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Falling in Love with a Mirage: The Millions Interviews Martha Anne Toll

Jody Hobbs Hesler - 9.20.2022 | 1 book mentioned

Martha Anne Toll’s debut novel, Three Muses, published today by Regal House, centers on prima ballerina Katya Symanova and psychiatrist John Curtain, whose love story is troubled by each of their fraught relationships with the past. After losing her mother at a young age, Katya hands herself over to relentless discipline and a manipulative partnership with her choreographer, all in pursuit of balletic excellence. John, who was forced as a child to sing to the kommandant of the concentration camp that murdered his family, helps patients but struggles to confront his own past and tainted connection to music. Throughout, the novel and its central love story are inspired and animated by the Greek Muses of Song, Discipline, and Memory. A professionally trained violist and lifelong ballet devotee, Toll brings her passions to bear on this sweeping tale of music, memory, discipline, and loss. Debuting at 64, after a career dedicated to social and racial justice, she also brings earned wisdom to the human complexities she explores. This is her first novel, but not her first rodeo. Her fiction and essays appear in a wide variety of journals, and her book reviews and author interviews appear regularly in The Millions, NPR Books, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. Jody Hobbs Hesler: Let’s start with your inspiration. Can you walk us through the Muse origin story and how these Muses shaped your novel? Martha Anne Toll: In 2010, I was casting around for a framework for a new novel. Browsing the internet, I discovered the three Muses who were part of the mythology on the Greek island of Boeotia: Song, Discipline, and Memory. I conceived of the character of John—saved and damned by his singing—as loosely affiliated with Song; and Katya with her commitment to ballet as loosely affiliated with Discipline. As I refined drafts, I used language associated with Song to describe John, and language associated with prayer and Discipline to describe Katya. Memory exerts tremendous power over both Katya and John. They are burdened with Memory, but they draw solace from it as well. In Katya’s case, Memory holds the key to her future. JHH: John and Katya both carry such heavy pasts. Could you speak more about how memory shapes them? MAT: Trauma is ongoing. For many, it’s necessary to plumb traumatic memories and address them head-on. That is certainly the case with John, a Holocaust survivor. John’s role as a psychiatrist is to help his patients investigate their own memories in order to heal. Our first 18 years—our childhoods—contain powerful memories. As we get older, we may interpret or understand those memories differently. I believe we have to reach a certain age and emotional stamina to handle some memories. That is the case with Katya. She has to grow up before she can handle the truth about her mother’s death. As for John, he would prefer not to remember any of his trauma. It was common in the camps for people to be desperate to have someone to bear witness. People hid messages in the mud and tried to find other ways to share the horrors of their experience. Bearing witness to that level of trauma and genocide is essential. It is another form of expressing collective memory. As Jews, we have been around for 4,000 years and have been dispersed for thousands of years. We are still being dispersed. Our collective memory holds us together. JHH: Music and ballet have been formative passions in your life. Can you share some of that background and some of the joys and challenges of translating those passions into the mechanics of story? MAT: I fell in love with ballet when I took my first class at age four. I worked and studied, but truly had no talent. But I had the immense privilege of watching professional dancers rehearsing throughout my childhood and attended as much ballet as came to my hometown of Philadelphia. I became very serious about viola when I began taking lessons at age 14. My teacher, Max Aronoff, was in the first graduating class at the Curtis Institute of Music and helped found the Curtis String Quartet. He deconstructed how to get the richest sound out of an instrument that is unwieldy and large. He also had a gift for teaching bowing technique. When I turned my attention to writing, my primary challenge was to get these two transitory and ephemeral artforms onto the page. I think that that will remain a lifelong challenge. I had three goals: to convey the total immersion necessary for a dancer or musician to learn their craft. There are no “overnight successes”; it is work, work, work, even for the most talented artists. Second, I wanted to convey the euphoria that comes with “nailing it,” as well as the frustration and rarity of attaining that. And third, I wanted to share the joy of the audience experience. JHH: The ballets in Three Muses exist only in your novel. What were some challenges, and rewards, of inventing and choreographing original, yet utterly imaginary, dances? How did you choose the music, “map” the dance sequences, and translate it all into words on the page? MAT: In early drafts, I used well known ballets, such as Swan Lake, and tried to write the story around them. After a couple of drafts, I realized I was too constrained by “real” ballets, so I began making up my own. I didn’t so much “map” out ballets as offer a taste of them. I used my background in music to research and consider what selections would mesh with the particular section of the story. I put a lot of time into choosing titles for the ballets, so that those, too, could lend clues to the story. By providing the opening dance steps and a window into rehearsals, as well as a sense of the music’s mood, I felt—and hoped—that the reader would fill in the rest. JHH: John and Katya are so driven and determined that their passions sometimes compete against their desires. We want them to choose joy, frivolity, love, and fun sometimes, but we know they’ll suffer for what they’d sacrifice in the bargain. Can you talk about that tension? MAT: You’re right about the tensions: John and Katya have these tensions on steroids! Katya is someone whom I could never be—her single-minded devotion to dance is something I endlessly admire but could not have done myself. Although she represents an ideal for me, I worry about her tendency to foreclose opportunities for love. For me, these same professional and personal tensions cause work-life balance issues every day. I think they are magnified for women, and that much more magnified for women who strive for the pinnacle of a very rarified artform. John suffers from a different set of tensions. He feels enormous pressure to succeed in America because he is the only one of his family who survived. His own expectations drive him forward. And as a refugee, he finds it difficult to get fully comfortable in American culture and with American romantic ideals. His early relationship with Ann, the office secretary, is meant to show his awkwardness with his adopted country. For all these reasons, including the violent, early loss of his family and his destroyed childhood, he has unrealistic expectations about love. He falls in love with a mirage—a prima ballerina on stage—and has little inclination to check his fantasies, despite his psychiatric training. On the other hand, I believe deeply in the power of love and am interested in its many facets, including when singular passion and drive can be detrimental to partnered love, which is ultimately what I’m exploring in Three Muses. JHH: Your own interests and identities often overlap with those of your characters, so I wonder if you’d like to share any personal or family stories that may have helped inspire their conflicts? MAT: I knew and am related to people who survived the Holocaust. There is a kind of osmosis when extended family members have German or Polish accents and come to Thanksgiving with numbers tattooed on their forearms. With virtually no formal Jewish education, the Holocaust was in many ways my introduction to Judaism. My father was a WWII vet and was wounded in the early days of the Battle of the Bulge. The war was a consuming interest for him. My mother’s cousin was from Mainz, Germany—the inspiration for John’s boyhood home—and lost her family in Auschwitz. Her unsuccessful struggle to get her father and sister out of Germany haunted her for the rest of her life. She wrote an autobiography for the family that helped me understand the extent to which Jews were fully assimilated into society. Their life in Germany was like Jewish life in America: exclusion, expulsion, and mass murder were inconceivable. To paraphrase the historian Peter Gay, he did not know he was Jewish until the Nazis came to power. As to the inspiration for Katya, she came fully formed into my head. I very much understand the struggle for mastery of an artistic discipline: as a child, I watched dancers practice incessantly. I trained to be a professional violist and am close to many professional musicians. Artistic immersion was a formative part of my youth and young adulthood. There are many parallels between the pressure and disappointments and perseverance in music and those in ballet. JHH: Researching the Holocaust, and the very specific roles like the one John had in the camps, of singing for the kommandant, must have been harrowing, to say the least. How did you pace yourself? What were some things you learned that didn’t make it into the book but that you wish people still knew? MAT: I’ve read extensively about the Holocaust since my early teens. Copious memoirs and historical accounts helped me imagine what it must have been like for John, even though none of us can really understand it. But in my zeal to understand as much as I can, I’ve immersed myself in this material without regard to pacing. I feel compelled to take in whatever I can, no matter how harrowing. It has been an immense gift to know people who survived, and to listen to their stories and wisdom. But this is the exception. A common fallout from trauma is silence: there is not only pain, but shame and survivor’s guilt. As I got older, I started asking a lot more questions and seeking out more details from friends and acquaintances whose parents and grandparents were Holocaust survivors. It helped me get away from generalities, and think about specific people and specific lives, which is what I tried to create with John. Some of the stories seeped into Three Muses, and others came from my imagination, which was grounded in research. Of course, many things got left on the cutting room floor. For me, the most important lessons are that the Holocaust can happen anywhere, anytime, and so we must guard against any kind of bigotry and racism; and that there is very rarely closure for the victims of such an experience. [millions_email]

