of NYRB Classics: Platonov's voice is as arresting as Kafka's. It is also tender, and weirdly touching. And Platonov inspired me to read (finally) Life and Fate, the sweeping World War II saga by his good friend Vasily Grossman. This novel, like some of Platonov's work, was suppressed by Soviet censors, and as a consequence was never properly edited. That shows, I think, in the sketchiness of some of the book's secondary characters and plots. But at its frequent best - in its depiction of German death camps; in its attention to the trials of Viktor Shtrum and his family; and in an early, haunting letter from Viktor's mother - Life and Fate approaches the depth of its models, Tolstoy and Chekhov. The two finest works of nonfiction I read this year, by contrast, had a distinctly American flavor: Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife and Edie, a riveting oral history of Edie Sedgwick, edited by Jean Stein. Each is in the neighborhood of 500 pages, but reads with the propulsion of an intellectual whodunit. Taken together, they create a panorama of the transformative years between World War II and Vietnam, whose upheavals we're still living down today. Come for the titillation; stay for the education. Amid these longer works, it was a relief to have poetry collections to dip into. My favorites were Frederick Seidel's Ooga-Booga and John Berryman's The Dream Songs, both of which I wrote about here. (On second thought, where these two poets are concerned, maybe relief isn't quite the right word.) Similarly, a couple of coffeetable books offered piecemeal inspiration. Air : 24 Hours, a remarkable monograph on/interview with the painter Jennifer Bartlett, is freshly minted MacArthur Genius Deborah Eisenberg's My Dinner With Andre. I also heartily recommend Up is Up, But So is Down, an anthology of Downtown New York literature from the 1970s and 1980s. Reproductions of flyers and zines adorn this volume, expertly compiled by Brandon Stosuy. Come for the images; stay for the writing. A couple of other novels I loved this year were Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift and Virginia Woolf's The Waves. Each, in my read, unraveled at the end, and so didn't quite stand with Nádas (or Herzog, or Mrs. Dalloway). But each reached rare pinnacles of perception and beauty, and I'm always pleased to spend time in the company of these writers. The best new books I read were Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City and Ingo Schulze's New Lives. One of the first things people notice about Lethem is his skylarking prose, but in this most recent novel, a note of deeper irony (the kind born of pain; one wants to call it European, or maybe Bellovian) disciplines the sentences. I look forward to seeing where Lethem goes next. The East German setting of New Lives, and its uroboric epistolary structure - starting late in the story, slowly filling in the background - made for slow going at first, but the ethical intensity of its restaging of Faust has haunted me since I read it. And then there was Europe Central, about which more anon. I'm not sure I can recommend it, anymore than I was sure I could recommend Joseph McElroy's Women and Men last year. I haven't even decided if I think Europe Central is a good book. But it swallowed me by slow degrees, and hasn't quite let go. There are many, many more amazing books I'd like to write about here: Janet Malcolm's book on Chekhov; McElroy's Lookout Cartridge; Rabbit Redux, Running Dog, Dog Soldiers; The Book of Daniel, Daniel Deronda... In fact, looking forward to "A Year in Reading" has begun to exert a formal pressure on my reading list, encouraging me to bypass the ephemeral in search of books I might passionately recommend. Fully half of what I read this year blew my mind, and I look forward to some future "Year in Reading" entry when I have 52 masterpieces to endorse. Imagine: one great book a week. For now, though, mindful that your hunger to read a 10,000 word post about what I read is probably even less keen than mine is to write it, I'll leave you with these titles, and wishes for great reading in 2010. More from A Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Carolyn Kellogg

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Each time I talk about two of my favorite books this year, I find myself discussing what people wanted from them as much as the books themselves. I adored them both, but both seem to need positioning. Take Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem. It's a novel of not-quite-real New York, in which a former child actor becomes friends with an obsessive fanatic/critic, threaded through with surrealism, a second-life-type game, esoteric cultural discussions, a romance or two and questions of identity and self. It is everything a novel can be: funny, smart, puzzling, engrossing, layered. It is very Lethem-ian, in that it is Philip K. Dick-ish, but it is more controlled and mature – more ambitious, even – than Dick. It works on several levels; it's the kind of book that's fun to talk about. What it isn't is a noir pastiche with a detective with Tourette's – there's no need for Lethem to write Motherless Brooklyn again, but some people are stuck on it. Re-read Motherless Brooklyn if that's what you want from Lethem -- but you'll be missing out. And then there's Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. A vocal Pynchon contingent loves big, perplexing Gravity's Rainbow - talk about layers! – and looks down on The Crying of Lot 49. The Pynchonmanes like the intellectual challenge of his massive books, and they tend to balk against the straightforward elements of Inherent Vice, which has a relatively clear plotline and a likeable, stoned main character. I would argue that comprehensibility is not a fault, that this book is as full of giddy joy with language and ephemeral ideas as his others. Those who don't see that are looking too close, but perhaps that's because they (we) are the target: when you step back, the book reads as an argument against the ambitious digging of his ardent fans. It's a 400-page case for living with mystery. Long may Pynchon's seclusion reign. More from A Year in Reading

A Year in Reading 2009

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The end of another year (and decade) offers many amusements and diversions, chief among them the inevitable, retrospective lists. We made our own attempt in September, with our Best of the Millennium (So Far) series, which proved to be an instructive and contentious exercise. Among the chief arguments leveled against such "best of" lists is the way they posit an illusory pinnacle of achievement and quality. By means of a grand consensus, the list smooths over natural and exciting variations in individual taste. But true discoveries are often made not by finding out what everybody liked, but by getting from one trusted fellow reader a recommendation that strikes a nerve or piques an interest. It's also true that the reader who reflects on a year will find a thread of reading experiences to parallel the real-life ones...and particularly sublime moments alone (even in a crowd, alone) when a book has taken the reader out of her world and into its own. This experience transcends the cold qualitative accounting that names one book better than another. And so amid all the lists (even our own), to round out the year, we offer a new installment of our annual "Year in Reading" series - an anti-list, as it were. Acknowledging that few readers, if any, read exclusively newly published books, we've asked our regular contributors and distinguished guests to name, from all the books they read this year, the one(s) that meant the most to them, regardless of publication date. Grouped together, these considerations, squibs, and essays will be a chronicle of reading and good books from every era. We hope you find in them seeds that will help your year in reading in 2010 be a fruitful one. As we have in prior years, the names of our 2009 "Year in Reading" contributors will be unveiled one at a time throughout the month as we post their contributions. You can bookmark this post and follow the series from here, or load up the main page for more new Year in Reading posts appearing at the top every day, or you can subscribe to our RSS feed and follow along in your favorite feed reader. Hari Kunzru, author of My Revolutions Julie Klam, author of Please Excuse My Daughter Phillip Lopate, author of Notes on Sontag Stephen Dodson, coauthor of Uglier Than a Monkey's Armpit, proprietor of Languagehat. Mark Sarvas, author of Harry, Revised, proprietor of The Elegant Variation. Diane Williams, author of It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature, editor of NOON Jonathan Lethem, author of Chronic City David Gutowski, proprietor of Largehearted Boy Jesse Ball, author of The Way Through Doors Deb Olin Unferth, author of Vacation Edan Lepucki of The Millions Michelle Huneven, author of Blame Joshua Ferris, author of Then We Came to the End William H. Gass, author of The Tunnel Reif Larsen, author of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet Victor LaValle, author of Big Machine Dana Goodyear, author of Honey & Junk, New Yorker staff writer Rosecrans Baldwin, founding editor of The Morning News and author of You Lost Me There Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City David Shields, author of Reality Hunger Stephen Elliott, editor of The Rumpus and author of The Adderall Diaries Brady Udall, author of The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint Rick Moody, author of The Black Veil Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man Marco Roth, a founding editor of N+1 Maud Newton, proprietor of maudnewton.com Patrick Brown of The Millions Hamilton Leithauser of The Walkmen Scott Esposito editor of The Quarterly Conversation and of Conversational Reading Ben Fountain, author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara Joe Meno, author of The Great Perhaps Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian Emily St. John Mandel, author of Last Night In Montreal Jennifer Egan, author of The Invisible Circus Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances Samantha Peale, author of The American Painter Emma Dial Lan Samantha Chang, author of Inheritance David L. Ulin, book editor of the Los Angeles Times Jerome Charyn, author of The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson Jon Raymond, author of The Half-Life Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles Ken Chen, author of Juvenilia Mark Haskell Smith, author of Moist Brad Watson, author of Last Days of the Dog-Men John Williams, editor of The Second Pass Carolyn Kellogg, of Jacket Copy and www.carolynkellogg.com Anne K. Yoder, of The Millions Tim W. Brown, author of American Renaissance Traver Kauffman, of Rake’s Progress Jeff Martin, author of My Dog Ate My Nobel Prize Ed Park, author of Personal Days Cristina Henríquez, author of The World in Half Garth Risk Hallberg, author of A Field Guide to the North American Family: An Illustrated Novella, contributor to The Millions Motoyuki Shibata, author of American Narcissus Robert Lopez, author of Kamby Bolongo Mean River Masatsugu Ono, author of Graves Buried in Water Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica Dan Kois, author of Facing Future Michael Fusco, of Michael Fusco Design Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 | Support The Millions

