We wouldn’t dream of abandoning our vast semi–annual Most Anticipated Book Previews, but we thought a monthly reminder would be helpful (and give us a chance to note titles we missed the first time around). Here’s what we’re looking out for this month. For more February titles — and there are a ton — check out the Great First-Half 2017 Preview.
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders: For Saunders fans, the prospect of a full-length novel from the short-story master has been something to speculate upon, if not actually expect. Yet Lincoln in the Bardo is a full 368-page blast of Saunders — dealing in the 1862 death of Abraham Lincoln’s son, the escalating Civil War, and, of course, Buddhist philosophy. Saunders has compared the process of writing longer fiction to “building custom yurts and then somebody commissioned a mansion” — and Saunders’s first novel is unlikely to resemble any other mansion on the block. (Jacob)
To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell: Millions staffer and author of Millions Original Epic Fail O’Connell brings his superb writing and signature wit and empathy to a nonfiction exploration of the transhumanist movement, complete with cryogenic freezing, robots, and an unlikely presidential bid from the first transhumanist candidate. O’Connell’s sensibility — his humanity, if you will — and his subject matter are a match made in heaven. It’s an absolutely wonderful book, but don’t take my non-impartial word for it: Nicholson Baker and Margaret Atwood have plugged it too. (Lydia)
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li: The Oakland-based Li delivers this memoir of chronic depression and a life lived with books. Weaving sharp literary criticism with a perceptive narrative about her life as an immigrant in America, Your Life isn’t as interested in exploring how literature helps us make sense of ourselves as it is in how literature situates us amongst others. (Ismail)
The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen: Pulitzer Prize Winner Nguyen’s short story collection The Refugees has already received starred pre-publication reviews from Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, among others. Nguyen’s brilliant new work of fiction offers vivid and intimate portrayals of characters and explores identity, war, and loss in stories collected over a period of two decades. (Zoë)
Shadowbahn by Steve Erickson: Well, it sounds like it’s got it all: the Badlands, the Twin Towers, Elvis’s resurrected twin brother, all put together to create what Jonathan Lethem called “a playlist for the dying American century.” He told Granta this was the best novel he read all year. (Lydia)
Amiable with Big Teeth by Claude McKay: A significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance, McKay is best-known for his novel Home to Harlem — which was criticized by W.E.B. Dubois for portraying black people (i.e. Harlem nightlife) as prurient — “after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath.” The novel went on to win the prestigious (if short-lived) Harmon Gold Medal and is widely praised for its sensual and brutal accuracy. In 2009, UPenn English professor Jean-Christophe Cloutier discovered the unpublished Amiable with Big Teeth in the papers of notorious, groundbreaking publisher Samuel Roth. A collaboration between Cloutier and Brent Hayes Edwards, a long-awaited, edited, scholarly edition of the novel will be released by Penguin in February. (Sonya)
The Schooldays of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee: This sequel to the Nobel Prize-winning South African author’s 2013 novel The Childhood of Jesus picks up shortly after Simón and Inés flee from authorities with their adopted son, David. Childhood was a sometimes thin-feeling allegory of immigration that found Coetzee meditating with some of his perennial concerns — cultural memory, language, naming, and state violence — at the expense of his characters. In Schooldays, the allegorical element recedes somewhat into the background as Coetzee tells the story of David’s enrollment in a dance school, his discovery of his passion for dancing, and his disturbing encounters with adult authority. This one was longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize. (Ismail)
A Separation by Katie Kitamura: A sere and unsettling portrait of a marriage come undone, critics are hailing Kitamura’s third book as “mesmerizing” and “magnificent.” The narrator, a translator, goes to a remote part of Greece in search of her serially unfaithful husband, only to be further unmoored from any sense that she (and in turn the reader) had of the contours of their shared life. Blurbed by no fewer than six literary heavyweights — Rivka Galchen, Jenny Offill, Leslie Jamison, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, and Karl Ove Knausgaard — A Separation looks poised to be the literary Gone Girl of 2017. (Kirstin B.)