The Millions Interview

Writing Is Thinking: Martha Anne Toll in Conversation with Ed Simon

Martha Anne Toll - 7.28.2021 | 1 book mentioned

As both a daily reader and somewhat frequent contributor, I have long been a devotee of The Millions. In the last several years, I have also become an Ed Simon devotee. Ed’s articles in The Millions are not only fresh and surprising, they are also always about something I had no idea I needed to know. Simon is an intellectual omnivore; his essays cover an awe-inspiring range of topics. So, I was delighted to read Simon’s quirky, wonderful, and informative new book, An Alternative History of Pittsburgh. At 182 pages, this 5” by 7” volume reads like a microcosm of American history, warts and all. The book is composed in short chapters, largely chronological, that read as both love letter to Simon’s hometown and an effort to reckon with Pittsburgh’s past—the good, the bad, and the ugly. From Socrates to August Wilson, from Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano (whose Open Veins of Latin America is a classic on the deleterious impacts of America ravaging Latin America) to Andrew Carnegie’s rapaciousness, to Pittsburgh’s role as an early American frontier town, to Billy Strayhorn, Major League Baseball, and so much more, An Alternative History of Pittsburgh contains gems on every page. The book starts in 300 million BCE with a dive into the geologic characteristics that make Pittsburgh unique, and ends in 1985 with the collapse of Pittsburgh’s legendary steel industry due to globalization. In its overarching sweep, coupled with its specificity to place, this book called to mind Tiya Miles’s eye-opening The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits. Simon sums up his feelings about Pittsburgh toward the end of book: “It must be admitted that the place is almost preternaturally charged with a broken beauty, a tinge of the numinous throughout the landscape itself.” I was excited to catch up with Simon by email. Martha Anne Toll: How did you come to the subject of Pittsburgh, other than growing up there? Ed Simon: I'd always wanted to write a Pittsburgh book. When I was an undergraduate at Washington and Jefferson, I tinkered at a super-pretentious Pynchonesque exercise of a novel that I titled Fourteenth Ward, and that I imagine is still in a box in my mother's basement. I rightly abandoned it, but I wonder if this new, slim volume is an attempt to do what I couldn't do with that novel, even as different as the two exercises are. Pittsburgh gets very deep in the marrow of people who are from there. Folks I knew in high school who took great pride in moving to New York, or California, or wherever, bedeck their social media in black and gold on particular days in the autumn. It may sound tautological, but because I'm from Pittsburgh I had to write about Pittsburgh. MAT: The research in this book must have been a massive undertaking. How did you do it? ES: As with a lot of my writing—though not all— much of the research was done while I was writing the book. When writing an essay, I normally have a very narrow, circumscribed understanding of what I'm going to cover. A lot of that research is done in a traditional way, i.e., I gather the books I'm going to need, I read what I need, I assemble notes, I organize a flexible outline, and so on. For this book, each one of the chapters— which are short, discrete, and fragmentary— was like writing a type of hyper-intense flash non-fiction. I’d gather what I needed while writing an individual section. While writing those fragments I might come across a reference or footnote that pushed me to some book that I had no idea existed, and I'd mine what I could. This is true for any book, but An Alternative History of Pittsburgh is also a record of me learning about Pittsburgh itself. MAT: How did you organize what you found? ES: When I put together my proposal for Belt Publishing, I already had a detailed outline of all 40 chapters, with their synopses as fleshed out as possible. I knew roughly what I wanted for the structure of the book, a largely chronological collection of discrete narratives, character sketches, and thematic arguments. I hoped the relationships between the chapters would manifest an argument about the significance of Pittsburgh that was less historical or scholarly and more literary. There were certain places, people, and events I knew would be in the book—Fort Pitt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, the collapse of the steel industry. I also had more obscure, idiosyncratic things that I wanted to cover, like the utopian colony of the Harmonists, or the 1877 anarchist railroad strike. Ultimately, about 90 percent of what I proposed ended up in the book. Some chapters were merged, some were expanded, and a few were cut entirely. MAT: Are you a Damon Young fan? I ran into him at the 2019 National Antiracist Book Festival and was too starstruck to speak, other than to blurt out that I was a huge fan. ES: I am! I was an avid reader of his work with Very Smart Brothas, and his book of essays What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker is simultaneously trenchant and hilarious. As a voice specific to Pittsburgh, Young is crucial in questioning the "Pittsburgh is the most livable city in America" narratives that have existed for my entire life, because he asks— and answers— "For whom is Pittsburgh most livable for?" A lot of Pittsburghers—myself included—are very much in love with the city, but white folks can be blinded to the profound inequities that endure in the city. Damon Young isn't the only young, gifted writer in Pittsburgh right now; there's Brian Broome whose Punch Me Up to the Gods is an amazing memoir, and Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, which has rightly been hailed as a potential future classic. Philyaw recently announced she's leaving Pittsburgh, and I'd encourage white Pittsburghers to read and think about the reasons why she gives for that decision. MAT: Thank you! I was gaga over Deesha Philyaw’s book and can’t recommend it highly enough. I look forward to reading Brian Broome’s. Can you talk to us about the Pittsburgh writers you discuss in your book? ES: For a city of its size, Pittsburgh has an imposing literary history. John Edgar Wideman, Annie Dillard, Michael Chabon, Rachel Carson, Jack Gilbert, Gerald Stern, W.D. Snodgrass, and of course August Wilson. We're overrepresented in fiction, poetry, and drama—Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, chronicling life in the Black neighborhood of the Hill District, is arguably the greatest triumph of the last half-century of American theater. Dillard is possibly the most significant chronicler of nature over the past several decades, as is Carson obviously, in a more explicitly scientific way. Gilbert is among the greatest of poets to write in the 20th century, even if he isn't a household name, as are Stern and Snodgrass. Chabon is a singularly brilliant writer who needs little introduction to the readers of The Millions, and Wideman's Homewood is every bit as visceral and ghost-haunted as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. MAT: How did you come to writing? ES: I've wanted to be a writer since I was a kid. My first essays geared for a wider public were published about a decade ago. At that time, I was working on my PhD, and the bulk of writing that I'd done was scholarly. I slowly began to transition toward writing creative nonfiction, essays, reviews, and so on. I don’t write for acclaim, and Christ knows I don't write for the money. I'm honored that anyone spends their limited time reading something I wrote. My essays pay for groceries, and that's not nothing. But I saw something on Twitter the other day, where the OP asked if people would still write if they knew nobody would read their stuff, and my thought was Well of course I would. Writers write, that's what we do—that's what we need to do. Writing is how I organize my experience and make sense of the world; in some ways writing is itself synonymous with thinking for me. MAT: Can you talk about the journey from academia to your current writing life? ES: Bluntly, the journey out of academia isn't necessarily a choice—it's mandatory these days, especially for millennial scholars. There simply aren't any tenure track jobs left, the profession itself is in free fall. While I know that being a fulltime faculty member must have its faults, my impression is that many working in that role have little clue how incredibly fortunate they were to do so before the profession was in decline. I'm incredibly envious. I'd love the romance of being a tenured professor somewhere, teaching students, and writing what I write right now, but with a salary and health insurance. MAT: Can you talk about your journey to this publisher? I first worked with Anne Trubek, founder and publisher at Belt, in 2015 when I wrote an essay for Belt Magazine entitled "The Sacred and the Profane in Pittsburgh," about St. Anthony's Chapel in Troy Hill on the Northside, which has more relics than anywhere but the Vatican. This was one of my earliest pieces that was popular—Neko Case tweeted a link! I've contributed something at least once or twice a year since. Belt Publishing is incredibly innovative and vital—Anne has created a small regional press with tremendous oomph. She’s addressing a conspicuous absence by highlighting writers and writing from the Rust Belt and the Midwest, regions that are often stereotyped, misunderstood, misinterpreted, or ignored by people on the coasts. The sheer variety of titles and authors that Anne has introduced to a wider audience is remarkable. My proposal was for an odd, unconventional book, halfway between a history and an impressionistic, fragmentary, creative nonfiction thing. Belt has been incredibly supportive, from proposal through publication. We’ve found a lot of readers, which speaks to the work that Belt does. MAT: Tell us about your writing for The Millions? What are your writing interests? And where do you seek inspiration? ES: The Millions is my literary home. I first started writing for them several years ago as a freelancer when Lydia Kiesling was editor, and I've been on staff since 2018. Both Lydia and now Adam Boretz have been incredible editors—supportive, insightful, and tolerant of my odder ideas. Since I've been a staff writer, I've been able to write all kinds of unconventional things. I'm so grateful and fortunate to find a wide audience for essays that might be viewed as too eccentric at other sites. I cover religion and history, sometimes writing in the same fragmentary style of my Pittsburgh book. Adam has also published a lot of my pieces centered in what I studied in graduate school, Renaissance literature, high theory, etc. I've done literary esoterica, things like a history of footnotes, an essay on marginalia, and a rumination on breaking the fourth wall. My fragment essays have been on things like a history of the color black, or accounts of people who've claimed to be messiahs, that sort of thing. There's no site like The Millions. When C. Max Magee founded it decades ago, he helped create an institution. It's a place that's not just focused on publishing, but that's also focused on reading. There's a huge difference. It's an honor to be able to contribute there. MAT: Tell us about your reading life. ES: Too much of my reading life is doom scrolling, but I'm the stay-at-home dad for a one-year-old. When you're exhausted, sometimes Twitter is the easiest thing to read. I try to keep up on the smart literary things that are published, so checking Arts and Letters Daily is a morning ritual. I try to keep in mind advice by Linda Troost, a fantastic professor at W&J, who said we should try to make sure that when we're at the (figurative) beach, we read a book from more than 200 years ago and a book from less than 20 years ago, so we can stay grounded in history and tradition and be open to the new. One incredible benefit to working at The Millions is that their much-loved year-end Year in Reading series provides an opportunity to stay grounded in contemporary literature. It keeps me centered in pleasure reading throughout the other 11 months of the year. I try keep up with new authors, or newish authors. Since January, I've read some fantastic novels, including Anna North’s Outlawed, Emily Nemens’s The Cactus League, Rufi Thorpe’s The Knockout Queen, Danielle Evans’s The Office of Historical Corrections, and the return of Andrea Lee in the incredible Red House Island. MAT: Did any books in particular influence your writing life? ES: If I could write something as sublime as Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading, I'd be content. He’s a model for a particular type of eccentric, essayistic, exploration of esoterica, an author who can mine threads of obscure information to make an argument about what it means to be human. He writes with a light touch, humor, erudition, and most importantly pure curiosity. MAT: What’s next for you? ES: This has been an incredibly busy year. I've got two more books coming out in 2021, and a third scheduled for 2022. The first is an anthology of writing which I coedited with philosopher Costica Bradatan entitled The God Beat: What Journalism Says About Faith and Why it Matters, released by Broadleaf on June 8. We had the opportunity to work with a lot of fantastic writers like Ann Neumann, Brooke Wilensky-Lanford, Tara Isabella Burton, Marcus Rediker, Simon Critchley, Daniel Camacho, and so on. It was a tremendous honor. The second book is an art book that I'm really proud of with the absolutely amazing title of Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology, which looks beautiful and will be published by Abrams in October, in time for Halloween. Finally, sometime in 2022, Broadleaf will be releasing a collection of my essays entitled Binding the Ghost: Theology, Mystery, and the Transcendence of Literature. There are a few other nascent projects that I'm also working on. MAT: I am in awe of your productivity! Anything else you want to talk about? ES: Thanks. When it comes to an audience for An Alternative History of Pittsburgh, I want people to know that this isn't just a book for Pittsburghers. One of the central arguments about the book is that Pittsburgh is a microcosm of America, and in its triumphs and failures, its exultation and wickedness, its good and its bad, there is something which the city can tell us about the nation of which it's a part. Now, when we're finally having a reckoning with what history really means, I hope my book can in some small way illuminate how we think about the past.

Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: Martha Anne Toll

Martha Anne Toll - 12.23.2020 | 1 book mentioned

Pandemic, Uprisings, Election. 300,000 senseless deaths and untold senseless misery, Black America demanding to be heard and honored, The Election. I got COVID, was sick for a couple of months, recovered, and leaned into audiobooks—blessedly available from our shuttered libraries—as I tried to regain stamina. In 2020, as in all other years, books were tonic and balm, escape, and lifeblood. I tend to group them in categories, even as categories are both useless and limiting. OBITUARY READS. I find gems reading writers’ obits, which I see as carrying on their legacy rather than a morbid fascination with death. A standout this year was Tunisian-French-Jewish-Arab writer Albert Memmi, who died at age 99. His autobiographical novel The Pillar of Salt (translated by Edouard Roditi) is a rich mélange of growing up poor and Jewish in the heart of a thriving polyglot city, the smells and tastes of Tunisian cooking, a young man’s thirst for education, and an interrogation of colonial oppression. I read my first Harold Bloom (I’d been avoiding him for years)—Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine—a fascinating exploration of cultural appropriation (Christianity appropriating Judaism). And while these do not qualify as Obit Reads, I’ll lump them here: The House of Childhood by Marie Luise Kaschnitz (translated by Anni Whissen), a weird and wonderful dreamlike visit to childhood, and Animal Farm by George Orwell (uncomfortably prescient). GRIEF. This year, there was plenty to go around. I loved Grief’s Country: A Memoir in Pieces by Gail Griffin, a blunt and searing look at widowhood; Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, a deeply humanitarian approach to treating trauma through identifying how the body holds it; The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir by Sara Seager, a renowned astrophysicist who weaves her journey to find life in the outer reaches of the universe with her trail through marriage, motherhood, widowhood, and beyond. MUSIC. I caught up with Stanley Crouch’s gorgeously written Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker. I loved the short, insightful essays in concert pianist Stephen Hough’s Rough Ideas: Reflections on Music and More, and the shimmering writing in Wolf Wondratschek’s Self Portrait with Russian Piano (translated by Marshall Yarbrough). I was curious to learn about iconic twentieth century pianist Vladimir Horowitz’s young male lover in Lea Singer’s novel The Piano Student (translated by Elisabeth Lauffer) and I luxuriated in the beauty of Philip Kennicott’s Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning. MEMOIR. I found Grace Talusan’s The Body Papers an elegantly composed, intense and important memoir about child sexual abuse, growing up Filipino in America, and so much more. I was struck by the craft and power in Lily Hoang’s A Bestiary, fragmented essays about injured family and love relationships and the strains of stereotype and career. Written in fast paced, accessible prose, Sopan Deb’s Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me is a world-spanning effort to understand the parents he couldn’t know as a child. I adored poet Natasha Trethewey’s Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir, a heartrending revisiting of her mother’s murder; essayist Paul Lisicky’s Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, a loving and eloquent look back at the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and poet Mark Doty’s What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life, a gorgeously written memoir organized around Doty’s lifelong adoration of America’s troubadour. NONFICTION. I was riveted by Karen Armstrong’s deep dive into the development, role, and meaning of scriptural interpretation across the world’s major religions in The Lost Art of Scripture, and astounded by the complex communications amongst trees explored in Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World (translated by Jane Billinghurst). Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures is a gripping, turn-your-world-upside-down-and-inside-out examination of some of earth’s smallest life forms. As a scientific neophyte, I appreciated Neil deGrasse Tyson’s clear explanations in Astrophysics for People in a Hurry. And Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race, a must-read for we white people grappling with our own racism. NOVELS [mostly]. There are too many to do justice here, but here are some I found memorable: André Aciman’s beautifully written Call Me by Your Name (gay coming of age story, movie about same) and Mitchell James Kaplan’s Into the Unbounded Night (a sweeping and absorbing investigation into early Roman Christianity as it split off from Judaism). Donna Miscolta’s linked short story collection, Living Color: Angie Rubio Stories, manages to be both light and serious in its treatment of a young Mexican immigrant facing prejudice that threatens her dreams. I was totally taken in by Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half (critical insights into the pain surrounding the act of passing); and Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom (in lovely prose, a scientist probes race and drug addiction and the meaning of family). Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other is a marvelous celebration of Black womanhood and love; Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown is a brilliantly structured takedown of Chinese stereotypes, Andrew Krivak’s stark and stunning The Bear follows the last girl on earth; Sulaiman Addonia’s Silence is My Mother Tongue covers life in an East African refugee camp, replete with societal taboos, sibling bonds, and the mysteries of language and silence. I listened to Luis Alberto Urrea’s The House of Broken Angels which he reads in laugh-out-loud-while-you-cry astonishing family storytelling that I hated to finish. My introduction to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Sula were also through listening. In an incredibly generous gift to her readers, Morrison narrates these novels herself. I hope I can hold onto the sound of her voice forever. And finally, I read George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss for the first time. The drama! The agony! The misogyny! The biting social commentary! The pathos! Maybe I needed to wait this long to begin my love affair with her. I’m already infatuated with Daniel Deronda and I’ve only just begun. More from A Year in Reading 2020 Do you love Year in Reading and the amazing books and arts content that The Millions produces year round? We are asking readers for support to ensure that The Millions can stay vibrant for years to come. Please click here to learn about several simple ways you can support The Millions now. Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005[millions_ad]