The Notables: 2009

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This year’s New York Times Notable Books of the Year list is out. At 100 titles, the list is more of a catalog of the noteworthy than a distinction. Sticking with the fiction exclusively, it appears that we touched upon a few of these books as well: The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker (a most anticipated book) Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli (my review, Millions Top Ten book) Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon (a most anticipated book, The Millions Interview with Dan Chaon, Best of the Millennium Longlister) Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem (a most anticipated book, The Kakutani Two-Step) Do Not Deny Me by Jean Thompson (Jean Thompson on Edward P. Jones) Don't Cry by Mary Gaitskill (Best of the Millennium Longlister) Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower (Wells Tower's Year in Reading, a most anticipated book, my review, Best of the Millennium Longlister, Millions Top Ten book) A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore (a most anticipated book, Edan's review) Generosity: An Enhancement by Richard Powers (a most anticipated book) In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Manil Suri's Year in Reading selection, National Book Award Finalist) Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips (National Book Award Finalist) Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (a most anticipated book, my review, National Book Award Winner) The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Booker Shortlister) Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall by Kazuo Ishiguro (The Lion, The Witch and Ishiguro) Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead (a most anticipated book) The Song Is You by Arthur Phillips (Anne's review, Arthur Phillips' Year in Reading, Arthur Phillips on Kelly Link) Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Booker Prize Winner) Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood (a most anticipated book)

LA Times interviews Jonathan Lethem

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At Jacket Copy, Carolyn Kellogg talks with Jonathan Lethem about his new novel Chronic City "I love to dwell in the space of a novel -- I don't find writing uncomfortable, it's something I really love doing. Writing a long novel, especially, it means that I'm creating this whole other set of people that I'm interested in, and this whole other world I get to go into, and I try to stay there. I try to go every day, not just to see the word count amass, which is helpful, but because then my subconscious is kind of living there."

Chronic City, Come Alive

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In an interview with Jonathan Lethem, the NBCC's Jane Ciabaratti offers, inter alia, a sympathetic reading of Chronic City; both have more affection than Kakutani did for what Lethem calls "the claptrap contraption plot I invented." Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal, in a flash of inspiration, assigns the book to the estimable Alexander Theroux - the only non-Latin writer who can credibly use the word "prosopographical" in a review. (But, attn editor: "not a jot" twice? in subsequent paragraphs?) A marathon bi-borough reading of the entire novel continues tonight at McNally Jackson.

The Kakutani Two-Step

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A while back, we diagnosed David Brooks' Bobo Shuffle; now it's time to call The New York Times' most pugnacious and prolific book reviewer on her patented move: The Kakutani Two-Step. It works roughly like this: belittle a novelist's finest work to date - preferably by tossing around unsupported adjectives...say, "arbitrary," "flimsy," and "unfinished." Then, five or six years later, when the novelist in question brings forth his next book, or the one after that, complain loudly about how lame it is compared to his previous masterwork, which, it is to be inferred, you adored. (Bonus points if you actually now call the previous book a "masterwork." Double bonus points if you also work in the word "limn.") The Kakutani Two-Step depends on readers having short memories (or perhaps sagely avoiding Kakutani's "Books of the Times" columns altogether) and so not noticing the cognitive dissonance. Only fans of the writers she caricatures (and, one imagines, the writers themselves) are likely to detect the sinister signature of the KTS. The latest victim is Jonathan Lethem, whose new Chronic City Kakutani calls "tedious [and] overstuffed"...and that's just the first sentence of the review! "This fictional Manhattan," she continues, has none of the energy or keenly observed grittiness of the real-life Brooklyn that Mr. Lethem captured with such verve in his 2003 novel, The Fortress of Solitude. But wait, wasn't that "dazzling" novel "fundamentally flawed," with a series of unconvincing and weirdly forced passages that break the spell that Mr. Lethem has so assiduously created? Not to mention a "contrived" and "melodramatic" ending?" And "many defects" in between? According to Kakutani, circa 2003, it was. Your takeaway from the Fortress of Solitude review: flawed, uneven, defective. Your takeaway from the Chronic City review: Michiko misses the "vividly . . . movingly" dazzling Fortress of Solitude. To be sure, it's possible to square the two Lethem reviews, if you're enough of a Kakutani exegete to infer that her kneejerk distaste, in each case, is for Lethem's forays into genre-bending. But all the casual reader will notice is the invidious comparison between the two books, the sudden vanishing of any her earlier reservations, like a magician's cloth being whisked away to reveal a tiny, perfect turd. I'm too tired right now to track down other instances of the KTS, but you don't have to look hard to find them; you might start by Googling David Foster Wallace (and if you think of more, why not leave them in the comment thread?) To be sure, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. It may also be true that Michiko's judgment works on the time-release principle of certain antacids...that hindsight makes the heart grow fonder. But, even in these lean days for newspapers, the Times presumably employs fact-checkers who could easily catch La Kakutani's self-misrepresentation. One thing is clear: she can't be bothered to check herself.