The Weight of Him by Ethel Rohan: Set in rural Ireland, the accomplished short-story writer’s debut novel takes on suicide, grief, overeating, and getting on. A novel that “that speaks to the essential core of our shared human experience,” says Robert Olen Butler. (Lydia)
Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan: A debut about motherhood, art, and living across cultures focusing on a young Japanese woman who abandons her son. Alexander Chee says it is “the kind of novel our century deserves.” (Lydia)
Lower Ed by Tressie McMillan Cottom: Academic and Twitter eminence McMillan Cottom tackles a subject that, given a recent spate of lawsuits, investigations, and closings, was front-page news for a good part of 2016. Drawing on interviews with students, activists, and executives at for-profit colleges and universities, Lower Ed aims to connect the rise of such institutions with ballooning levels of debt and larger trends of income inequality across the U.S. (Kirstin B.)
Awful all around, for all of them.
I think the US covers are so much better. They are more subtle and more artistic. I was pleasantly surprised!
— Radhika.
Such a thought provoking and in-depth analysis of the work, AMPruteanu.
Its clear from this that America is way better than the UK!!
Go team America!!
Yay!!!
UK = visit a dentist already!!!
Jimmy Nowhere: when they pay me for that, I’ll give them that. Until then, though: Nyet!
Have you seen the UK cover for Knut Hamsun’s Hunger?
It’s awful.
Never judge a book by its cover they say….
Obviously they’re never read the Necronomicon ;)
They have tails you know…(Brits that is)
My cousin/brother Jeb told me so.
I’ve even heard that some of the books they read have plain covers with just the name of the book on it!! Sometimes only down the spine!!!
They have big dusty old libraries with these plain covered books and people actually read them!!! 80
Its a mad, mad world and no mistake!!
It isn’t that one set of covers are better or worse than the other it is good that publishers recognise the different sensibilities of 2 seperate sets of readers. perhaps we could work on the spelling next.
P-lease! Don’t get me started on the spelling!!!
I’m pretty sure they learnt modern English from us Americans (You only have to read Charles Dickens to understand how backward they were before we educated them on modern English)
I love the accent though; “Aw-roight Mary, spare us cupla bob!”
so twee…
“seperate”
“Aluminium”
“Honour, Colour.”
An obsession with the letter ‘u’ maybe?
(If you line up lots of u’s it kind of looks like teeth:
uuuuuuuuu
They have wooden teeth you know….
F.A.C.T.
(The Queen mother did in fact had plywood teeth)
Actually judging from the perspective of which books I would be more likely to pick up to read the blurb – for the most part (perhaps one exception) I prefer the UK covers. Could not always tell you why. I certainly wouldn’t presume to say the US covers are awful (well one or two really put me off) but simply that they do not attract me in the same way.
Great article!
The ignorant/rude/offensive people in the comments? Not so much.
Or person, should I say.
This is strange: in the years since I’ve been following TMN’s Tournament of Books, this marks the first time that I’ve preferred the US editions over the UK. Except with “Freedom” and “So Much for All That.” That giant bird drives me nuts.
You should compare covers of the John Cleaver series by Dan Wells. They’re also in Germany (and look at the cover from Taiwan from the first book).
Great piece; I find it fascinating that although we English and Americans are very similar in many respects, that there are also some beautiful finite differences that make us wonderfully unique.
I can’t agree on this whole spelling deal though! – ‘English’ grammar on the whole is an organic entity and changes have appeared throughout the 20th Century on both sides of the Atlantic. Hundreds of words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary every year, I’m sure the same applies state-side…
NB: The American spelling ‘Aluminum’ is in fact scientifically correct; When this new material was presented to English engineers, they, in their wisdom changed it!
(The queen Mum did in fact have very bad teeth though i’m sure they were spruce not plywood!!)
vive le difference as they say…
> I did think that the Necronomicon post was funny though!!
Like it or not, ‘Dwayne the Rude’ is one funny guy!
We are very good at laughing at ourselves over here ;)
200 years ago Noah Webster changed the spelling when he did his dictionary.
Generally, the UK covers have a little more tone, but adaptability to local tastes is a dine idea.
Comments (above) about dumbed-down American spelling are pointless and incredibly self-defensive!
Is oversimplification really the first principle of everything in the US?
“fine idea”, of course.
Generally the American covers are more artistic.