Essays

A Goofy State of Mind: My Grandmother’s Letters from Martha Gellhorn

Amy Shearn - 5.21.2012 | 1 book mentioned 12

Frances "Peggy" Harvey, circa 1933, in Wichitaw, Kansas, where she lived with her mother and sister. She was about to go to college at the University of Kansas, where she would study journalism and meet her future husband, a dashing journalism student named Wilbur Schutze. 1. A Goofy State of Mind. Dear Peggy: The letter I am about to write you is a monstrous impertinence. This is fair warning; you should now tear it up. It is, I think, insolent enough to give an opinion when asked for it; it is the outside limit to render judgments when no one desired them, and as a result of reading a letter not addressed to you… So. You better tear it up. If you are still with me, I wish to tell you that, from the absorbing letter you wrote Mother (and which she showed me because you mentioned my book: always encourage authors) I have decided you are in a goofy state of mind. Sometime around the year 1949, the eminent war correspondent and novelist Martha Gellhorn wrote the above letter from her home in Cuernavaca, Mexico to an Episcopalian clergyman’s wife living in the small town of Alma, Michigan. Both women were devoted writers of vivid missives. Gellhorn’s pen pals included Eleanor Roosevelt, the editor Maxwell Perkins, H.G. Wells, her husband (later, ex-) Ernest Hemingway, and other luminaries. The housewife whom she was addressing, Peggy Schutze, nee Harvey, a native Kansan of pioneer stock, wrote mostly to her mother and sister. They came to know one another because Peggy (a.k.a. Nani Peg, my maternal grandmother) was a member of the St Louis League of Women Voters, which was run by Martha’s mother Edna. Both Martha and Peggy were imaginatively terrible cooks and tore through stacks of paperback thrillers like addicts, but other than that they seemed to have little in common. My Uncle Jim found the stack of Gellhorn letters – typewritten on paper translucent as skin shards – when my grandmother died ten years ago. I was interested in them then (like everyone, awfully: “Hemingway’s wife?!”), but I only became truly obsessed with them recently. My first novel had just come out to very little fanfare, I was pregnant with my first child, and part of me was worried I had seen the beginning and end of my writing life. I hoped that if I studied Martha, the writer who wanted to be a mother, and Peggy, the mother who wanted to be a writer, some golden mean would eventually present itself. 2. A Monstrous Impertinence. This state of mind might be desirable if you were a novelist, dreaming up the characters and plot for a new novel. This novel would be written from the point of view of the woman: the woman would describe herself for the reader, declaring her character as subservient and uncertain, wedded to a man (seen through her eyes) who combined the outstanding features of Rudolph Valentino – irresistible to all women – with the personal complexes of Don Juan Tenorio – to whom all woman were irresistible – with the moral passions and mental fierceness of Martin Luther. Our heroine, a mouse in her own eyes, is married to this paragon, which is somewhat like being married to Vesuvius in eruption, and she is at once awed, adoring, and terrified. She is never certain for a moment of this amazing figure, her husband; by contamination, she attributes the most exotic talents and knowledges to her children, since they have inherited the father’s magic. And she counts herself for nothing… Martha Gellhorn spent the early 1930s in Paris, cutting her teeth as a foreign correspondent, having a torrid affair with the married French journalist Bertrand de Jouvenel, and generally courting scandal and adventure. From there she’d gone on to cover the Spanish Civil War, marry Ernest Hemingway, live in Cuba, and become one of the few female journalists to report on WWII. (She covered D Day by sneaking on to a hospital ship and illicitly crossing over to France, losing her military credentials as a result.) Her journalism tended towards a particularly empathetic form of reportage; her pieces describe the lives of ordinary people affected by war, often ending on an editorial moment of strong anti-war sentiment. By the late forties she’d published six books and divorced Hemingway. Following the publication of her well-received (and totally heartbreaking) war novel, The Wine of Astonishment (later republished as Point of No Return), and a brief, frustrating period of time spent in Washington DC during the height of McCarthyism, Gellhorn fled to Mexico. She described her home in the mountain resort of Cuernavaca as “a small white house in a small walled garden, set among high soft trees. Beyond the trees is a circle of blue mountains, the loveliest I know. This is a valley where nothing happens, where people simply live, where there is sun, and the slow peacefulness of day following day.” She often said that Cuernavaca was the place she spent the happiest four years of her life; she was in love with the landscape and the locals, she felt happy and strong living alone after her difficult marriage to Hemingway. She was supporting herself by selling what she termed “bilgers,” popular stories about titled English ladies and Italian gigolos, or naïve young American women visiting Europe, to Good Housekeeping and the Saturday Evening Post. In a letter to a friend, she wrote, “I’m all right again. I know who I am… Here, where I am really alone, I am not lonely. Whereas in the US, I feel the whole time that something is desperately the matter with me.” She was also forty, single, and had decided she wanted a child. She wrote, “It’s what one needs: someone, or several, who can take all the love one is able to give, as a natural and untroublesome gift.” A few years earlier she had written an ex-lover, “I want a child. I will carry it on my back in a sealskin papoose and feed it chocolate milkshakes and tell it fine jokes and work for it and in the end give it a hunk of money, like a bouquet of autumn leaves, and set it free. I have to have something, being still (I presume) human…” In February of 1949, she wrote to my grandmother. Martha mentions in one of the letters that she hasn’t been to Europe in two years, and that she is “completely hag ridden” preparing to leave her house in order to go “gallivanting around [Italy] in search of an idea or two, and the chance for making an honest dime.” What she doesn’t say is that the main purpose of her trip to Italy was to adopt a war orphan. As my grandmother squirmed under her mantle of domesticity, Martha was seeking a child of her own. I don’t have any copies of my grandmother’s responses to Gellhorn or the “absorbing letter” that started it all, but my uncles and mother remember her letters as well-written fits of whimsy. My Uncle Bill emails me, “Her Christmas letters were in an ‘Erma Bombeck’ vein which I found highly inappropriate,” especially, he notes, when he was a teenager. As my mother puts it, “she used to take incidents from life and theorize about them and slightly fictionalize them to coax out entertaining tales.” Great for a novelist, but a liability in a letter-writer, particularly when the letter-writer is your mother, and the letter-subject, you. My grandmother was, as Gellhorn immediately nosed out, a repressed writer. When my grandparents met in 1935 they were both journalism students at the University of Kansas. My grandmother seems to have had lots of dates, and no wonder. Peggy Harvey was charming, bright, and lovely (in a well-coiffed college-era photograph she recalls Judy Garland in Meet Me in St Louis), though in a letter to her mother and sister she attributes her success with the college boys entirely to a new girdle. She soon settled on the tall, good-looking, serious Bill Schutze, and in 1936 they eloped. When Peggy and Bill were first married, they lived in a New Deal housing project in St. Louis, spending heady nights drinking cheap wine with other idealistic young Democrats, including the drama critic and playwright William Inge. Peggy worked for a radio station, writing radio plays and fiction on the side. It might not have been Gellhorn’s glamorous Parisian romp, but it was its own kind of urban excitement. By the time of the Gellhorn letters, Peggy was in her mid-thirties, with three small boys (my mother would come along later). Five or six years after they’d married, my grandfather had found religion and decided to become an Episcopalian minister, which is how they’d ended up in Alma. From my journalist Uncle Jim: “I have to imagine their sojourn in boondocks Michigan was a tough price for their religious convictions. I think it was an especially tough price for my mother to pay for my father’s convictions.” Fast-forward to the late forties. More from Uncle Jim: My father was in his mid-30s, a tall rail-thin cleric with a hawk’s beak and a smile never quite certain, rector of the only Episcopal church in Alma… My mother was sort of the local mad woman of Chaillot, locked away in a tower in the tottering castle next to the church banging away at an ancient portable typewriter and emitting blood-curdling whoops and hollers whenever she thought she had written something especially funny or blood-curdling. She was very bright, truly eccentric and certainly had never bargained for the life of a middle western small town preacher’s wife loaded up with brats, scoured by the shrewdly appraising eyes of parishioners whenever she left the house. I’ve always loved my uncles’ descriptions of their childhood. They claim to have been deposited outside on the stoop every morning like “empty milk bottles” and allowed to roam free all day while my grandmother wrote. (Things were, I gather, a little less loosey-goosey by the time my mother came along.) Peggy worked on letters and journals and scraps of fiction; as a college student in Kansas she had written a breezy gossip column for the LaBette County newspaper under the name “Betty LaBette.” Jim reports that when he was young she presented book reviews to local clubs and wrote for an Episcopalian newspaper: “I only remember that when we were small, the penalty for interrupting her at her writing was often a wildly unsettling outburst, even if one were bleeding, especially if one were bleeding.” Meanwhile, Martha Gellhorn was clattering away at her own portable typewriter in her paradise of Mexico, uninterrupted unless she wanted to be. 3. Pull Your Socks Up. You and I, let us assume, are neither one of us complete dopes: we therefore know that even in a joke your husband [doesn’t] give a damn about pictures on dust jackets; that women do not crowd the “confessional” for love of the confessor; that, even as metaphor, “patting fannies” won’t do. But these themes recur, in the extremely witty and well-written letter of an extremely witty and intelligent woman. And they give me, an old hand at peering at people, pause… I like you. I think you have a great deal of stuff. I think you are being a fool, to the point of goofiness. I think you better pull up your socks and stop inventing things. Life is bad enough without invention of any sort. You’ve got a good young man who loves you, and three children. Leave those complications to novelists, who take their whole lives out in invention, because they haven’t much real life to handle… I can only plead affection for you, and a sort of anxiety. As if I saw someone trying to fly, without adequate training hours, on the grounds that it would be interesting to see what happened. In an undated excerpt of my grandmother’s writing, she is renumerating what she loved about “keen old” St. Louis when they lived there in the early days of their marriage, and describes a visit – perhaps their first meeting – with Martha. At this point they had only one child, my Uncle Bill (“Billy”), and my grandfather (“Bill”) had not yet gone to seminary. My grandmother writes: One of my favorite activities has been politics and League of Women Voter stuff, this past year, and Bill greatly disliked both... His particular gripe was against Mrs. George Gellhorn [Edna, Martha’s mother], a perfectly swell woman who was president of the League, and despite being the usual clubwomanly matron type, had a healthy and youthful interest in honest-to-goodness down-to-earth politics in our precinct and helped us beat the local gang boss. Mrs. G. gave rather sumptuous old fashioned dinners for greatly mixed up groups of people and sometimes included us. Bill said all the other others were out-of-the-world college professors and theorists, and felt a trifle overwhelmed by Mrs. G because she was such a dominatin’ woman. So the other day, when her daughter was coming to call, Bill made elaborate arrangements to duck out and go swimming at the Y. He planned to take Billy with him, taking for granted that no Schutze man would wish to spend Saturday afternoon with a member of that rampant feminist family… just as the two boys were ready to make their getaway, there was a knock at the door and Bill, being nearest, answered. He opened the door and discovered on the threshold, a very tall and good looking blonde, about our age, with flashing eyes and instant appreciation of meeting a man in St. Louis in these manless times. Miss G. was here to discover what people in neighborhoods like ours felt about international affairs, to include in an article her boss was making her write for Colliers on middlewestern viewpoint in general. Bill suddenly discovered that he had a great of knowledge about all our neighbors, about politics, international affairs, and just anything this gal wanted to know. He seated himself in the master-chair and did not stir therefrom all afternoon. I’d assume Martha didn’t find her occasional visits to St Louis quite as enthralling as my grandmother did. Gellhorn biographer Caroline Moorehead describes one such visit thus: “Edna’s many friends and acquaintances dropped in, and Martha sat watching their ‘round shapeless pudgy non faces’ with disdain, observing that these ‘nice’ people were made of ‘Wilton carpeting, cold cream, ice cream, cotton wool, everything bland and soft.’” It’s not as if she came to Missouri to steal any ministers’ hearts. And yet, as Martha points out, Peggy seemed to assign to her husband “the outstanding features of Rudolph Valentino” and “the personal complexes of Don Juan Tenorio.” It’s an attitude that baffled even Peggy’s own family. Uncle Jim recalls her saying that, “Of course, all clergymen were attractive to women in the church, and of course, all clergy wives have to take precautions for that reason. I was probably 10 or 11. I remember chalking that remark up to my mother being nuts. I always saw my father pretty much as a walking icicle. I didn’t want to hear about my parents’ sex lives. And you could never tell which part of what my mother said was some strange refraction of reality or simple delusion. But they were in their mid-30s in a place and climate where repression was almost a sport. Who the hell knows?” Or it could be that Peggy was, as Martha assumed, “terrifyingly busy at invention.” Somehow she ended up as one of those people who never quite lived in her own proper context, among people who might have appreciated her zany wit, and instead found herself in a life were she was perpetually out-of-step with what was expected of her as a small-town clergy wife. Martha wrote that when living in the US she had the feeling that something was “desperately the matter” with her – so she took off and lived abroad. Peggy didn’t have this option. She had to make life interesting somehow. Martha writes: Personally, I get bored spitless as soon as folks cause me trouble (trouble being, in this instance, doubt.) I was made jealous once in my life and it was a jealousy to end all jealousies and the whole performance was done with drums and cymbals and enough to make the roof fall in. A really competent professional did the job, Miss Dietrich to wit, and I had cause as few women ever do. All that was lacking were neon lights to blazon the cause over the sky of Berlin. My immediate reaction, after the first shock of knowing I was jealous, was black rage. I got in a broken down airplane and left, like that, fast as winking. I also told the guy to pick up his chips and shove, as far as I was concerned: it didn’t make me feel more loving to have uncertainty introduced. It made me sore as hell, and secondly it made me think he wasn’t worth my time, and thirdly it bored me, oh but bored me in a very big way. Finally, no doubt as revenge, I took him back and treated him carefully to such a dose of indifference as would equal the score (in heaven) between my jealousy and his damaged vanity. But you see, I do not operate on a basis of doubt. I hate it… What interests me is how much one can give, how much one can get; but on the foundation of the idea that no one will ever tire of this pursuit and that one is utterly safe, in the heart. The incident to which she refers happened in late 1945 or early 1946. She had just divorced Hemingway. (Tellingly, she wrote to my grandmother, “If marriage were usually as enthralling as you find it, more people would stick to it. My own experience with said state was comparable to living in Sing-Sing, which a touch of the Iron Maiden of Nurnberg thrown it.” Um, ouch.) Shaken from the marriage’s messy end and fresh from covering the disturbing Nuremberg trial, Gellhorn went to Berlin where her new lover, the handsome young Commander James Gavin, was stationed. According to biographer Caroline Moorehead, “Marlene Dietrich, who had apparently long had her eye on [Gavin], arrived in Berlin [as a USO performer] and was ‘sick with rage’ to find Martha installed as his mistress.” Martha spent her days palling around with other foreign correspondents, including CBS correspondent Charles Collingwood, and Dietrich told Gavin that Martha and Collingwood were in love. As revenge, Gavin told Martha he was going out for a walk and disappeared, spending the night with Dietrich. “Jealousy was not an emotion Martha had experienced before. But, recognizing the ‘disgusting, cheap, ugly’ sensation that now overcame her, she left Berlin for Paris, declaring that no relationship with a man was ever going to work for her and that henceforth she would stick to friendship.” Martha described her reaction when she realized her lover had gone to bed with Dietrich: “I stayed in that room weeping as I really did not believe I ever could or would again… and every night since it has come back to me the same way, like a pain that hurts too much.” As she intimated in the letter to my grandmother, she took off for England. When Gavin followed her, she relented and took him briefly back, but their lives were headed in separate directions and they soon split for good. In March of 1946, Martha was covering the Japanese surrender in Indonesia, but she was already writing to a friend that what she really wanted “was a little white house, with a picket fence around it and some toddlers.” While my grandmother was imagining inklings of drama, her accomplished epistler was weaving her own rosy-viewed, fiction-tinged story about what life as a mother would be like. They were both, I suspect, fairly busy at invention. 4. A Fine Cast of Characters. See? If you want to write a book, you have started a fine cast of characters. But, presumably, you are not writing books, and are living. And on that basis, your cast of characters won’t stand; and to a novelist, you are (terrifyingly) busy at inventing complication… Anyhow, you’re not average (since we take “average” to be an ugly word) and you’ve nothing to worry about (and certainly you know it) and if you like to keep life intense by believing it to be uncertain, go ahead. It all ends up the same. The point is to be alive, any way you know how. You are. You know. And here it is, the assumption that we all secretly share (or maybe by “we” I mean only “me”) that there are two paths – writing books, or living; wife/mother, or novelist – and never the twain shall meet. I always feel like I’ve swallowed a dull coin of dread when I read those lines, but perhaps this is only how things were at that time, or maybe only how they seemed to Gellhorn. When she was in her twenties, Martha wrote to her French lover Bertrand de Jouvenel: “I know there are two people in me. But the least strong, the least demanding, is the one that attaches itself to another human being. And the part of me which all my life I have shaped and sculpted and trained is the part that can bear no attachment, which has a ruling need of eloignement, which is, really, untamed, undomesticated, unhuman… Since I was a child people have wanted to possess me. No one has.” She was proud of the untamed part of her, but it also caused her pain. Never to sustain a relationship, her greatest successes came from that other life path – the daring war correspondent, the brazen world traveler, the independent-minded novelist. Even when Gellhorn was married to Hemingway, writing and relationship didn’t quite mesh. Early in their courtship they supported each other while covering the Spanish Civil War and then at home in Cuba, where Hemingway encouraged her to be a more disciplined writer and they spent every morning working on their novels. But once they married her work became a point of contention with Hemingway, who resented her going away to cover World War II while he enjoyed the success of For Whom The Bell Tolls (and spent a lot of time drinking and fishing) back in Cuba. Martha wrote to her mother about the difficulty of being a journalist while still being “a good woman for a man;” meanwhile, Hemingway wrote to his son that Martha was “selfish and ambitious.” By the time he joined her in Europe to cover the war they had engaged in a kind of journalistic competition for the best reporting jobs, and unsurprisingly the much more well-known Hemingway won out. At this point, their marriage was all but over. Which was essentially fine by her. She later wrote travel essays dismissively casting Hemingway as “the Unwilling Companion,” but for the most part refused to talk about her time with him. Maybe Martha foretold her own future when, 24 years-old and living in Paris, she wrote a letter to her mother saying that only in work “can one have a real sense of life, of the wonder and surprise and joy of being alive.” She was most happy when alone and traveling and writing. In the end, as she wrote, “I want life to be like the movies, brilliant and swift and successful.” It’s remarkable that this eminent woman took such time and effort to reach out to my grandmother, this “mouse in her mind.” It’s maybe more remarkable that this relative stranger is able to see right to Peggy’s spine. In one of her letters she must have referred to her plan to start a career of her own once her children were in school, because Martha writes in response, “Okay. But I think you better write books instead of doing social service, when the time comes. You’d be wasted on social service.” That young idealist from the St. Louis projects hadn’t entirely disappeared, however, and social service it was. Once my mother was in kindergarten my grandmother went back to college and became a teacher, teaching English at a predominately black school in Pontiac, Michigan where she was the only white person in either the staff or student body – this was in the 1960s. I like this part of her biography. I like the blithe way she is said to have dealt with complicated race relations at a tempestuous time. But still I wonder where that urge to write books went. In Gellhorn’s novella “The Fall and Rise of Mrs. Hapgood” Mrs. Hapgood muses: Did people ever give up what they really wanted? Those numberless women who had rejected careers as concert pianists in favor of wifehood and never forgot their sacrifice were more apt to be cowards than concert pianists. When you set out, alone, you were up against competition and doubt; you might turn out to be nobody, not a wife nor a concert pianist. You threw away security for hope; but those who were driven by hope did not stop to add and subtract; they could not help themselves; they did what they had to do, undaunted by final results. You do what you have to do. Peggy always wrote, even when the work went unpublished, even when it would seem impossible that she would have any time for it. She wrote because she wanted to. Did it count as “giving it up” because the writing never led to commercial success or financial gain? Because she didn’t “throw away security for hope?” She might not have had a career as a writer, but she was always a writer. An undated letter from my grandfather. This must have been in the mid-forties, when he had gone to seminary in Virginia and my grandmother and my Uncle Bill were living with her mother in Wichita. She was pregnant with my Uncle Jim at the time, and they were planning on moving to be with my grandfather soon -- so it would have been after the visit from Martha in St Louis, but before the letters. My grandfather writes, “I found myself telling somebody that [Gellhorn] isn’t the type of person you would think… When you get right down to the facts I don’t know of any reason for defending her gadding about, getting married, and unmarried. There is that which can’t be explained away. I’m not passing judgment but believe this might be explained by her lack of religion. It is true that such people scurry about seeking something but don’t know what it is so they try marriage, Europe, cars, etc.” There is something telling about his pat explanation of this complicated woman. It’s all so simple in my grandfather’s estimation – Gellhorn’s unsettled life was result of lack of religion – a conclusion which would have probably made Martha laugh. And yet, she was seeking something, some nebulous thing that she herself might have been hard-pressed to define. She wrote in one of the letters to Peggy, after describing some upcoming travels, “This is a way of life too. But, honestly, I believe the sons and husbands are a better way of life.” Who can say how much she meant this? And can’t there be a way of life that encompasses both? Neither Martha nor my grandmother was ever able to reach a satisfying conclusion. Martha did adopt her Italian orphan, and wrote about the experience in a 1950 piece for the Saturday Evening Post that my grandmother clipped and kept among her letters. She writes, “the miracle had happened; I was struck by love as if by lightning.” The essay concludes on an uplifting, undeniably rosy note: “I found the little boy, all right, but in the end, the way I see it, he has adopted me.” In the end, however, she did not find that motherhood came naturally to her, and her relationship with her adopted son was always strained. He developed into a troubled adult, a drug addict who floated in and out of jail. From a particularly brutal letter she wrote him when he was a young man: “I have no respect for you, and at present little affection… And I’ve never been able to go on loving people I don’t respect… Honey, you are neither a job nor obligation: you’re a selfish, lazy, pointless young man.” Clearly motherhood was not the unconditional love affair Martha had been expecting. Peggy Schutze was an adoring and adored wife, mother, and grandmother, and she enjoyed (despite her doubts) a long and happy marriage. When she had a stroke towards the end of her life, my grandfather’s fierce devotion to taking care of her impressed even the nursing home staff. A few months after she died, he followed. At his funeral, my Uncle Jim delivered a eulogy that was a tribute to their enduring love, faithfulness, and loyalty to one another. As for her writing ambitions, despite the encouragement from Gellhorn, she never produced much more than Christmas letters and stories for us grandchildren. And yet, as Martha wrote, “It all ends up the same.” It is good advice for any writer, I think (or for that matter, any mother): The point is to be alive. You are. You know.