Most Anticipated: Rounding Out 2009, An Epic Year for Books

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At the beginning of the year, we noted that "2009 may be a great year for books." With the publishing schedule for the remainder of the year filled out, calling 2009 a great year for readers is now a certainty. If anything, 2009 is backloaded, with new titles coming in the second half of the year from legends like Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth and fan favorites like Lorrie Moore and Jonathan Lethem. A peek into 2010, meanwhile, reveals more literary excitement on tap, with new titles on the way from Jonathan Franzen, Joshua Ferris, and others. Below you'll find, in chronological order, the titles we're most looking forward to right now. (Special thanks to the illustrious members of The Millions Facebook group who let us know what they are looking forward to. Not everyone's suggestions made our list, but we appreciated hearing about all of them.)In July, Dave Eggers continues the trend he started with What is the What, working closely with his subject to produce a work with elements of memoir and non-fiction. In Zeitoun, the subject is Abdulrahman Zeitoun, "a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four," who lived in New Orleans and disappeared in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A few weeks ago, The Rumpus ran a long interview with Eggers that touches on Zeitoun, among several other topics. Eggers first encountered Zeitoun when McSweeney's put out Voices from the Storm, an oral history of Katrina, and he told The Rumpus, "Their story intrigued me from the start, given that it's at the intersection of so many issues in recent American life: the debacle of the government response to Katrina, the struggles facing even the most successful immigrants, a judicial system in need of repair, the problem of wrongful conviction, the paranoia wrought by the War on Terror, widespread Islamophobia." (Scroll down to October for more "Anticipated" action from Eggers.)William T. Vollmann is known for his superhuman writing output, but his forthcoming book Imperial is a monster, even for him. Weighing in at 1,296 pages and carrying a list price of $55, this work of non-fiction is "an epic study," in the words of the publisher, of Imperial County, California along the U.S.-Mexico border. Ed offers quite a bit more discussion of the book. Don't miss the comments, where it's said that Vollmann has called the book "his Moby-Dick."August kicks off with what will no doubt be a peculiar literary event, the publication of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. It is a rare thing these days when a flurry of media attention centers on someone who has no interest in basking in it. And so, perhaps as Pynchon intends, the focus will be on the book. Inherent Vice promises to be odd. It's 416 pages, shorter than the typical Pynchon doorstop, and the publisher Penguin, in its catalog, notes that Pynchon is "working in an unaccustomed genre" this time around. "Genre" seems to be the buzzword here. The book sports neon cover art and follows a private eye (Doc Sportello). The book begins: "She came along the alley and up the back steps the way she always used to." Review copies are already out, and the early word is that the novel overlaps somewhat with and bears some similarities to Vineland.Inherent Vice shares a release date with a new book by Richard Russo, That Old Cape Magic, which Entertainment Weekly has already called "very beach-y." (Sadly, it appears to have come in last in their poll to determine the "Must book of the summer.") It sounds like fairly standard "suburban malaise" fare in which a mid-life crisis is endured over the course of the summer, the upside for the reader being that Russo is bringing his considerable skills to the table. PW is fairly tepid on the book, "Though Russo can write gorgeous sentences and some situations are amazingly rendered... the navel-gazing interior monologues that constitute much of the novel lack the punch of Russo's earlier work."Of Roberto Bolaño's forthcoming, newly translated novels, Millions contributor Lydia writes: "I almost never know about the hot, up-and-coming items, but I do happen to know about this one, and I feel that, like many readers, my relationship to Bolaño has been one of breathless anticipation since the moment I first heard his name. Which was like this: at my old job, I was going through the mail. There was a New Directions catalog of aforementioned hot, up-and-coming items. I haven't historically had a lot of interest in contemporary trade publications, but New Directions has a very warm spot in my heart because I associate it with The Berlin Stories. Anyway, in said mag I read a blurb about Nazi Literature in the Americas, and thought it sounded really neat, and then learned I would have to wait a year to read it, and since then it feels like there's been a lot of waiting - sometimes with glorious gratification at the end (2666), sometimes not (Nazi Literature in the Americas, ironically). It's thrilling that they keep coming! The Skating Rink in August, Monsieur Pain in 2010. It's like new the James Bond franchise (btw, I'm a Craig, not a Brosnan). I just love having something to look forward to. I hope I don't wet my pants on the way to the bookstore." (Bolaño fans will also be looking out for Melville House's Bolaño: The Last Interview And Other Conversations)Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply returns to the territory of separated siblings (You Remind Me of Me looked at a pair of long-lost brothers.) This time, the focus is on twins, one of whom has been missing for ten years. The book garnered a blurb from Jonathan Franzen, who will appear later in this list and who says of Chaon's book, "I've been waiting for somebody to write the essential identity-theft novel, and I'm very glad Dan Chaon's the one to have done it"Let's just get this out of the way: In September, you are going to hear a lot about Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.More importantly, we'll get Richard Powers' follow up to his award-winning novel The Echo Maker. In Generosity: An Enhancement, Powers explores the idea of patenting the human gene for happiness. Last year, Powers wrote about the human genome for GQ. There's not a lot of info available about this one but Ed Champion writes he "foresee(s) some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels," and Sarah Weinman "tweeted," "Richard Powers' new novel Generosity is about as audacious as a novel gets, and has fucked with my head as a reader every which way."Lorrie Moore is set to deliver her first novel in over a decade, A Gate at the Stairs. All those Moore fans out there are faced with a huge dilemma this week. Do they read the "Childcare," the excerpt of the novel that is the fiction offering in this week's New Yorker, or do they avoid the magazine and hold out for two more months until the novel comes out? We've never been big fans of the New Yorker's packaging of novel excerpts as short stories, so to all the Moore fans out there, we say - avert your eyes when you reach page 70 of this week's issue!Kazuo Ishiguro's Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall is already out in much of the rest of the English-speaking world. In The Guardian, Christopher Taylor described the book as "a carefully arranged sequence of interlocking stories" and said, "while many of the stories hinge on artistic talent - the risks and unkindnesses associated with it; who's got it and who hasn't - the strong focus on more widespread problems in life makes Nocturnes more than a writer's thoughts on his job." The Complete Review rounds up the rest of the early reactions.Pete Dexter returns in September with Spooner. This one sounds like another dark, Southern tale not unlike Paris Trout, the book that first put Dexter on the fiction map. The first line of Spooner is "Spooner was born a few minutes previous to daybreak in the historic, honeysuckled little town of Milledgeville, Georgia, in a make-shift delivery room put together in the waiting area of the medical offices of Dr. Emil Wood."We'll also get a new novel from E.L. Doctorow about a pair of brothers. Homer & Langley is about Homer and Langley Collyer, two famous Manhattan hoarders and recluses, who, after gaining notoriety for their obsessive habits and reportedly booby-trapped home, were found dead in 1947 surrounded by, according to Wikipedia, "over 100 tons of rubbish that they had amassed over several decades." Newsweek has an excerpt of the book. The novel's first line is "I'm Homer, the blind brother. I didn't lose my sight all at once, it was like the movies, a slow fade-out."Dan Brown is no doubt getting serious bank for his return to airport bookshelves and grocery store check-out lines, but he's not the only one having a great recession. Audrey Niffenegger reportedly took home a $5 million advance for Her Fearful Symmetry, her follow-up to her very popular The Time Traveler's Wife. Niffenegger describes the book on her website: "The novel concerns a pair of mirror-image twins, Julia and Valentina Poole... Julia and Valentina are inseparable, and function almost as one being, although in temperament they are opposites."Acclaimed novelist Margaret Atwood will have a new novel out in September called The Year of the Flood, which has been described as "a journey to the end of the world." The Random House catalog, meanwhile, called it a "dystopic masterpiece and a testament to her visionary power." If that all isn't intriguing enough, it appears that the book is maybe (or maybe not) the second book in a trilogy that was kicked off with Oryx & Crake. Atwood and her publishers have offered mixed signals on the trilogy question. Quill & Quire looked into the question, and included a quote from Atwood saying, "It's not a sequel and it's not a