What’s clearly noticeable though is the fact that 90% of UK covers have snippets of acclaims or praise from sources, be it newspapers or other authors. This plays as a major selling point for the books from my study of the UK market.
As an American, I could not say which is better–we are all culture bound. I can critique the art tho.
The Brit ROOM for instance offers great claustraphobic effect with the gradient as if looking through a window and the strectched text on ROOM give the effect of a magnifying glass. So that house is really small. The Am. ROOM suggests a child and maybe an angry child which I don’t find as interesting.
The Brit FREEDOM has vertical text which is harder to read. The Am FREEDOM has eye catching text and nice colors.
SO MUCH FOR THAT on the Brit ver is harder to read than the Am. but the opposite ti true of the next book, SUPER SAD.
To Dwayne Davies:
The British fascination with the letter ‘U’ is actually a very successful innovation on their part.
It makes drawing the ‘U’ to a Scrabble rack much less of a threat.
^ U’s used to be V’s – (Ancient stonemasons found it easier to carve a V than a U.)
I live near a city called Bath, Roman Name: Aqvae Svlis
V’s like, 4 points, U’s only 1 point :(
I therefore blame the Romans for my poor Scrabble scores.
There is one big difference between the US and UK. The UK still publishes a lot of quality writing,= and has many excellent bookstores. The US tends to publish cookbooks, romance novels and self-help trash. The difference may be that the British still teach English in schools. Most people here in the US find People magazine challenging.
Just pop in any American bookstore–what do you find. Anything BUT books and then cookbooks and self-help trash.
Dear Dwayne Davies…
Give it a break. Or get a job. You obviiously have too much time on your hands given the number of off-topic posts…
I thought the good ‘ol US would be crushed in this one, but I’m pleasantly surprised to see that we faired pretty well. I’m one of those nerds that would lean towards purchasing a book (or any product) just because of the design. I appreciate the insightful reviews after each example.
me being neither American not English i would say i have unbiased opinions and I think for all the books except for freedom i prefer the UK book covers are much better since I am guilty as charge of judging books by their cover i would have choose the UK ones every time (except for freedom) without even knowing which one it belongs two!!!!!
~Cuz Diamond is nothing but coal that did well under pressure~
You can’t really tell from the picture, but the UK Super Sad… has a coloured foil effect that, IMHO, works very well.
IMHO:
“The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”: US. US version reminds me of the paintings of Wayne Thiebaud: Happy, but with a haunting quality. The UK version looks like a still life with cake, lemons, and human being. That’s kind of creepy when you think about it.
“Room”. UK. A hauntingly beautiful quality about it. Little house draws us into picture, and might draw me into the book itself. The US version is more scary-creepy-disturbing.
“A Visit from the Goon Squad”. US. I like Jennifer Egan, and the bigger her name is on the book the more likely I am to read it. The UK version is just kinda’ weird with the letters falling like coal on an umbrella. What’s that about?
“Freedom”. US. It’s pretty, and it has a whole bird and not just some lame feather like the UK version.
“So Much For That”. US. Bold colors and torn picture suggest more than a place setting where if you look closely the knife has been replaced by a box cutter (or is that a fountain pen?). I like orange in books. It reminds me of my copy of “A Clockwork Orange”.
“Super Sad True Love Story”. US. A tongue-in-cheek, over-the-top title deserves a similar cover. The UK version is too muted and convoluted in tone. The US version is as in-your-face as the title.
jeez, could’ve you have been ANY more bias against the UK??
could’ve been a good article…
wasn’t
I am a writer and I design my own book covers completelty by myself. Who else knows better than me how to visualize the content of my manuscript?
Completelety = completely
Hehe, completelty
I find it interesting that for the “unbearable Sadness of Lemon Cake”, the UK cover emphasises the “Sadness” whereas the US cover emphasises the “Lemon Cake”. Far be it from me to draw any conclusions from that. :-)
Reading some of these comments are quite funny, “Visit a dentist already” & “Plain covers with only the title down the spine”, guys come on, really? Don’t believe everything you hear. The U.S version of most of the books are better, which is a shame really as it’s the covers that draw you in, oh well, I think more time needs to be spent deciding on the cover designs over here in Britatin.