Person to Person

Jai Chakrabarti Wants to Know His Characters Intimately

Martha Anne Toll - 2.21.2023 | 1 book mentioned

I had the good fortune to be introduced to Jai Chakrabarti by my writer friend Amy Gottlieb, who correctly suspected that I’d love Jai’s work. His debut novel, A Play for the End of the World, got under my skin and stayed there, in the best way. His new story collection, A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness, out today, is set in India and America, exploring themes of deracination, family, and language. Together, the stories fill out a sparkling constellation. I talked with Jai about his writing practice, South Asian literature, and the immigrant experience. Martha Anne Toll: How did these short stories come to be, and how did you decide how to order them in the collection? Jai Chakrabarti: The overarching theme for the collection is how we grow with our birth families but also how we adopt new ones. As I was writing these stories, I was at first struggling to become a new parent; my partner and I suffered through several miscarriages until finally our son was born. Then, as all parents know, our reality shifted: I wanted to speak to both the yearning as well as the sacrifices and joys of being a parent. So, I looked for stories that spoke to these themes and experiences. I also wanted the stories to be diverse in terms of narrative voice as well as length. My thoughts on ordering story collections likely come from reading and, once upon a time, ordering my own poetry collections. I enjoy when one story transitions to another by illuminating another part of the conversation that the previous story alluded to but didn’t explore in depth. There are thematic connections between the stories but also moments where we are jolted into new geographies, ideas, and styles. MAT: Do you have a daily writing practice, and if so, what is it? JC: While my schedule is erratic at the moment, I’ve often had a daily morning practice that begins with a short meditation, followed by journaling, after which I sink into whatever creative project I’m working on. If I’m lucky enough to be writing for a few hours, I’ll take breaks and walk or read. I like stopping my writing practice in the middle of a scene or a paragraph so that there’s something there I can transition back into when I start writing again. I should say this is the ideal practice, and there are many days or even weeks when I’ve been far away from it. Those are the times when I try to do whatever I can, whether it’s moving a few commas, adding a hundred new words, or simply allowing myself to read and to walk with the unwritten words. MAT: This collection references the beauty of the Bengali language and how it transmits eloquence. Can you talk about your accretion of language? Are you ever tempted to write in Bengali? JC: I’m fortunate to have had a bilingual education. Even after my family emigrated to the states, I would go to a school in Kolkata for the summer. This meant I was able to enjoy classical and eventually, contemporary Bengali literature. There are still certain sonic patterns that I can hear in my English sentences that I know are borrowed from Bengali, as well as structural forms that I’ve inherited from South Asian literature. While I doubt that I will try to publish fiction in Bengali, I’d love to translate for American readers lesser-known Bengali short stories writers like Ashapurna Devi. MAT: Many of your stories look at America from an outsider’s point of view, and touch on what seem to be irreconcilable differences between your characters' homelands and America. Can you talk a bit more about that? JC: I was interested in interrogating the idea of home, of what we carry in our bodies that tells us this land is safe. For those who have crossed borders and oceans to make a new home, I think there’s always at least some lingering sense of sacrifice, that despite the profits and opportunities of the newfound country there is something left behind. Families, traditions, the specific look of a street at sunset, the way the body feels in a different air. Through these stories, I want to acknowledge the longing that persists despite the accumulation of new joys. MAT: Is there any difference in your process for writing a short story collection versus a novel? JC: Both story-writing and novel-writing are immersive processes for me. In order to feel that I’m inside of a cozy room with my characters, I can work only a single story or a single novel-in-progress at a time. This intimacy with the characters is important for me because I want to be attuned to subtle shifts in their emotional registers. That said, the novel is a longer relationship. Instead of being in a warmly lit room, sometimes I’ve felt that my novel characters and I are stranded together on a desert island (sometimes with lots of fresh fruit and water, sometimes not!). So, between the forms it’s a question of air, I suppose, and distance. What books are you excited about now? I had a chance to blurb Jennifer Rosner’s beautiful new novel Once We Were Home, and I recommend everyone read it. I’m also excited about Ada Zhang’s forthcoming collection of short stories from A Public Space, The Sorrows of Others. Both are out later this year. What’s next for you? I’m at work on a new novel. It’s entirely different from anything else I’ve written, and I’m having a ton of fun.