prequel... It's a simultaneouel." Ah, one of those.In The Anthologist, Nicholson Baker covers well-trod literary ground by focusing on a writer protagonist. However, PW gave the book a starred review, calling it "lovely" and saying "Baker pulls off an original and touching story, demonstrating his remarkable writing ability while putting it under a microscope." Baker's protagonist is Paul Chowder, who is tasked with writing an introduction for a poet friend's anthology and delivers the book's stream of consciousness narration. By all early accounts the book is quite funny and also deeply immersed in poetry, with digressions on a number of history's great poets. The Simon & Schuster catalog calls the book a "beguiling love story about poetry."It's my feeling that John Irving's fiction has fallen off quite a bit in recent years (the last really good read for me was A Son of the Circus), but I still keep an eye on Irving's new novels for any sign that he has regained his early career mojo. His last several books haven't tempted me, and it's probably too early to tell whether the Last Night in Twisted River will. Reading the first sentence of the publisher's description, we already find a couple of Irving's authorial tics, New Hampshire and bears: "In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear." Don't be surprised if a wrestler figures into the action somewhere in there. Still, Irving has compared the new book to The Cider House Rules. That's a good sign.The venerable William Trevor will have a new novel out, Love and Summer.Millions reader Matthew looks forward to Laird Hunt's Ray of the Star, due in September, "because Laird's novels are fantastic." Of Kamby Bolongo Mean River by Robert Lopez, he writes "This is his sophomore novel; his first, Part of the World was bizarre and funny." He plans to read The Museum of Eterna's Novel by Macedonio Fernandez (arriving in 2010) "because Borges sez so."October is sure to bring Wild Things mania and Dave Eggers is going to be right in the middle of it. He worked with Spike Jonze on the film version of Where the Wild Things Are. And, in what is sure to be the most literary novelization of a film (adapted from a children's book) ever, an Eggers-penned version of Wild Things is set to hit shelves when the movie comes out. There's also the fur-covered edition.New Yorker readers have already gotten a taste of Jonathan Lethem's forthcoming book Chronic City. Of the excerpt, packaged as the story "Lostronaut," I wrote, "This story was pretty awesome. It was the only speculative fiction to land in The New Yorker this year, not quite making up for the absence of Murakami and Saunders from the magazine's pages. This story is told in the form of letters from Janice, a 'Lostronaut' aboard some sort of space station, to her 'Dearest Chase.' She and her fellow astronauts are trapped in orbit by Chinese space mines and that's not even the worst of it for poor Janice. While the premise and epistolary style are intriguing, Janice's unique, irrepressible voice really carries the story."Readers are soon set to see the fruits of an ambitious project by R. Crumb, his illustrated Book of Genesis, a surprisingly faithful rendering of the first book of The Bible done in Crumb's unique style. Crumb talked about the project four years ago with Robert Hughes: "I was fooling around with Adam and Eve one day. Doodling about Adam and Eve. At first I did this satirical take off on Adam and Eve - lots of jokey asides and Jewish slang because they're Jewish right? God is Jewish... Finally I got over fooling around and I realized I just had to tell it straight."Booker winner A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book, according to publisher Knopf's description, "spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children's book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves." The book is out already in the UK, where a review in the Telegraph included this intriguing aside: "Byatt's publisher is keen to present The Children's Book, her first novel for seven years, as an equal to Possession, the work that secured her reputation and her mass-market appeal nearly 20 years ago. It certainly compares to its popular predecessor in its daring and scope and, unlike the more cerebral parts of Byatt's output, is its equivalent in terms of storytelling and readability."J.M. Coetzee's Summertime is a follow up to Boyhood and Youth in Coetzee's series of memoirs. The NYRB recently published an excerpt.Quite a lot of sub-par material has been published in order to satiate the ravenous demand for Hunter S. Thompson's writing. Thompson's essays for ESPN in his later years were uneven at best, but fans may find something to like in The Mutineer, which Simon & Schuster says is "The highly anticipated final volume of the previously unpublished letters of Hunter S. Thompson, king of Gonzo journalism and one of the greatest literary figures of our time." Insofar as HST,in his latter years, may have been more entertaining and lucid in his letters, this may put The Mutineer slightly above the low bar set by other recent HST collections. On the other hand, the book is edited by Johnny Depp, implying that the book is more about venerating the cult of HST than unearthing new work on par with his best efforts.November will bring the publication of Michael Lewis' much anticipated chronicle of the financial crisis, The Big Short. In October last year, when economic uncertainty was at its height and fears were voiced in some rarefied quarters about the possibility of some sort of structural collapse, we wrote, "The world needs an exhaustive look at what happened in 2008 and why." There have already been several books about the collapse and what caused it, from The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown to The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, but many readers have been waiting for a book by Lewis, both because of his long history writing about Wall Street's excesses and because of the powerful essay he penned on the topic for Portfolio magazine in November. Some readers may be weary of the topic by the time the book comes out, but it's sure to garner some interest.The great Philip Roth keeps churning out new novels. This year's offering is The Humbling, Roth's 30th novel. The publisher copy says "Everything is over for Simon Axler, the protagonist of Philip Roth's startling new book. One of the leading American stage actors of his generation, now in his sixties, he has lost his magic, his talent, and his assurance." The NY Times reported that yet another Roth novel, Nemesis, is due in 2010.Jonathan Safran Foer will have a non-fiction book out in November called Eating Animals, which most are guessing focuses on vegetarianism. An interview with Foer at Penguin's UK website would seem to confirm this. It doesn't mention the book, but the introduction says "Jonathan Safran Foer on why he doesn't eat anything with parents."Millions reader Laurie points us to My Bird by Fariba Vafi, translated from Farsi and originally published in Iran in 2002. The publisher Syracuse University Press says: "The narrator, a housewife and young mother living in a low-income neighborhood in [modern] Tehran...[is] forced to raise [her] children alone and care for her ailing mother... One of the most acclaimed and best-selling contemporary Iranian writers." Laurie adds, "The novel won several literary awards in Iran and, according to a 2005 article in the New York Times, Vafi never attended college and writes when her children are in school."2010: Probably the most anticipated book of next year will be the The Pale King, a coda to David Foster Wallace's sadly shortened life as a writer. We already know a fair amount about the book - it will center on an IRS agent - and three excerpts have been published already, "Good People" and "Wiggle Room" in The New Yorker and "The Compliance Branch" (pdf) in Harper's. A piece by D.T. Max went into some detail about The Pale King following DFW's death. Given the amount work that lies ahead for DFW's editors, this may be a second half of 2010 release.Also possibly arriving in the second half of 2010 is Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, which we are just beginning to hear about. The book is the long-awaited follow-up to Franzen's loved, hated, celebrated, Oprah-snubbing novel of nearly a decade ago, The Corrections. Franzen has been coy about the title - the book is reportedly called Freedom - but readers got a taste of what Franzen has in store in "Good Neighbors," an excerpt that was published in the New Yorker a few weeks ago.Joshua Ferris will follow up his blockbuster debut Then We Came to the End with The Unnamed. The Book Case writes, "The novel focuses on Tim and Jane Farnsworth, a long-married couple who seem to have it all. But Tim has twice battled a bizarre, inexplicable illness." Beattie's Book Blog mentions that the illness is that he "can't stop walking."John McPhee has a new book due out called Silk Parachute. McPhee wrote a 1997 Shouts & Murmurs piece called "Silk Parachute" about his elderly mother. It begins "When your mother is ninety-nine years old, you have so many memories of her that they tend to overlap, intermingle, and blur."Time Out NY says Sam Lipsyte's The Ask is about "Milo, a New York father who is on the brink of economic ruin, and covers themes including but not limited to 'work, war, sex, class, race, child-rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, the old-model brain, the commercialization of sadness and the eroticization of chicken wire.'"British publisher Faber says Rachel Cusk's The Bradshaw Variations "is a powerful novel about how our choices and our loves and the family life we build will always be an echo - a variation - of a theme played out in our own childhood."In the comments or on your own blogs, let us know what books you're looking forward to.

Most Anticipated: 2009 May Be a Great Year for Books

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The publishing industry (and every other industry) may be going down the tubes, but readers won't be wanting for good new books this year, I suspect. Readers will get their hands on new Pynchon, Atwood, Lethem, and Zadie Smith - those names alone would make for a banner year, but there's much more. Below you'll find, in chronological order, the titles we're most looking forward to this year. (Garth penned a few of these little previews, where noted. And special thanks to members of The Millions Facebook group who let us know what they are looking forward to. Not everyone's suggestions made our list but we appreciated hearing about all of them.)In February, T.C. Boyle returns again to his unique brand of historical fiction with The Women. The four women in question all loved famous architect (and eccentric) Frank Lloyd Wright. Given the time period and subject matter, this one may resemble Boyle's earlier novel The Road to Wellville. PW says "It's a lush, dense and hyperliterate book - in words, vintage Boyle."Yiyun Li wowed quite a few readers with a pair of standout stories in the New Yorker last year, and all her fans now have her debut novel The Vagrants to look forward to. PW gave this one a starred review and called it "magnificent and jaw-droppingly grim." Quite a combo. All signs point to Li being a writer to watch in 2009 and beyond.Out of My Skin by John Haskell: I like John Haskell's writing a lot, and I like books about L.A., and so I think I'll like John Haskell writing a novel about L.A. (Garth)Home Schooling by Carol Windley: This book of short stories set in the Pacific Northwest is certain to garner comparisons to that other Canadian, Alice Munro. (Garth)March brings Jonathan Littell's very long-awaited novel The Kindly Ones. American readers have waited for an English translation since 2006, when the book was originally published in French. The German reviews for this Prix Goncourt winner were decidedly mixed, but I'm still intrigued to read this novel about an S.S. Officer. Literature, pulp, or kitsch? We'll know soon enough. (Garth)Walter Mosley, best known for his Easy Rawlins mysteries, offers up The Long Fall, the first in a new series, the Leonid McGill mysteries. The new book is notable in the change of venue from Los Angeles, Mosley's heretofore preferred fictional setting, to New York City. PW says Mosley "stirs the pot and concocts a perfect milieu for an engaging new hero and an entertaining new series."In Castle by J. Robert Lennon, "A man buys a large plot of wooded land in upstate New York, only to find that someone has built a castle in the middle of it--and the castle is inhabited." Intriguing, no? (That description is from Lennon's website.) In related news, Lennon's collection of stories Pieces for the Left Hand will be published also in March. It'll be the book's first U.S. edition.Mary Gaitskill's 2005 novel Veronica was a National Book Award finalist. Now she's back with Don't Cry. The title story in this collection appeared in the New Yorker last year.I've already devoured Wells Tower's debut collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. Tower's eclectic style is on full display here. Some of these stories are masterful iterations in the New Yorker style, while others experiment with voice and style. The collection closes with the title story, his most well known, an ingenious tale of vikings gone plundering. Normally a debut collection wouldn't merit much buzz, but readers have had their eye on Tower for years because of his impressive long-form journalism in Harper's and elsewhere. (Tower also appeared in our Year in Reading this year.)Zoe Heller had a huge hit with What Was She Thinking in 2003. Her follow-up effort, The Believers arrives in March. PW gives it a starred review and says it "puts to pointed use her acute observations of human nature in her third novel, a satire of 1960s idealism soured in the early 21st century." The book came out in the UK last year, so you can learn plenty more about this one if you are so inclined. Here's the Guardian's review for starters.April brings Colson Whitehead's novel Sag Harbor, which jumped a few notches on many readers' wish lists following the publication of an excerpt (registration required) in the New Yorker's Winter Fiction issue. Based on that excerpt (and the publisher's catalog copy), we are in store for a coming of age story about Benji, a relatively well-off African-American kid growing up in New York (and summering on Long Island) in the 1980s.Colm Toibin has a new novel coming in May called Brooklyn. This one looks to be a novel of immigration. From the catalog copy: "In a small town in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s, Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work at home. So when a job is offered in America, it is clear that she must go."I've been following Clancy Martin's How to Sell as it's appeared in excerpts in NOON and McSweeney's. The writing is terrific, funny, and disturbing: ripe for a Coen Brothers adaptation. (Garth)Summer reading season gets going in June with Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin, which his publisher is calling "his most ambitious work to date." This one sounds like it will look in on the lives of several disparate characters in New York city in the mid-1970s. Audio of McCann reading from the book is available at CUNY Radio.Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won tons of praise for Half of a Yellow Sun. Now she's back with a collection of stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, likely including "The Headstrong Historian," which appeared in the New Yorker last year.Monica Ali is back with her third novel, In the Kitchen. This one is based in London and apparently involves a murder at a hotel.July: William T. Vollmann is known for his superhuman writing output, but his forthcoming book Imperial is a monster, even for him. Weighing in at 1,296 pages and carrying a list price of $55, this work of non-fiction is "an epic study," in the words of the publisher, of Imperial County, California. Ed offers quite a bit more discussion of the book. Don't miss the comments, where it's said that Vollmann has called the book "his Moby-Dick."August: When the deliberate and reclusive Thomas Pynchon puts out a new book it's a publishing event, and with Pynchon set to deliver a new book just three years after his last one, well, that's like Christmas in July, er, August. This one is called Inherent Vice and its cover is already causing much speculation (and some consternation) among the Pynchon fans. Expect rumors about the book to be rife through the first part of the year. Pynchon's publisher Penguin, meanwhile, has called it "part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon - private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A. fog."The Amateur American by Joel Saunders Elmore: I have to mention this novel by my old friend Joel, sections of which I read in manuscript. Surreal yet propulsive, it has one of the sharpest opening lines I've ever read... assuming he kept the opening line. (Garth)September: Scarcely a year goes by without Philip Roth sending a new novel our way. Little is known about his forthcoming novel except the title The Humbling. Amazon UK's listing for the book puts it at just 112 pages which seems like just an afternoon's work for the prolific Roth. As Garth notes, his last two outings have been underwhelming but with Roth there's always a chance of greatness.Kazuo Ishiguro's collection of stories also comes out in the U.S. in September (though it will be out in much of the rest of the English-speaking world in May). The catalog copy calls Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall "a sublime story cycle" that "explores ideas of love, music and the passing of time."Acclaimed novelist Margaret Atwood will have a new novel out in September called The Year of the Flood. There's not much info on this except that it is being described as "a journey to the end of the world."E.L. Doctorow has an as yet untitled novel on tap for September.As does Jonathan Lethem. According to Comic Book Resources, Lethem said his untitled novel is "set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it's strongly influenced by Saul Bellow, Philip K. Dick, Charles Finney and Hitchcock's Vertigo and it concerns a circle of friends including a faded child-star actor, a cultural critic, a hack ghost-writer of autobiographies, and a city official. And it's long and strange." I like the sound of that.A Gate at the Stairs, Lorrie Moore's first new novel in over a decade will arrive in September. The Bookseller sums up some of the excitement.October: You probably already know that Dave Eggers is working with Spike Jonze on a film version of Where the Wild Things Are, but did you know that Eggers is doing a novelization of the childrens classic too? It's apparently called The Wild Things and will show up in October.Arriving at some point in late 2009 is Zadie Smith's Fail Better. With her critical writing in The New York Review, Zadie Smith has quietly been making a bid to become the 21st Century Virginia Woolf. When she writes from her own experience as a novelist, she's sublime; when projecting her own anxieties onto others, she's less so. It will be interesting to see which Zadie Smith appears in this book of essays on books and writing. (Garth)We encourage you to share your own most anticipated books in the comments or on your own blogs. Happy Reading in 2009!