Curiosities, New Releases

Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Li, Greer, Strout, and More

Thom Beckwith - 9.20.2022 | 1 book mentioned

Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new release titles from Yiyun Li, Andrew Sean Greer, Elizabeth Strout, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millions keep churning out great books coverage? Then become a member today. The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about The Book of Goose: "Li follows Must I Go with an intriguing novel of two devious teenage friends who are coping with the aftermath of WWII. Fabienne helps her drunken father, a widower, on their Saint Rèmy farm, and her friend Agnès lives with her parents and attends the village school. One of their 'games' involves Fabienne dictating a series of stories about little children who die in various ghastly ways, which Agnès records in a notebook that they share with the recently widowed postmaster, M. Devaux, whose friendship they pursue on a lark. Devaux, an author himself, helps get them published, and Agnès, whom Fabienne decides should get sole credit, becomes famous. Her rise from peasant girl to author becomes a big story, and she is given free education at a finishing school in England. Then, on a whim, Fabienne lies and frames Devaux for a drunken sexual assault on her, forcing him to leave town in disgrace. As the story unfolds, Agnès reckons with a frightening series of episodes in which she takes on Fabienne’s mischievous traits. Bringing to mind Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, by way of Anita Brookner’s quietly dramatic prose, this makes for a powerful Cinderella fable with memorable characters. It’s an accomplished new turn for Li." Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about Less is Lost: "Greer follows up his Pulitzer-winning Less with another delightful road story featuring middle-aged writer Arthur Less. This time, he’s traveling across the U.S., hoping to raise money to salvage his home with partner Freddy Pelu. Freddy, who narrates the story and has lived with Less for nine blissful months in San Francisco, has recently taken a teaching sabbatical in Maine, where Less plans to join him. But after the death of Less’s former lover, the poet Robert Brownburn, the estate hits him up for 10 years of back rent on Brownburn’s former house, where he now lives with Freddy. He assures Freddy he’ll make everything okay by paying it back with magazine articles and other literary gigs. Soon Less is off to do a profile of a famous sci-fi author, who has Less drive him and his pug in a camper van to Santa Fe, N.Mex., for an onstage interview. Along the way, Less accidentally floods a commune, sleeps in a tepee, and rides a donkey down a canyon. After a cascading series of humorous mishaps, Less wonders if Freddy will leave him. Though a bit overboard at times, Greer packs in plenty of humor and some nicely poignant moments. Fans will eat this up." Three Muses by Martha Anne Toll Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about Three Muses: "Loss, memory, and romance are explored in Toll’s bittersweet debut. In 1944, Janko Stein is an 11-year-old German Jewish death camp inmate who is spared because of his beautiful singing voice. That same year, in New York City, seven-year-old Katherine Sillman receives ballet lessons as a consolation after the death of her mother and later grows up to become an acclaimed prima ballerina, thanks to her Svengali-like choreographer, Boris Yanakov, who is also her lover. Janko, adopted by a New York City family after the war and renamed John Curtin, goes on to a psychiatric residency. In 1963, John and Katherine, now rechristened Katya Symanova, meet in Paris after John becomes entranced by her performance in Yanakov’s Three Muses. Back in New York, the two of them begin a heated love affair, but will they ultimately be separated by John’s survivor’s guilt and Katya’s allegiance to Yanakov? Toll is savvy in exploring how love can flourish in the face of trauma, but her theme is undercut by clichéd situations and dialogue ('You were born to dance'). Despite the pungent realism of the death camp setting and the vibrant depiction of the New York ballet scene, John and Katya feel a bit too wooden, with every emotion spelled out. It’s an ambitious if uneven effort." Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about Lucy by the Sea: "Strout follows up Oh William! with a captivating entry in the Lucy Barton series. This time, Lucy decamps to rural Maine during the first year of the Covid lockdown. At the pandemic’s onset in 2020, Lucy’s philandering ex-husband and longtime friend, William, whisks her away from New York City to a rental house in coastal Maine. He may have self-centered ulterior motives beyond his assertion that he’s trying to save her life, but they are not readily transparent for most of the narrative. Personal and public events intrude during the lockdown as the pair develop a “strange compatibility” while attempting to comprehend the new normal. Their two daughters each face a crisis in their marriage; William contacts his once unknown half sister, Lois Bubar, and reveals a life-threatening medical condition; and the country roils from George Floyd’s murder and the insurrection on January 6. Bleak memories of Lucy’s impoverished childhood and of her recently deceased husband surface in shattering flashbacks. Loneliness, grief, longing, and loss pervade intertwined family stories as Lucy and William attempt to create new friendships in an initially hostile town. What emerges is a prime testament to the characters’ resilience. With Lucy Barton, Strout continues to draw from a deep well."

Book Previews

September Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)

Editor - 9.1.2022 | 1 book mentioned

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 September books we’re looking out for. Let us know what you’re looking forward to in the comments! Want to know about the books you might have missed? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millions keep churning out great books coverage? Then sign up to be a member today. Fen, Bog, and Swamp by Annie Proulx: Proulx brings her talents to nonfiction environmental writing and research, exploring the history of wetlands worldwide and how they have been maligned and drained, even while they are crucial to our planet’s survival. A book that travels from Canada to Russia to England and to other damp, crucial patches of the planet, taking us on what Bill McKibben calls “an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important. A compact classic!” (Lydia) Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell: Circus Palmer, jazz trumpeter and old-school ladies’ man, is no stranger to the temptations of dangerous love. In her debut novel, Warrell assembles a lush orchestra of female voices to sing a story about passion and risk, fathers and daughters and the missed opportunities of unrequited love. When Circus learns that the woman closest to his heart, the free-spirited drummer Maggie, is pregnant by him, his reaction to the news sets the chorus of women to singing a song that’s soulful and gripping. The novel’s title comes from the great Jelly Roll Morton. (Bill) The Furrows by Namwali Serpell: At a beach in the Baltimore suburbs, a sister watches her brother disappear into the waves: “You were alone out there and the world took you back in, reclaimed you into its endless folding.” Serpell’s latest novel, which follows her expansive debut The Old Drift, begins with an epigraph from Marcel Proust: “People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive.” The Furrows chronicles the overpowering “aura of life” of the presumably drowned boy as he swims through the consciousnesses of those who mourn him. (Matt) If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery: In the 1970s, when political violence swept over their native Kingston, Topper and Sanya moved to Miami. But before long, the couple and their two children witness the discrepancy between the American dream and the stark reality. They fight their way against racism and natural and financial disasters. In the family’s worst days, even their pet fish commits suicide perhaps out of despair. Delicately crafted with irony and love, these linked stories explore the home and a sense of belonging in an age governed by the caprice of whiteness and capitalism. (Jianan Qian) Broken Summer by J. M. Lee (translated by An Seon Jae): On his 43rd birthday, Lee Hanjo wakes up to find that his wife has disappeared. Moreover, she has secretly written a novel about the sordid true self of a famous artist who in every way resembles Hanjo. Upon the publishing of that novel, Hanjo has to reckon on a particular summer in his younger days when he chose to cover up a tragic event with lies. As one of Korea’s best storytellers, J. M. Lee is famous for creating twists after shocking twists. Notedly, the charm of Lee’s stories originates from not only a mastery of craft but also a deep understanding of human nature. (Jianan Qian) Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin (translated by Jamie Chung): A mother-daughter story told from the perspective of a socially conservative Korean mother who struggles to accept her daughter’s sexual identity and the idea of a nontraditional life & family. Those values come into question again as she cares for a female patient at the nursing home where she works — a professionally successful woman with no children. The world has changed, and everyone’s coping & evolving; this specific cultural & generational perspective surely has universal resonance and poignancy. (Sonya) What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri: The debut collection from Kolluri, What We Fed to the Manticore is “a dazzling, daring bestiary” (Aimee Nezhukumatathil) and “a world of incredible imagination and daring” (Claire Comstock-Gay). Animals narrate these nine stories – there’s a hound in mourning, existential vultures, pigeons and donkeys and rhinos, oh my – but that doesn’t mean they’re Disney-cute. Instead, Publishers Weekly writes in a starred review, they weave together into an “exquisite” whole that explores climate change and natural disruption as well as human kindness and animal joy. (Kaulie) On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton: Award-winning novelist Sexton follows her luminous books A Kind of Freedom and The Revisioners with a novel of music, family, gentrification, and mid-century San Francisco, told via the story of a mother who dreams of musical success through her daughters’ girl group, The Salvations, as the landscape of the city shifts all around them. Kaitlyn Greenidge says of the novel ““On the Rooftop further cements Margaret Wilkerson Sexton as a deft chronicler of Blackness in America. A deeply felt, big hearted exploration of family, sisterhood and gentrification, this is the kind of expansive, lush novel that envelops with charm while provoking with its fierce intelligence.” (Lydia) Bliss Montage by Ling Ma: This story collection, from the author of the brilliant novel Severance, offers eight tales with wild, fantastical premises. In one, a pregnant woman has an arm protruding from her vagina, and, in another, a film professor has a Narnia-like world inside his office wardrobe. Publishers Weekly says most of the stories are “enchanting, full of intelligence, dry humor, and an appealing self awareness.” In its starred review, Kirkus calls the collection “haunting and artful.” (Edan) The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li: Yiyun Li is perhaps best known for her short stories, often published in the New Yorker, whose quiet elegance and emotional power recall the likes of another master of the form, William Trevor. But she’s an equally remarkable novelist, and returns in September with The Book of Goose, a moving story of female friendship. This intricate story begins in the postwar rural provinces of Paris, where Fabienne and Agnes develop a writing game: bold Fabienne will come up with stories and timid Agnes will write them out. Now, adult Agness is telling their story in The Book of Goose, a beguiling tale of intimacy and obsession from one of our most capacious and generous talents. (AOP) Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout: Rejoice! A new Elizabeth Strout novel. In her latest, the Pulitzer Prize winning author revisits her protagonists from My Name is Lucy Barton and Oh William! This time, it’s the COVID pandemic, and Lucy’s ex-husband William has taken her from Manhattan to a small town in Maine. In its starred review, Publishers Weekly describes it this way: “Loneliness, grief, longing, and loss pervade intertwined family stories as Lucy and William attempt to create new friendships in an initially hostile town.” (Edan) The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell: Able to pull off a memoir as well as contemporary fiction, O’Farrell continues with historical fiction. Her previous novel, Hamnet, was a The New York Times best seller and National Book Award winner, and now The Marriage Portrait travels to Renaissance Italy in the 1550s. Lucrezia de’ Medici is the third daughter to a grand duke. When her older sister dies, Lucrezia’s fight becomes not just for a kind of autonomy, but for her very survival. As the publisher says, it’s, “Full of … beauty and emotion.” (Claire) Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer: If you, as I did, loved the Pulitzer-Prize winning Less, then you’ll be excited to learn that Greer has penned a sequel about the lovable writer, Arthur Less. This time, Less is on a road trip in the States with a famous science fiction author and his black pug named Dolly. Hilarity ensues. Publishers Weekly says, “Fans will eat this up.” (Edan) The Deceptions by Jill Bialosky: Plutarch claims that an ancient Greek fishermen, out for his day’s catch, heard a thundering proclamation delivered from the heavens – “The great god Pan is dead.” For early Christians it was taken as a sign of the obsolescence of the gods, that the oracles had fallen mute. Except those old gods never died, not really. In Jill Bialosky’s latest novel The Deceptions, her unnamed narrator discovers this only too well in her incantatory, hallucinogenic, and ecstatic perambulations through the white-marble halls of the Metropolitan Museums of Art’s Greek and Roman collections. A soon-to-be-published poet grappling with both the collapse of her marriage and the departure of her child, the narrator finds refuge in the echoing halls of the museum, the wells of Parnassus perhaps running unseen down Fifth Avenue. Poetry and inspiration, obsession and divinity, all come under Bialosky’s purview in her elegantly constructed fable of trying to create while everything else falls apart. (Ed Simon) Three Muses by Martha Anne Toll: A debut by The Millions contributor and winner of the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction, Three Muses tells the story of John Curtin, a Holocaust survivor who was forced to sing for the kommandant at a concentration camp. His life intertwines with Katya Symanova, the Prima Ballerina of the New York State Ballet who is struggling with a controlling choreographer in her life. The novel is billed by the publisher as a, “love story that enthralls,” and Paul Harding says it, “captivates…from the first page to the last.” (Claire) Stay True by Hua Hsu: A memoir from the brilliant New Yorker staff writer, who describes a formative friendship he had as a young man in the Bay Area–a friendship formed around what the two young men had in common and what they didn’t, and one that ended when his friend suffered a violent and early death. Rachel Kushner calls the book, “exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” (Lydia) Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie: The author Home Fire and winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction returns with a story of a relationship between two women that starts in youth in Karachi and picks up in London in middle age, when they must come to terms with an unresolved conflict of the past. Ali Smith calls the book, “A shining tour de force about a long friendship’s respects, disrespects, loyalties and moralities.” (Lydia) Hysterical by Elissa Bassist: In her debut memoir, essayist and humor writer Bassist writes about the two years she spent searching for answers for her unexplained chronic pain and how releasing her pent up rage finally helped her find relief. Part-memoir, part-manifesto, Hysterical asks women to tap into their anger, sadness, and joy— and to no longer silence themselves in the face of misogyny and the patriarchy. Danzy Senna writes: “This artful, moving work of creative nonfiction transcends the self, while keeping us rooted in the most intimate of stories.” (Carolyn) It’s Not Nothing by Courtney Denelle: Denelle’s debut novel follows Rosemary Candwell throughout Providence, as her life passes by in a blur of shelters, miserable jobs, psychiatric facilities, cold medicine, caffeine, and mental health crises. Despite this, Rosemary is always reaching and fighting and hoping to find her way out of the cycle she’s in. Our own Emily St. John Mandel says: “This is an extraordinary debut from a wildly talented author. Denelle’s prose is a marvel of precision. Flashes of unexpected humor light up the darkness, and the arc of her novel is deeply moving.” (Carolyn) Solito By Javier Zamora: The debut memoir by poet Zamora explores his harrowing migration from El Salvador to the United States to reunite with his parents. Traveling alone, then nine-year-old Zamora cannot imagine the dangers that await him and the other migrants on their journey—nor can he believe the kindness, love, and hope that can be fostered amid fear. Publishers Weekly’s starred review says the “immensely moving” memoir “sheds an urgent and compassionate light on the human lives caught in an ongoing humanitarian crisis.” (Carolyn) The Unfolding by A.M. Homes: The year is 2008, Barack Obama has just been elected president, and the narrator of Homes’ newest novel (May We Be Forgiven) is plotting how to reclaim “his” country. The narrator, known as “The Big Guy,” spends his days figuring out how to undermine this administration and undo what’s been done to America, while his family begins to spiral out of control. Salman Rushdie calls the novel “a terrific black comedy, written almost entirely in pitch-perfect dialogue, that feels terrifyingly close to the unfunny truth.” (Carolyn) My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley: Helen Grant and her daughter Bridget have always had a fraught relationship full of misplaced intimacy, viciousness, and lies.In adulthood, Bridget craves distance while Helen demands closeness. Riley’s novel explores the painful and difficult nature of mother-daughter relationships, estrangement, and coming to terms with what we need versus what we have. Publishers Weekly calls the “affecting” novel “a fine addition to Riley’s notable body of work.” (Carolyn) Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions by Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi: Nigerian author Ogunyemi debut novel in stories follows four girls who meet at an all-girls boarding school in Nigeria. Spanning centuries and continents, the stories explore how a single moment from their past echoes throughout their lives—as well as the cultural, familial, political, and global factors that shape their past, present, and future. Our own Edan Lepucki writes: “Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi will sweep you away with these subtle yet profound stories. She is a bold and elegant writer, and this debut is such a pleasure.” (Carolyn) Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth: When Abby and her husband Ralph move in with Laura, Ralph’s mother, Abby hopes she can build a loving relationship with her cruel and callous mother-in-law. Instead, Laura takes her own life and begins to haunt the couple—and Abby must find a way to excise the ghost trying to ruin her life. The novel has garnered praise from Laird Hunt, who says it’s “filled with sharp, crackling sentences, which bend variously sinister, humorous and sad,” and Courtney Maum, who says it’s “bursting with smart, provocative, heart-breaking things to say about the nature of grief and its ability to take up just as much—if not more—physical space than the actual person lost.” (Carolyn) Junie by Chelene Knight: Set against the backdrop of Vancouver’s vibrant and diverse Hogan’s Alley neighborhood, Knight’s novel explores the complicated relationship between Junie and her mother Maddie. As Junie reaches adulthood, her mother falls deeper into her alcoholism and their beloved neighborhood is destroyed by outside forces. Esi Edugyan says: “This is a vivid, indelible world, one made more poignant by its coming loss.” (Carolyn) Kibogo by Scholastique Mukasonga (translated by Mark Polizzotti): Told in four interconnected parts, Mukasonga (The Barefoot Woman) writes about the myths, tales, and stories of colonial Rwanda and the missionaries who seek to change the country. Kirkus’ starred review writes: “Pensive and lyrical; a closely observed story of cultures in collision.” (Carolyn) Bindle Punk Bruja by Desideria Mesa: In what the publisher calls “Boardwalk Empire meets The Vanishing Half,” Mesa’s historical fantasy debut is inspired by an ancient Mexican folktale. Set in the 1920s, white-passing bruja Luna (also known as Rose) takes on Kansas City mobsters and dirty politicians to protect her family, her true identity, and her magical abilities. (Carolyn)

Person to Person

Get into a Rhythm: The Millions Interviews Laura Warrell

Martha Anne Toll - 8.8.2022 | 1 book mentioned

Laura Warrell’s debut novel Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm is a luxuriant dive into the world of jazz and love. Trumpet player Circus Palmer swims through a series of captivating women—including his daughter, Koko—without landing on the unconditional love he has for his instrument. Yet it is Circus’s women who comprise the joists and crossbeams of this engaging novel. I had the good fortune to catch up with Laura Warrell by email. Martha Anne Toll: How did you first come to writing? Laura Warrell: I never consciously decided to write. It came naturally. I began once I learned how to handle a pencil—I wrote my first book when I was six, although my mother claims I was five. Throughout my childhood, I wrote stories and film scripts so I could become a movie star and act in my own films. In college, it dawned on me: I like acting, but I love writing. Very little in had to change. I was already writing constantly, so now there was simply more intention and more desire to understand craft. I got two writing degrees, learned to read with a closer eye, and participated in classes, conferences, anything I could do to get better. MAT: What kind of reader were you as a child? And now? LW: I read to escape a somewhat challenging childhood and to imagine a life: loads of racy YA books, including Judy Blume, because no boys had crushes on me though I was crushing on them. In high school I read a lot of Jackie Collins—again, to imagine a much sexier life. In high school I discovered literary and classic fiction; that’s where Toni Morrison and Alice Walker came in. I attempted Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, found Vonnegut and Toni Cade Bambara. Nowadays, I like to keep up with all the amazing authors who are publishing now. I’ve met many of my contemporaries online and through other literary communities, and I want to read their books. I’ve just finished my friend Liska Jacobs’s The Pink Hotel, which was so fun. I’m looking forward to Daniel Nieh’s Take No Names and Cleyvis Natera’s Neruda on the Park. I can’t wait to see what Raven Leilani, Brit Bennett, Isle McElroy, and Dawnie Walton do next. I adored The Secret Life of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw. I’m also a fan of Danzy Senna and Steve Almond. Toni Morrison is a favorite—she models the idea that you should write about who and what you want to read about, and stay true to it. I turn to the greats, like Munro or Bambara, when I need to get unstuck, and have lesser-known favorites like Jamie Quatro and Christine Schutt who are brilliant with language. I love international writers like Javier Marias and Marguerite Duras, and also turn to poets when I need to get into a rhythm: Giovanni, Neruda, and Sexton are go-tos. MAT: What was your work life before the book and currently? LW: For a while, I looked for “day jobs” to fit around writing. I worked in editing and public relations, and as a fact checker at a glossy magazine, which was fun but not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. After my divorce, I moved to Europe to write and have adventures, which I did! There, I taught English and realized how much I actually enjoy teaching—I liked moving around a classroom and engaging with other people. When I came back to the U.S., I got the necessary credentials to start teaching at the university level and have taught in English departments on both coasts. Few things give me more pleasure than convincing students to go for it. MAT: How did you come to write Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm? LW: For longer than I care to remember, I was involved with a charismatic musician, the kind of fella women swoon over. Like Circus Palmer, this guy was impossible to pin down. I wondered why so many of us become entangled and enchanted by these slippery characters. We’ve seen these kinds of relationships explored from the perspective of the cad, because we want to know what drives him, but we rarely see these relationships from the points of view of the women who get their hearts broken, or are smarting from being cast aside. I wanted these women to have their say and a chance to right their romantic ships, though maybe not all of them will. MAT: Music is also integral to your book. Can you talk about how you got it on the page? LW: I need to dig beneath the surface and fully inhabit my characters before putting them on the page. With Circus, I didn’t simply need to know who was his favorite musician or how often he practiced; I needed to know what the horn felt like in his hands, how the horn worked, and how his mind came up with melodies. I read great books about jazz musicians, focusing on their creative processes and psychologies. I wanted to give Circus habits that reflected the precision and obsessiveness of the jazz greats, which is why he won’t touch his horn unless his hands are clean. It was crucial to convey how the music would sound and feel to Circus and Maggie. I wanted readers to “hear” the music and groove to it. My research included long luxurious quotes from the greats, people like Louis Armstrong and Coltrane. I also asked the musicians in my life, especially my students at Berklee College of Music. So much of what I observed in them shows up in the novel. MAT: How did you conceive of the novel’s structure? LW: Men like Circus walk in and out of other people’s lives, which I wanted the structure to mirror. Chapters can stand alone, and characters show up and disappear. I also like that the structure mirrors music, particularly jazz, wherein each player steps forward to take a solo and share her interpretation of the main melody, which, to extend the metaphor, is each woman’s love affair with Circus. MAT: I felt the strongest relationship Circus had was to his trumpet. Could you elaborate? LW: Most jazz musicians love their pianos, saxophones, and trumpets more than anyone or anything. Through their instruments, they form both a private and public relationship with what they love, music. Musicians are the luckiest because there’s a physical manifestation of their creative inspiration they can hold and touch. We joke about the faces musicians make when they’re playing since they often look like they’re having sex, but I imagine it as an erotic experience. Inevitably, I imagine, musicians form the closest relationship with their instruments because of the amount of time they must spend to master them. I loved the idea of Circus being capable of love, devotion, commitment, and sacrifice, but not willing or able to exercise that with people. MAT: Musicians practice for thousands of hours before they can perform at the level that they do; what does your writing practice look like? LW: I wish I had a consistent writing practice. As an adjunct professor, it’s hard to get into a rhythm. You’ve got mountains of papers to grade one day, then nothing the next. One semester, you’ve got classes Monday afternoons, the next you don’t. As soon as I form a habit, life shifts and I have to form a new one. So, I just make sure I sit down at some point and write. I’m a list maker. I write a schedule for myself each new week and make sure to pencil in at least two hours every day to write, at least five to six days a week. I do my best to stick to it. MAT: What about your book’s path to publication? LW: What a long, arduous path! It took two years, fifty agent queries, and countless rewrites before I landed my agent and a book deal. The end was fantastic—a six-way auction and a deal with Pantheon and the phenomenal Lisa Lucas. The beginning was rough, so what I can offer is the conviction that if we believe in our work, we mustn’t give up. I hope my journey can gives writers some hope. We have to keep doing the work—writing, revising, showing it to trusted readers, and revising again. MAT: What’s next? LW: I’m working on my next novel, also about the challenges of love and connection. Clearly, I’m obsessed with fractured relationships and the myriad ways we rob ourselves of what I consider the most meaningful experience in life, which is love. [millions_email]