A Year in Reading: New Yorker Fiction 2008

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Looking back through old posts at The Millions, one of my favorites is my post going through every New Yorker story in 2005. It was a somewhat grueling post to compile, but in the spirit of recent New Year's resolutions, also very rewarding. I spend a lot of time each year reading the New Yorker and so it seems fitting that I might reflect on that time spent and revisit some of what I read. As perhaps the most high-profile venue for short fiction in the world, taking stock of the New Yorker's year in fiction is a worthwhile exercise for writers and readers alike.As with my effort a few years ago, what you'll find below is more an exercise in listing and linking than any real attempt at summary, but hopefully some folks will enjoy having links to all of this year's stories on one page. I've also included some links to people who talked about New Yorker stories during the year. I'll include Perpetual Folly here rather than with the stories below since it reflected on every story in the New Yorker over the course of 2008.In revisiting all of the stories, one major over-arching theme emerged for me, the conflict between stories that center on what I call "suburban malaise" (born out of "The Swimmer" and "What We Talk about When We Talk about Love" among many others) and those that don't. The former are what I think of as the base condition for New Yorker (and indeed all of contemporary American and UK short fiction) and the latter are the departures from that. The departure can be one of character, theme, setting, or style. The distinction is, of course, imprecise, and there are many riveting, impeccable examples of the "suburban malaise" story on offer from the New Yorker. The departures, meanwhile, can serve as a breath of fresh air and when done well, expand the boundaries of short fiction for the reader.January 7, "Outage" by John Updike - The New Yorker kicked off the year with old standby John Updike offering a story that begins somewhat quaintly with protagonist Brad being thrust into a reverie by a storm-caused power outage. The story continues on quaintly as Brad wanders through his darkened town, but changes tone when he encounters a similarly dazed neighbor Lynne and the plot shifts to one of more typical New Yorker-esque suburban malaise and infidelity. Updike's The Widows of Eastwick was published in October. Links: Jacob Russell, Richard LarsonJanuary 14, "Wakefield" by E.L. Doctorow - Speaking of suburban malaise, Doctorow takes it to the next level in this long story of a disaffected husband and father who hides out in his garage attic, letting his family believe he's gone missing. Like a stowaway on his own property, Howard Wakefield scavenges for food and spies on his wife as she steers the family ship. The central drama of the story hinges on how long Howard will keep up his ruse and the story's end is tantalizing. This one, interestingly, is a retelling of a Nathaniel Hawthorne story of the same name. Docotorow has a new, as yet untitled novel coming out late this year. Links: One Real StoryJanuary 21, "Ash Monday" by T. Coraghessan Boyle - Like many Boyle classics, this one is set in California where the fear of natural disaster is always present in the background. On the surface, this story is one of neighbors doing what neighbors sometimes do: hate each other. Though it is the New Yorker's third story in a row about the suburbs to lead off 2008, this one, with its west coast focus, is far from typical for the magazine. Boyle, who knows how to end a story, closes this one out in a blaze of glory. Boyle's new book The Women comes out soon.January 28, "The Reptile Garden" by Louise Erdrich - Goodbye suburbs. Erdrich's story is about dreamy Evelina in North Dakota who is not adjusting to college life very well. She obsesses over Anais Nin and eventually ends up taking a job at a mental hospital where she meets Nonette, who, like Nin, is French. The type of friendship that could only bloom inside the confines of a mental hospital ensues. Eventually, Evelina makes the transition from staff to patient. The story is excerpted from Erdrich's novel Plague of Doves.February 4, "Friendly Fire" by Tessa Hadley - Hadley, like the four preceding writers, is a favorite of New Yorker fiction editors. Her stories seem to exude the grayness of lower middle-class English towns. This one is about a pair of women who do cleaning jobs. Pam owns the little business and Shelly helps out. Shelly's son Anthony is in Afghanistan and this fact lends some definition to her otherwise mundane life. This is a story of dialog and exposition, not plot. It's funny in parts and looks in on a life. Hadley's The Master Bedroom was published last year.February 11 & 18, "Free Radicals" by Alice Munro - Munro is a favorite of mine, though I've preferred several of her stories from over the years to this one. Still, it's quite good and even gripping in parts. Even just now, skimming through it, I'm getting sucked back in. It's about recently widowed Nita. Munro sets the stage with a lengthy introduction to Nita, her life proscribed and seemingly shrinking following the death of her husband. With a knock at the door and an unexpected visitor, however, the story takes an abrupt and darker turn. Munro's most recent collection is 2006's The View from Castle Rock. Links: Armenian Odar, Lemon HoundFebruary 25, "Shelter of the World" by Salman Rushdie - Channeling the "The Emperor's New Clothes," Rushdie introduces Akbar the Great who has "an imaginary wife," Jodha. Akbar being who he was, "no man dared gainsay him." Akbar's people build him a city, he employs an "Imperial Flatterer First Class," and he speaks in the royal "we." Akbar's inability to say "I" is a symptom of the great solitude that results from his great power and feeling experimental he tries referring to himself as "I" with his imaginary wife. As you can imagine, the story has the qualities of a parable. It's also quite funny in parts. "Shelter of the World" is an excerpt from Rushdie's novel The Enchantress of Florence. Links: Jacob Russell, N+1March 3, "Leaving for Kenosha" by Richard Ford - Fresh off finishing up his Bascombe trilogy, Ford offers up a story about another divorced father, this one in New Orleans. "It was the anniversary of the disaster." and Walter Hobbes is spending the day with his teenage daughter Louise who wants to say goodbye to a classmate who is leaving the city for good, part of the ongoing, post-Katrina exodus. While Louise is at the dentist, it's up to Walter to find a card for the occasion, "There was simply nothing he could do that was right here, he realized. The task was beyond his abilities." The story offers up ample amounts of patented Richard Ford suburban malaise and the meeting at the story's end - Walter and Louise and the departing family - manages to capture a certain feeling about what has happened in New Orleans. Ford's most recent book is 2006's The Lay of the Land. Links: Jacob RussellMarch 10, "Raj, Bohemian" by Hari Kunzru - A very quirky story. The narrator travels in rarefied social circles, attending high concept dinner parties in spectacular, rent-free lofts, that sort of thing. The circle is infiltrated by Raj, who photographs one such party and uses the pictures in an ad. The narrator gets ticked off, the party's host says, "That's so Raj." Another says, "Get over yourself, man. You're acting so old-fashioned, like some kind of Communist." The narrator begins to suspect that all of his friends are trying to sell him something, that their "coolness" has become a marketable commodity. An interesting paranoia sets in, but Kunzru doesn't take the concept as far as he might have. Kunzru's most recent book is last year's My RevolutionsMarch 17, "The Bell Ringer" by John Burnside - In Scotland, Eva's father dies, "still, the fact was that in the aftermath of the funeral, when it had seemed as if the whole world had fallen silent, what had troubled Eva most was her marriage, not her father's absence." Her husband is the distant Matt. To escape her solitude, Eva signs up for a bell-ringing club, out of which a love triangle of sorts emerges. The story fits into the modern British and Irish short story tradition of William Trevor, Roddy Doyle, and Tessa Hadley and is a decent example of the style. Burnside has a new novel, The Glister, coming out in March.March 24, "The Region of Unlikeness" by Rivka Galchen - The narrator insinuates herself into the odd friendship of Jacob and Ilan. The two men are talkers, name-dropping intellectuals who delight in both low and high culture. The narrator is mesmerized by them and they see her as a sort of "mascot." Then she gets caught between the two men. They seem to be quarreling initially, but a mystery emerges, something involving time travel and all sorts of odd meta-physics. This one is an excerpt from Galchen's debut, Atmospheric Disturbances.March 31, "Great Experiment" by Jeffrey Eugenides - This is a memorable story, one that seems even more timely now than when it was published. Kendall is a poet with a day job working for eighty-two-year-old Jimmy Dimon's boutique publishing house, helping Dimon publish whatever strikes Dimon's fancy, an abridged edition of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America in this case. Kendall is bitter, underpaid, and unsupported by his equally bitter wife making him easy prey for Dimon's crooked accountant, Piasecki, who ropes Kendall into an embezzlement scheme. Eugenides strikes a nice balance in this one. The reader feels sympathy for Kendall's predicament but also a loathing for his tendency to blame all his ills on others. Eugenides hasn't had any new books out in a while, but he recently edited the anthology My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead. Links: Good ReadingsApril 7, "The House Behind a Weeping Cherry" by Ha Jin - Awkward, innocent Wanren is living in a rooming house for prostitutes in Flushing, Queens. Short on rent, Wanren is pushed into service as a driver by the landlady (and madame) Mrs. Chen. Wanren becomes like a brother to the three girls he lives with, but falls for one of them, Huong and hatches a plan to start a new life with her. Jin offers up an engaging peek into a hidden subculture of illegal immigrants, sweatshops, and sex workers. Another memorable story from the magazine this year. Jin's most recent book is last year's A Free Life.April 14, "The Lie" by T. Coraghessan Boyle - Boyle was the New Yorker's first repeat visitor to the fiction department last year, and by mid-April no less. This story offers a somewhat more generic vision of suburban malaise than is typical of Boyle (again in California), but it also goes for the gusto. Like Wakefield of Doctorow's story in January, Boyle's Lonnie plays a sort of disappearing act, not with himself, but with his baby instead. Unable to stop himself, Lonnie dismantles his life almost in slow motion and it's hard to look away, though you want to. No natural disasters here, though.April 21, "The Repatriates" by Sana Krasikov - Grisha and Lera spent a decade in America finding opportunity but Grisha, though he finds plenty of success and remuneration, becomes disillusioned and has visions of greater things back in Russia. As the title indicates, this is a story of repatriation, rather than the expatriation that has been an inspiration for so many expats writing in America. That unique element, plus the exotic locale of Russia (I'm a sucker for exotic locales), made this one a winner for me. This story appeared in Krasikov's debut, One More Year. Krasikov also appeared in our Year in Reading and penned a guest post for us.April 28, "Bullfighting" by Roddy Doyle - British suburban malaise takes wing to Iberia. In this very memorable story, Donal and his middle-aged buddies plan a guys' trip to Spain, where Doyle serves up a compelling mix. The guys all have fun, getting away from the families and all that, but Doyle also makes clear how circumscribed their lives really are and how finding real joy and escape is a near impossibility. Doyle's latest is a collection of stories, The Deportees.May 5, "Them Old Cowboy Songs" by Annie Proulx (registration required) - This was a very affecting story that stayed with me a long time and that I still remember vividly eight months after first reading it. Proulx captures the frontier, Western spirit as well as any writer ever has, but she certainly doesn't romanticize it. The hardships and loneliness faced by homesteaders Archie and Rose McLaverty are unfathomable to us today. A must read. This story appears in Proulx's most recent collection, Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3.May 12, "A Man Like Him" by Yiyun Li - This is a strange story with a surreal quality that seems common in contemporary Asian fiction. At its heart though, the story is about an older generation being bewildered and wounded by the younger. In China, where the story takes place, modernization has come quickly, and one imagines that the older folks must look upon the younger ones like aliens. In Li's story, an allegedly unfaithful father has been publicly pilloried on his daughter's popular blog and become something of a national scapegoat. Teacher Fei is sympathetic and tracks down the man, as much to commiserate with him as to try to understand. Li's debut novel The Vagrants comes out in February.May 19, "East Wind" by Julian Barnes - Another entry in the British suburban malaise column (though technically the malaise is felt by the seaside). Vernon lives in a small beach town. "He'd moved here to have no weather in his life." He isn't looking for love but unexpectedly finds it (or something like it) with Andrea, an immigrant waitress with East German roots. She's got a skeleton in the closet, one that was particular appropriate for an Olympic year. Barnes' latest is his memoir Nothing to be Frightened of.May 26, "The Full Glass" by John Updike - Updike makes his second appearance of 2008, and he's feeling old in this one, kicking off with the senior citizen narrator's pharmaceutical regimen. It's not long before he's reminiscing about growing up during the Great Depression and then alighting from one reminiscence to another with the notion of his various habits tying the memories together. A solid story that has a very different narrative arc from most of what appears in the magazine. Links: Ward SixJune 2, "A Night at the Opera" by Janet Frame - This brief story was a previously unpublished piece by the late writer from New Zealand. It is essentially a reverie - a distant memory - that bubbles up in the mind of an institutionalized woman as she watches a Marx Brothers film. Another more "experimental" piece than is typically seen in the magazine. Frame wrote Faces in the Water and several other novels.June 9 & 16, The Summer Fiction issue: "Natasha" by Vladimir Nabokov - A lovely line: "With a pout, Natasha counted the drops, and her eyelashes kept time." Last year, Verses and Versions, a collection of poetry translated by Nabokov was published. "Tits Up in a Ditch" by Annie Proulx (registration required) - Proulx paints tough life for Dakotah, born to a teen-aged mom, raised by her cruel grandparents. She gets married, has a baby, the marriage falls apart, and she joins the Army. The tragedies are laid on thick from there, but it's a vibrant, gripping read. "Don't Cry" by Mary Gaitskill (registration required) - This has a very "issues of the day" feel to it. Janice goes with her friend Katya to Ethiopia where Katya is looking to adopt a child. There are roadblocks both bureaucratic and emotional and all in all it's a solid story. The rendering of Ethiopia is nicely done. This is the title story in Gaitskill's forthcoming collection.June 23, "The Headstrong Historian" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - A sweeping story about a woman named Nwamgba, almost epic in its scope, and in following her life, we are witness to the many changes over the decades that overtake her land and people. Nwamgba bears a son Anikwenwa after many miscarriages but then is widowed. She sends Anikwenwa to school where he learns English. Adichie explores the distance that grows up between Nwamgba and Anikwenwa, she knowing only the old ways, he becoming steadily assimilated by the new. By the time Grace, Nwamgba's grand-daughter is born and comes of age, the generations are separated by a gulf, and the story itself becomes an intriguing parable of the changes that came to Africa in the 1900s, what many things were altered and what few things nonetheless endured. Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun won much praise when it was published.June 30, "Deep-Holes" by Alice Munro - Munro makes her second appearance of 2008. This story, like the prior week's story, covers decades. In this one, a family disintegrates and then two of its members come back into contact. It's not quite as good as "Free Radicals," but, being an Alice Munro story, it's still quite good.July 7 & 14, "Thirteen Hundred Rats" by T. Coraghessan Boyle - With the year only half over, Boyle logs his third appearance in the magazine. There are few "literary" writers that can base a story around the outlandish and pull it off. Were Boyle's stories to actually take place in real life, the climactic moments would be fodder for those "strange but true" stories that get forwarded to everyone's email inboxes. It's a quality that not all readers appreciate. This story, as the title suggests, involves quite a few rats. In my opinion Boyle pulls it off. But then, I'm a Boyle fan. Links: Too Shy to Stop.July 21, "Yurt" by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum - A very fun read. This story takes us into an elementary school, among harried, altruistic teachers and their petty gossip. I loved how Bynum adopts the proscribed vocabulary of the elementary school, referring to all her characters as Ms. or Mr. The big news in the teachers' lounge is that the flighty Ms. Duffy has returned pregnant from a long trip overseas. There's much to love here. It doesn't have the ponderousness of emotion that so many New Yorker stories bear. The story is an excerpt from the novel Ms. Hempel Chronicles.July 28, "The Teacher" by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - A rather strange story and fairly memorable, though we're getting into the last half of 2008 here, so I suppose I didn't read this all that long ago. This one could have been tightened up a bit, but I loved the off-kilter characters: the narrator, two spinsters, and some sort of latter day mystic. I have no real-life analogs for them, yet they leaped off the page for me. The plot was less intriguing to me, however. A little tighter, and this story would have been a favorite. Jhabvala won the Booker Prize in 1983 for Heat and Dust. Links: EmdashesAugust 4, "Clara" by Roberto Bolaño - 2008 was the year of Bolaño, and the New Yorker took part in the surge of interest surrounding the late author. This brief story seems almost in a dream. The narrator is in love with Clara. They write letters to each other and talk on the phone from afar. The distance between them seems more than just physical. It's as if the universe has willed it. Bolaño's 2666 was published in translation to much acclaim last year.August 11 & 18, "The Dinner Party" by Joshua Ferris - More suburban malaise. This time of the variety that takes place in Brooklyn. But it's not about a dinner party so much as waiting for a dinner party to occur. The dinner party is one of the mundanities of life - the couple hosting the party clearly thinks so - but much as we rebel against these mundanities it doesn't take much to make you realize that bitching and moaning isn't rebelling. This story has suspense and a very nice narrative arc that I won't ruin by divulging its details. Ferris' debut Then We Came to the End was a National Book Award finalist. Ferris appeared in our Year in Reading in 2007. Links: Too Shy to Stop, I Read A Short Story TodayAugust 25, "Awake" by Tobias Wolff - This tiny story is a well rendered little sketch. Wolff takes us into the head of Richard, lying awake in bed, musing on various things and wanting to put the moves Ana, his girlfriend, lying next to him. The story captures well the competing influences in the mind of the young man: sex and all the complications that come with the pursuit of it. Wolff's Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories came out last year. Links: Under the Midnight Sun, One Real Story, Too Shy to StopSeptember 1, "Gorse is Not People" by Janet Frame - This is the second story by the late Frame in the magazine in 2008 and this one is pretty mind blowing. Written in 1954, it's about a dwarf named Naida, who, living very much in her own head, believes that she will be released on her 21st birthday from the institution that houses her. She also believes that she will get married and live some kind of glamorous life. It's