Person to Person

Surrounded by Choice: The Millions Interviews Sopan Deb

Martha Anne Toll - 7.15.2022 | 1 book mentioned

I first met Sopan Deb in 2020 when I moderated a virtual panel called Brown in America: Community, Culture, and Code, hosted by San Antonio’s Malvern Books. Deb had just published his first book, a memoir, Missed Translations: Meeting the Immigrant Parents Who Raised Me. Missed Translations is a breathtaking read about the contradictions in Deb’s upbringing. He had an all-American suburban childhood in New Jersey, yet was raised by Bengali parents who both drifted away from him by the time he became a young adult. Far from being a paean to loss, Missed Translations is a compassionate, at times humorous, recounting of Deb’s adult efforts to reconnect with both parents, now living worlds apart. Deb’s first novel, Keya Das’s Second Act, published earlier this month by Simon & Schuster, is grounded in tragedy, but is ultimately a story of redemption. When the novel’s titular character dies in a car accident just after she’s come out to her parents as gay, her family—who was horrified by her revelation—is destroyed by her sudden death. Keya’s father, Shantanu, discovers a script that Keya and her girlfriend Pamela had been writing and shares his discovery with his ex-wife Chaitali and their remaining daughter, Mitali. Along with Pamela, Shantanu and Mitali bring the play to life as an affirmation of their lost loved one. In addition to being an author, Deb is a basketball writer, contributor to the Culture section of the New York Times, and a stand-up comedian. Curiosity and humor mark his writing, which centers flawed, lovable characters. I caught up with him by email. Martha Anne Toll: What was the inspiration(s) behind Keya Das's Second Act? Sopan Deb: I began writing the novel in the summer of 2020. After the release of my memoir, Missed Translations, I wanted to write something that dealt with grief and redemption. It could also have been the pandemic. Redemption is an interesting topic to me. Are we a forgiving society? I think many of us like to think we are, but I’m not so sure of that. I’ve also been interested in South Asian family dynamics and wanted to explore a split family and what it would take to bring one back together. Finally, this particular story is inspired by the real-life interaction of a Bengali friend of mine, who had a difficult coming out experience with her parents. MAT: This book has a dark premise at its center, the death of a daughter, and parents’ inability to accept their child’s choice in love. Can you talk more about that and why it matters to you? SD: My parents were arranged to get married. More specifically, my mother was pressured into marrying my father. This wasn’t unusual culturally at the time. But the natural progression is that when the next generation grows up here in the United States and are surrounded by choice, it can be difficult for my parent’s generation to adapt, particularly those of South Asian descent. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong. It just is. I think about “choice” a lot. I think I take “choice” for granted. For my parents, “choice” isn’t a word they knew a lot about. In terms of Keya Das, I do think a certain subset of South Asian parents still struggle with LGBTQ issues. It’s a generational issue, but also a cultural one. Remember, it was only in 2018 that India struck down its sodomy law. MAT: You have a lot to say about the current dating scene for younger and older people. SD: One of the most interesting relationships for me is the one between a character named Chaitali and Jahar. Chaitali is divorced and remarries Jahar, who was also previously married. It’s incredibly unusual for South Asian marriages to end in divorce. There’s a stigma to it. It’s partially why my parents stayed married for so long, despite having a difficult marriage, which ultimately ended after 30 years. I wanted to explore a different type of dating. We rarely see middle-aged dating depicted with characters of South Asian descent in literature, so I wanted to give it a shot. MAT: In addition to their dating life, Mitali and her father have many other parallels. Can you talk about that? SD: When we meet them, these characters are both fundamentally broken human beings floating through life without purpose. They see themselves as empty shells and act like it. Ideally, they would deal with the emptiness together. But they blame themselves so much for Keya’s death that they don’t feel they deserve any sort of companionship. They likely model handling loss after each other. Deep down, they’re loving people with huge regrets about not expressing that love enough. There’s a lot of self-loathing there, combined with a huge capacity to love. (We see hints of that through their interactions with Kalpana, Mitali’s grandmother and Shantanu’s mother.) They also both have a resentment of Chaitali, although it’s an unfair one. Finally, I also think Shantanu and Mitali very much crave the adoration of the other one. MAT: How did your experience with the publication of Missed Translations, a memoir, inform this novel? This is your first novel, how was that process different as well? SD: Writing my memoir essentially gave me the confidence that I could write fiction. I learned a lot about my own voice in writing Missed Translations, including what I’m good at and what I’m not so good at. I would definitely write the memoir differently today because I think I’m a better writer. The biggest adjustment was being able to make things up in the novel. As a journalist, my mind is trained to be accurate about all things. In fiction, you could make up an entire planet if you want to. (I didn’t do that.) That took some getting used to. In the memoir, I was mostly focused on my own story, whereas in the novel, I had to think about how to serve several characters. MAT: Do you feel Keya Das’s Second Act shares any connective threads with Missed Translations? SD: Definitely. For one thing, the concept of a split South Asian family. I’m very familiar with that from my own family. But also, there are several scenes with a therapist in the novel. One of the concepts I discuss in Missed Translations is how mental health treatment is often stigmatized in South Asian communities. In Keya Das’s Second Act, I wanted to explore what it might’ve been like if someone of my parents’ generation went to see a therapist. There’s also the concept of what it means to achieve the American Dream. The opening scene features Shantanu looking out onto a barely maintained lawn, while his white neighbors have perfectly green lawns. My father, who grew up in India, worked for years to have a perfect lawn when I was growing up. He never quite got there. It’s emblematic of what his life was like in America. Beyond that, both books partly take place in the New Jersey suburbs, where I grew up, and feature the Bengali American community I grew up around heavily. MAT: You have wonderful and humorous insights into being part of an immigrant family in America. You’re through and through an American, but some Americans may not see you that way. Can you talk about this? SD: This is an interesting question. When I covered the Trump campaign as a politics reporter, I was told to “go back to Iraq” by a Trump supporter at a rally, followed by someone else asking if I was a member of ISIS. Those were jarring moments and a reminder that in some eyes, I will never be a true “American,” whatever that means. I think it’s important to remember that when someone is deemed “other” or “un-American,” it’s not just about bigotry or citizenship. It’s often political disagreement being funneled into something else. I remember being angry in those moments, but the anger quickly dissipated. The way I look at it, I don’t feel the need to defend or discuss how American I am. I was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. That’s the end of the discussion for me. If it’s not, it says more about the person who thinks otherwise than me. MAT: You don’t translate or provide background on the Indian holidays that are important in this book, particularly Durga Puja. What was behind this decision? SD: I didn’t feel the need to, truthfully. It makes the book feel “otherized,” if that makes sense. If I read a book that features a reference to Christmas, I don’t need Santa Claus explained to me. I tried to leave enough context for the reader to understand, but ultimately, this isn’t a book mainly about religion. MAT: Your day job is as a sportswriter—does this influence your fiction writing at all? SD: It sounds simple, but as a writer for the Times, I’m able to keep my writing sharp because I have to do it so often. Since everything is extensively edited, you’re constantly reminded what is and isn’t good writing. Obviously, I have more leeway in the type of voice I use when I’m writing fiction, but being a journalist allows me to keep my storytelling skills, to the extent I have them, in as good a shape as possible. MAT: Have any books in particular influenced your writing life? SD: This may be a cliched answer for a South Asian writer, but it’s true: Jhumpa Lahiri’s works were profound for me, particularly The Namesake. Her short story collections as well. I had never seen Bengali characters brought to life like this before. It made me feel like I was reading about my own family and conversely, gave me the push to write about my own experiences. An amusing story my parents told me—they knew her family before I was born and used to spend time with them. They told me this while I was in the process of writing Missed Translations. My mother said something like, “I heard Jhumpa became a writer or something,” which made me laugh. Yes, Mom! Jhumpa Lahiri more than “became a writer.” That’s how I knew it wasn’t made up. [millions_email]