clear that Naida is mentally disturbed and that she would likely not fare well on the "outside," but she is also incredibly sympathetic. Frame captures Naida's odd mindset that fuses child-like thoughts with adult desires. It's a powerful, affecting story that is a major departure from what is typically found in the magazine.September 8, "Face" by Alice Munro - Munro lands in the magazine for a third time in 2008. Like "Deep-Holes" from earlier in 2008, "Face" covers almost a whole lifetime in a short story. The narrator has a troubling childhood featuring a cruel father and a large birthmark on his face. The narrator grows up and becomes a successful radio actor and announcer ("He has a face for radio" was the juvenile thought that crept into my head) and in his old age is reminiscing about a childhood event that haunts him, when his birthmark came into focus for him and when his life was seemingly set on the course that has taken him through the decades. Munro makes one think that many novels might be better served as short stories, particularly in the hands of a master like her. Links: I Read A Short Story TodaySeptember 15, "A Spoiled Man" by Daniyal Mueenuddin - I found this story to be irresistibly charming because its protagonist was so irrepressible. Rezak insinuates himself into a job among the large staff on the estate of a man and his American wife. He lives in a home of his own construction that might be best described as a crate and breaks it down and moves it with him wherever he goes. Much time is spent describing Rezak's ingenious modifications to the crate. Rezak is, it seems, a man who would be happy almost no matter what. He even finds himself a wife. But the realities of Rezak's circumstances eventually close in on him. Mueenuddin's debut collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders will be published in February. Links: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders was one of Manil Suri's Year in Reading picks.September 22, "The Noble Truths of Suffering" by Aleksandar Hemon - I'm generally a big fan of Hemon's work though I'll acknowledge that it seems like he goes back to the same well for all of his fiction, plumbing his own experience of leaving Bosnia before the war and trying to assimilate into American life (and particularly American academic and literary life). In this story Hamon's narrator is back in Bosnia, returned from the U.S., but he is still at prey to the awkwardness of his double life, illuminated when through a confluence of events, a famous American author visiting the country ends up joining him at his parents' house for dinner. There is a neat story within a story element to this one as well (another hallmark that crops up in Hemon's work). Hemon's latest is 2008 National Book Award finalist The Lazarus Project. Links: Under the Midnight Sun.September 29 "Three" by Andrea Lee - Three vignettes about three people who died. This story didn't do much for me. Even though I read it just three months ago, I had trouble remembering it. Did I inadvertantly skip this one? Could be. Lee's latest is Lost Hearts in ItalyOctober 6, "The Idiot President" by Daniel Alarcon - Alarcon appears in the New Yorker fairly frequently. This story, like his others, takes place in Latin America. In this one, the narrator expects to be leaving for America soon, but in the meantime he has joined an acting troupe, traveling around. They put on a memorable performance in a mining town for the workers there. There's not much drama here. It's mostly a tale of the narrator's stasis. Alarcon's most recent novel is Lost City Radio. Links: Under the Midnight Sun.October 13, "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl" by Yiyun Lee - The second story by Li in 2008 and this one is also very good. It is about a middle-aged, unmarried man, Hanfeng, and woman, Siyu. Hanfang's mother, Professor Dai, was Siyu's teacher. Dai is the formidable sort and would like to see the two married, less out of compassion that out of a desire to see the two of them squared away. Siyu and Hanfeng pursue the relationship in order to please Professor Dai, but the pleasure in the story is the way Yi explores the relationships and teases the back story out of the various interactions.October 20, "Sleep" by Roddy Doyle - This is Doyle's second story of 2008, and it's a snack of a story filled with musing and reminiscing. In some ways the story is about being with someone and what you think about while they sleep - when you are alone, but not really because that person is right next to you - but the story is about a lot more too.October 27, "The Boy Who Had Never Seen the Sea" by J.M.G. Le Clezio (registration required) - Le Clezio raised his profile quite a bit in the U.S. this year with his surprise Nobel Prize win, but I regret to say that this story was a major dud for me. There's just nothing to hang your hat on in this one. Daniel is the boy of the title, and though he has never seen the sea, he is obsessed with it. So he leaves his boarding school and heads to the water. I didn't enjoy the thoroughly dreamy language in this one, nor the lack of specifics. It was told like a myth or parable but for no reason that I could discern. It was as if Le Clezio was using the dreamy style to excuse himself from the constraint of constructing a believable narrative. Links: After Le Clezio won the big prize, we heard from one of his American publishers.November 3, "The Fat Man's Race" by Louise Erdrich - The New Yorker continues to go back through its roster of writers as Erdrich makes a second appearance on the year. This one is the magazine's most bite-sized of the year, an amuse bouche as all eyes turn to the election. It's about a woman who is sleeping with devil, which maybe makes it fitting for election week. This story may or may not be in Erdrich's new collection The Red Convertible.November 10, "Leopard" by Wells Tower - A very inventive story from Tower whose fiction and non-fiction I'd love to see more of in the New Yorker. This one is told in the second person about (by?) an unpopular eleven-year-old boy. Tower gets into the boy's head incredibly well - the perpetually wounded pride, the outlandish fantasies that punish those who have wronged him. This story appears in Tower's excellent forthcoming collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. Links: Sana Krasikov picked Tower's collection for her Year in Reading and Tower appeared in our Year in Reading as well.November 17, "Lostronaut" by Jonathan Lethem - This story was pretty awesome. It was the only speculative fiction to land in the New Yorker this year, not quite making up for the absence of Murakami and Saunders from the magazine's pages. This story is told in the form of letters from Janice, a "Lostronaut" aboard some sort of space station, to her "Dearest Chase." She and her fellow astronauts are trapped in orbit by Chinese space mines and that's not even the worst of it for poor Janice. While the premise and epistolary style are intriguing, Janice's unique, irrepressible voice really carries the story. Lethem has an as yet untitled novel slated for September. Links: DiscoverNovember 24, "Ghosts" by Edwidge Danticat - This story takes us way out of the New Yorker comfort zone to the rundown neighborhoods of Haiti. It looks at Pascal, a young man who occupies two worlds. His parents run a fairly upstanding restaurant but Pascal has been befriended by the gang members who patronize the place. Pascal gets in a bit too deep with them and the result is quite gripping. Danticat's most recent book is her memoir Brother, I'm Dying.December 1, "In Other Rooms, Other Wonders" by Daniyal Mueenuddin - It took me a while to get into this very long story but in the end I liked it quite a bit. It basically chronicles the relationship between an old Pakistani patriarch Harouni and his young mistress Husna. Husna is not of the same social standing as Harouni but her proximity to him allows her to experience an extravagant life. She seems to understand the trade-off, but not enough to maintain her position once Harouni's daughters appear on the scene. This story, along with Mueenuddin's earlier in 2008, shows off an expansive, almost lyrical style. This is the title story in Mueenuddin's forthcoming debut collection.December 8, "Waiting" by Amos Oz - This was an engaging story about a daily routine interrupted. There is a bit of mystery behind it. Instead of meeting small-town Israeli bureaucrat Benny Avni for lunch as she always does, Avni's wife has sent him a cryptic note. Avni is very rigid in his ways and so we follow him through all of his perfectly sensible rationalizations for Luda's sudden change in behavior. The enjoyment (if that is the right word) comes in watching a sense of concern creep into the actions of this otherwise aloof man. Oz has a new book Rhyming Life and Death coming out in April.December 15, "The Woman of the House" by William Trevor - Trevor, perhaps the most frequent fiction contributor to the New Yorker over the last decade, makes his first appearance of 2008. I'm not a huge fan of Trevor's gray, damp landscapes and characters but he is no doubt a masterful storyteller and a genius with the British version of suburban malaise. This one is unique in that it places a pair of itinerant, immigrant painters at the center of the action. Told partly through their eyes, the story of the woman living as caretaker for her crippled cousin is seen from an outsider's perspective. The prolific Trevor's most recent collection is Cheating at Canasta.December 22 & 29 - The year closes out with the annual winter fiction issue (slimmer than usual this time). There were four stories in this one. Here they are in order from my most favorite to least: "Another Manhattan" by Donald Antrim, "Some Women" by Alice Munro (a fourth New Yorker appearance in 2008!) (registration required), "The Gangsters" by Colson Whitehead (registration required), and "Meeting with Enrique Lihn" by Roberto Bolaño.And to wrap up this already overlong exercise, my favorite New Yorker stories of 2008 were "Wakefield" by E.L. Doctorow, "Free Radicals" by Alice Munro, "The Lie" by T. Coraghessan Boyle, "Them Old Cowboy Songs" by Annie Proulx, "Yurt" by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, "The Dinner Party" by Joshua Ferris, "Gorse is Not People" by Janet Frame, "Leopard" by Wells Tower, "Lostronaut" by Jonathan Lethem, and "Another Manhattan" by Donald Antrim.Bonus Link: The 2008 Year in Reading series