Book Previews

Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2022 Book Preview

Editor - 7.14.2022 | 1 book mentioned 2

In what has proved to be an endlessly trying year, we hope this list—which contains more than 175 books—will provide opportunities for you to be delighted, excited, and surprised. The second half of 2022 brings new work from Anuradha Roy, Mohsin Hamid, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Marianne Wiggins, Annie Proulx, Namwali Serpell, Ling Ma, Percival Everett, Andrew Sean Greer, Yiyun Li, Kamila Shamsie, Celeste Ng, Lászlo’ Krasznahorkai, George Saunders, Ian McEwan, Orhan Pamuk, and Cormac McCarthy (who is publishing not one, but two new books; what an overachiever!). We also have anticipated debut novels by Morgan Talty, Tess Gunty, Jonathan Escoffery, and Zain Khalid. There’s also new books by two Millions staffers: Kate Gavino and Anne K. Yoder. We hope you’ll find a book, or two, or ten to keep you company amid all of this. While we try our best, we miss books every single time we put this list together and, as usual, we will continue with our monthly previews, beginning in August. Let us know in the comments what you’re anticipating in the second half of 2022. Want to help The Millions keep churning out great books coverage? Then sign up to be a member today. July How to Read Now by Elaine Castillo: The author of the acclaimed novel America is Not the Heart now publishes a volume of criticism, essays destined to become classics--covering the lies told about fiction and empathy, the response to what Castillo calls "unexpected reader," and the imperial and colonial ideas that undergird works of art and readings of them. Gina Apostol calls the collection, "a powerful punch in criticism’s solar plexus: Castillo’s take as the ‘unexpected reader’ is what literature needs now, both an absolute bomb and a balm—a master class in the art of reading. Her art is a corrective and a curative but also just a joy—humorous, insanely erudite, and absolutely necessary for our times.” (Lydia) The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs: The perfect summer read just showed up on my doorstep and I can’t wait to dive in. The Pink Hotel is Jacobs’s third novel, and like her debut Catalina, she returns her sharp gaze and pleasing prose to Southern California. In this case, to a landmark hotel in Beverly Hills where small town newlyweds Kit and Keith have come for a honeymoon—as well as a possible job offer. When fires and protests engulf the city, chaos is unleashed. Kirkus calls the book a “sharp social satire” and Janelle Brown says it’s “heady and dark and dangerous.” (Edan) The Great Man Theory by Teddy Wayne: Paul, a flailing New York academic, is writing a book entitled The Luddite Manifesto: How the Age of Screens is a Fatal Distraction, but his life goes south when he’s demoted into the adjunct ranks-and has to pick up Uber shifts to make ends meet. By turns funny and angry, with a healthy dose of poignant thrown in, this is the book for people who only think they’ve read all they ever want to read about the Trump era. (Michael) 1,000 Coils of Fear by Olivia Wenzel (translated by Priscilla Layne): Set during the 2016 U.S. prudential election season, playwright Wenzel’s debut novel follows an unnamed Black German woman splitting her time between Berlin and New York. Through memories, reflections, and an interview, the woman reveals much about her childhood, trauma, and her feelings about class, racism, and capitalism, as well as the dangers lurking internally and externally. Kirkus calls the debut “a prismatic novel, thoughtful and unsettling.” (Carolyn) Brother Alive by Zain Khalid: When his closest confidantes leave behind their sons, imam Salim Smith adopts the three unrelated boys and they live above a Staten Island mosque. Despite their differences, the boys are held together by secrets, belief, and loyalty—which, in the end, may not be enough. “A novel with the polish and warmth of a stone smoothed in the hand after a lifetime of loving worry—original, darkly witty, sometimes bitter, and so very wise,” says Alexander Chee. “And certainly the debut of a major new writer.” (Carolyn) Keya Das’s Second Act by Sopan Deb: New York Times reporter Sopan Deb’s debut novel is set in the world of Bengalis living in the New Jersey suburbs. Shantau Das is a man in exile — divorced from his wife, estranged from his traditional Bengali neighbors, no longer speaking with his elder daughter and, worst of all, tortured by regrets that he failed to accept his late daughter Keya after she came out as gay. The discovery of the unfinished manuscript of a play Keya was writing could release Shantau from his exile. By staging the play, the members of this splintered family realize they can pay homage to Keya while discovering new meanings of family, creativity and second chances. (Bill) After the Hurricane by Leah Franqui: From the author of America for Beginners, a woman leaves her life as a success story in New York to return to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, in a search for the father she hasn’t seen in years, a family mystery that interrogates success and explores family ties. (Lydia) The Empire of Dirt by Francesca Manfredi (translated by Ekin Olap): Your first period often feels like the start of a curse; for 12-year-old Valentina, it may actually be one. The walls of the house she shares with her mother and grandmother start to bleed, the first of several plagues to descend on the family, as Valentina’s world falls into chaos. Maybe it’s a generational curse, as Valentina’s grandmother believes. Maybe it’s the fruit of decades of family secrets. Maybe it’s just what it feels like to grow up in a world hostile to women and girls. The English language debut of Italian author Francesca Manfredi, The Empire of Dirt is as elegant and precise as it is haunting. (Kaulie) Bad Thoughts by Nada Alic: Alic’s sharp and funny debut story collection follows women—who party, obsess, dream, desire, and cope—within and against the confines of the modern world. T Kira Madden writes: “Alic offers a collection tracing the brutal and hilarious contours of humanity, with every sentence engined on the current between the two. Astute and unpredictable without ever veering into kitsch, Alic is a vital voice of our time.” (Carolyn) Hawk Mountain by Conner Habib: A single father finds himself playing host to an old classmate who used to bully him back in high school. As they become reacquainted he learns that bullies don't change much and that the impulse behind their behavior is quite often something other than hatred. This is the debut novel by the Dublin-based American author, a story the publisher calls a "tense story of deception, manipulation, and murder." (Il’ja) Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah: A young Native American man is intent on finding "a place for himself" (author's website) in a world seemingly bent on giving him anything but that. Drawing on a wealth of Indigenous tradition, Hokeah has produced in his debut a novel that underscores the quiet strength that arises when a family is true to its identity and the too common tragedy that results when identity is suppressed. (Il’ja) Amanat edited by Zaure Batayeva and Shelley Fairweather-Vega: Amanat is a Kazakh word that refers to a promise, a moral commitment, and a cultural legacy to be cherished and protected. Likewise, the same-titled anthology introduces the most representative yet diverse voices from post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Together, they piece out the intergenerational history of a country that has been reshaped by politics several times in recent decades. In these stories, the wisdom, struggles, and resilience of the real people never cease to inspire us. (Jianan Qian) Self-Portrait with Ghost by Meng Jin: Self-Portrait with Ghost is the first story collection by Meng Jin, the acclaimed author of Little Gods. Written during the recent years of political turbulence and social isolation, these stories teeter on a fulcrum between past and future, US and China, self and society. Compared with other times of human history, the contemporary age seems to reward us with generous access to knowledge and information. But Jin’s stories, in smart and unique ways, also remind us of the other side of the coin: we are constantly inventing and reinventing our self-images, and, despite seemingly more vehicles to express our thoughts, we do not have much real power. (Jianan Qian) The Burning Season by Alison Wisdom: America is often spoken of as the “city on a hill,” a utopian refugee and site of spiritual yearning, yet very often the communities born from that Edenic vision are more like Jonestown or the Manson Family than they are paradise. Alison Wisdom, the author of the acclaimed novel We Can Only Save Ourselves, presents a particularly American fable in her latest book about married couple Rosemary and Paul, and their residence with an ultraconservative and misogynistic cult led by the charismatic Papa Jake in Dawes, Texas. Paul takes to the confines of the community with relative ease, while Rosemary is appropriately disquieted, especially as a series of symbolically fraught wild fires break out, and threaten to immolate those who’ve sought sanctuary in this potentially dangerous place. Papa Jake promises “Traces of heaven – the glory of God falling like light, feathers of the angels. Evidence of the presence of God, a miracle,” but Dawes is another American nightmare. Here in this community where women delete their period apps and wild fires threaten to burn the world, Wisdom provides a trenchant parable for our moment. (Ed Simon) Crying in the Bathroom by Erika L. Sánchez: In her memoir-in-essays, Sánchez (I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter) writes about growing up the daughter of Mexican immigrants, her journey to becoming a bestselling writer, and everything in between with heart, humor, and vulnerability. About the essay collection, Sandra Cisneros says: “It’s only after you’ve laughed that you understand the heartbreak beneath the laughter. I relished especially the stories she shares about being a wanderer savoring her solitude, a rare gift for a woman, but absolutely essential for any writer.” (Carolyn) Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: A chance subway encounter between childhood friends leads to video game design stardom. Set over the course of thirty years, the novel follows these lifelong friends navigate love, loss, and fame in Massachusetts, Los Angeles, and all the real and virtual places in between. Publishers Weekly’s starred review calls the novel “an exhilarating epic” and “a one-of-a-kind achievement.” (Carolyn) Sister Mother Warrior by Vanessa Riley: Riley’s (Island Queen) newest novel reimagines the true stories of two women during the Haitian Revolution: Marie-Claire Bonheur, the first Empress of Haiti, and Gran Toya, a free West African-born warrior. The two women, fights in their own right, meet when a war breaks out on Saint Domingue—and they both make their mark in the revolution that led to Haiti’s independence. Myriam J. A. Chancy calls the novel “richly imagined, meticulously researched, and fast-paced” that “encourages us to rethink history through fresh eyes.” (Carolyn) The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy: Booker Prize nominee Roy’s newest novel follows Elango, a Hindu potter, who becomes obsessed with rendering an image that came to him in a dream: a terracotta horse. Once the horse is complete, Elango struggles with heartbreak, religious violence, and an ever-changing community that may no longer accept him. Narrated by his student Sara, a lonely woman on the cusp of adulthood, the novel explores themes of love, loss, art, myth, nature, and the tension between the East and West. Publishers Weekly’s starred review says that this “novel of small tragedies” is “Roy’s best to date.” (Carolyn) An Honest Living by Dwyer Murphy: Murphy, a former litigator and the editor-in-chief at CrimeReads, has produced an engaging noirish debut novel. A freelance lawyer in mid-aughts Brooklyn is approached by a mysterious woman calling herself Anna Reddick who offers him $10,000 cash to track down her missing husband, who, she believes, is pilfering rare true-crime books from her collection. Cue Chinatown. When the real Anna Reddick shows up, the story ricochets through a series of deceptions involving unscrupulous book sellers, a possible suicide, a sleazy real-estate developer and an eccentric female novelist. The writing is brisk, never showy, and Murphy delivers a loving snapshot of a New York that existed not so long ago but is already long gone. (Bill) Kaleidoscope by Cecily Wong: The second novel from Wong, Kaleidoscope follows Riley Brighton, second daughter of a rag-to-riches Chinese American family who found their fortune in a “globally bohemian,” culturally appropriating shopping chain, as she tries to make sense of a staggering loss and her own place in the Brighton story. Celeste Ng calls it “a moving portrayal of the tangled knot of sisterhood and the dizzying spiral of grief. Cecily Wong’s dazzling second novel deftly explores the complex push-pull of family and ambition, and the ways we learn to define ourselves in—and out of—our loved ones’ orbits.” (Kaulie) Harry Sylvester Bird by Chinelo Okparanta: Harry Sylvester Bird is a young white man from Pennsylvania with racist parents who embarrass him, leading him to mount a project of personal redemption in adulthood that involves a "Transracial-Anon group" and eventually goes awry. Kirkus calls it a "tart, questioning exploration of how deep racism runs." (Lydia) Sirens & Muses by Antonia Angress: Sirens & Muses, Angress’s debut novel, is already drawing glowing comparisons to that famous campus-novel debut The Secret History, if The Secret History had the art fascination of The Goldfinch. “An intriguing exploration of art and wealth spearheaded by messy, engrossing characters” (Kirkus), Sirens & Muses follows four artists through a year at an elite art school and then into the heart of New York City during Occupy, raising and upending questions of beauty, class, money and artistic identity along the way. For fans of Tartt, obviously, but also of Writers & Lovers, The Interestings, and all stories of art, desire, and the search for an authentic self. (Kaulie) Shmutz by Felicia Berliner: The great masculine, priapic enfant terrible of Jewish American literature was Philip Roth, whose sexual foibles and neuroses came in for ample investigation across his corpus. All those shiksas, the STD anxieties, that scene with the liver in Portnoy’s Complaint. And yet Jewish women were often made the punchline of that formidable canon, the jokes about overbearing mothers and nagging wives. Now, in a voice evocative of Erica Jong, Felicia Berliner answers the Rothian tradition in Shmutz, with a cover evoking the erotic congruencies of Purim hamantaschen. Unlike Roth, Berliner takes religious seriously, exploring the intersection of the physical and spiritual in the story of Raizl, a young Hasidic college student who is awaiting for her arranged marriage but in the meantime becomes increasingly addicted to internet porn. “But the videos imprinted in her memory will not be erased and sealed shut. No angel will come to wipe away her knowledge.” Desire and guilt, faith and ecstasy – Berliner proves that such human categories are never diametrically opposed, but rather always enmeshed together in the throes of their own combative passion. (Ed Simon) Gods of Want by K-Ming Chang: National Book Award "5 Under 35" honoree Chang (Bestiary) returns with a story collection—steeped in feminism, queerness, and fabulism— that focuses on the lives, loves, memories, myths, and secrets of Asian American women. About the debut collection, Dantiel W. Moniz says: “Full of mythic desire, joy and pain disguised as the other, and navigating the precarious balance of how to belong to a land while still belonging to oneself, Gods of Want is bursting with language and images so striking, so sure of their own strength, I found myself stunned.” (Carolyn) The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai: From the Pen/Hemingway finalist Jamil Jan Kochai, comes a stunning new story collection that captures contemporary Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora in America. A young man’s video game adventure mutates into an investigation of his father’s war memories. Two married medical doctors choose to take care of their fellow countrymen despite the disappearance of their own son. A college student in the US launches a hunger strike against the Israeli violence against Palestine. Jamil’s stories blur the line between fantasy and reality, and even comedy and tragedy. He breathes new life into the narratives of war and displacement. (Jianan Qian) Fire Season by Leyna Krow: A suicidal banker sees opportunity in an illegal scheme. A new-to-town con man’s time may finally be running out. A future-seeing woman entertains both these men with her power. In her debut novel, Krow (I’m Fine, But You Appear to Be Sinking) follows these three people as their lives converge and are irreparably changed when a fire devastates their town. Anna North says the novel is “an arresting take on magic, science, disaster, and salvation that’s eerily resonant with the fire seasons we find ourselves living through today.” (Carolyn) Total by Rebecca Miller: As a fan of Miller’s previous short story collection, Personal Velocity, published way back in 2001, I was happy to learn that her new book is a return to short fiction. Almost all the stories center on women, exploring desire, infidelity, motherhood, and technology. Publishers Weekly calls the collection “alluring,” while Kirkus describes it as “a beautifully constructed, acutely felt, morally honest collection.” (Hannah) Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori): Murata’s (Earthlings) first collection to be translated into English features 12 stories about what it means to be human here and now, in the future, and in alternate realities only the author can dream of. In a starred review, Kirkus calls the collection “beautiful, disturbing, and thought-provoking.” (Carolyn) Briefly, a Delicious Life by Nell Stevens: Creative inspiration is a kind of haunting. The sudden appearances, the inexplicable coincidences, the deep mystery of where the voice you’re hearing is actually coming from. Nell Stevens’ novel Briefly, a Delicious Life investigates such creative hauntings, literal and otherwise, in the story of Bianca, the ghost of a fifteenth-century girl who inhabits the Charterhouse, a former monastery in Mallorca. Almost four centuries after her death, and Bianca falls in love with a new resident, the beautiful nineteenth-century French novelist George Sand who has arrived with her lover, the composer Frederic Chopin. “I died in 1473, when I was fourteen years old, and had been at the Charterhouse ever since,” Bianca says, yet “After I died, I found myself in a time of beautiful women,” with one spectral eye towards the oblivious Sand. Stevens provides a haunting (in all senses of the word) and evocative magical realist account of creativity and gender, sexuality and inspiration, a ghost story both gothic and beautiful. (Ed Simon) Dirtbag, Massachusetts by Isaac Fitzgerald: Fitzgerald publishes a memoir in essays about the many lives he has lived, inculding time in a Boston homeless shelter in his youth. The big-hearted Fitzgerald explores masculinity, self image, self-acceptance, and life in what Marlon James calls "A heart on the sleeve, demons in check, eyes unblinking, unbearably sad, laugh-out-loud funny revelation." (Lydia) Half Outlaw by Alex Temblador: Temblador’s first novel for adults follows Raqi, an orphaned girl, now woman, who receives a call that the addict uncle that raised her is dead and his motorcycle club has invited her on his Grieving Ride. Though she wants to decline, the club leader dangles a promise: if she attends, he will give her the address of her paternal Mexican grandfather. Desperate to have familial connection, Raqi agrees and sets off on cross-country trek where she will discover more about herself, her family, and her upbringing than she ever could have imagined. Tarfia Faizullah says: “With tender rigor, Temblador takes on the complexities of both chosen and inherited family and culture, while also taking us on a thrilling heroine’s journey.” (Carolyn) The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras: This memoir by Contreras (Fruit of the Drunken Tree) looks back on her childhood in a politically-fraught Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s. After suffering a bout of amnesia in her young adulthood, she returns to Colombia to reacquaint, reorient, and rediscover her familial history. “The Man Who Could Move Clouds is a memoir like no other, mapping memory, myth, and the mysteries and magic of ancestry with stark tenderness and beauty,” raves Patricia Engel. “A dreamlike and literal excavation of the powers of inheritance, Ingrid Rojas Contreras has given us a glorious gift with these pages.” (Carolyn) Other Names for Love by Taymour Soomro: A novel about masculinity, family, and desire following a 16-year-old Fahad during a summer in rural Pakistan, where a connection with another boy will haunt him through adulthood in London and then an eventual return to the scenes of the past. (Lydia) Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty: A collection of 12 linked stories following David, a boy growing up in the Panawahpskek (Penobscot) Nation of Maine in the present day, detailing incidents funny, painful, traumatic, and formative to its characters. A review in the New York Times Book Review raves "Talty forms a rich and vast picture of what it is to be alive, with stunning clarity, empathy and unwavering honesty." (Lydia) Denial by Jon Raymond: “Hopeful” isn’t a word typically associated with cli-fi, and yet, John Raymond’s fourth novel, Denial, defies expectations in this way. Set in the year 2052, Denial depicts a world ravaged by climate change but that has avoided the catastrophe that it could have been due to a global protest movement that broke up the fossil fuel corporations and placed former executives on trial for crimes against the environment. The twist in this story comes when a journalist tracks down and plans to confront one of the most notorious executives who fled the country and escaped punishment in Mexico. As Jenny Offill praises: it’s “as fast-paced as a thriller, but the mystery at the heart of it is not who committed the crime but how to live in its eerie aftermath.” (Anne) Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield: The first novel from the author of salt slow, Our Wives Under the Sea follows Miri as she struggles to understand what has happened to her wife, Leah, fresh back from a deep sea mission gone wrong. In a starred review, our sister site Publishers Weekly describes it as “a moody and intimate debut… both a portrait of a marriage and a subtle horror fantasy;” Kristin Arnett calls it “one of the best books I've ever read. It's not only art, it's a perfect miracle.” (Kaulie) The Poet's House by Jean Thompson: Claire, a woman in her twenties, begins working for Viridian, a poet whose career has been defined by her work and love affair with Mathias, a prominent poet. As she spends time within this insular literary circle, Claire considers Viridian’s life choices and compromises and develops her own relationship with words. Julia Alvarez describes The Poet’s House as “a coming-of-age novel, a novel of manners (Jane Austen, make some room on that big bench, dear), a page-turning narrative with laugh-out-loud scenes, and ultimately a hopeful, affirming book about how words can stir the mystery in us, help us find ourselves, and maybe even make us, however reluctantly, bigger versions of ourselves.” Jean Thompson’s most recent book has received starred reviews from Kirkus and Booklist. (Zoë) Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan: Set in Harlem, this debut coming-of-age novel follows a young girl growing up in Harlem in the ‘90s, navigating an Upper East Side prep school, exploring her artistic talents and hungers of all kinds, and facing intense maternal-line pressured to be thin and perfect. Starred review from Publishers Weekly – “A treasure.” (Sonya) August Mothercare by Lynne Tillman: Lynne Tillman has a way of perceiving and writing that's both nuanced and incisive. Her philosophical memoir, Mothercare: On Love, Death, and Ambivalence, grapples with the challenges of caring for a dying parent, the innavigable US healthcare system, and a daughter's ambivalence and grief—specifically in the context of the emotions that arise while caring for a difficult parent. As artist Gregg Bordowitz champions, “Only Lynne Tillman can write a clear-eyed account examining a topic that is anything but clearly comprehensible. This is a book about caring for the ill and dying, loss, regret, resentment, and contradictory emotions; all the mysteries of human attachments through their various transformations." (Anne) Mother in the Dark by Kayla Maiuri: A story about a family who moves from city to suburb and up the class hierarchy, throwing their family order in disarray and leading to a confrontation that tests the bonds between mother, daughters, and sisters. Daniel Loedel calls it "a gorgeous novel with profound insights into what keeps a family together and what it takes to shake off the stranglehold of the past." (Lydia) Paul by Daisy Lafarge: Poet Lafarge’s debut novel follows Frances, a 21-year-old British graduate student, who is volunteering on a farm in southern France. When she arrives, she meets the farm’s wildly charismatic and mysterious owner, Paul. As their physical and emotional connection deepens, Frances realizes what she stands to lose—and how she must save herself. Alexandra Kleeman writes, “Daisy Lafarge’s debut is a force to be reckoned with: all sinewy prose and sharp compulsion, with deep insight about the choreography of power and its eerie, unsettling flavor.” (Carolyn) Bad Sex by Nona Aronowitz: Our historical moment is, once again, particularly in need of clear-eyed, unrepentant, and radical understandings of women’s identity and sexuality. Fifty years after Second Wave Feminism envisioned different ways of existing in the world, and the Supreme Court along with its fellow travelling prudes, scolds, and puritans have stripped women of their fundamental rights, the misogynistic and theocratic impulse still strong in the American psyche. A writer for Teen Vogue, which has surprisingly been one of the most consistent of progressive political voices during our revanchist age, and Nona Aronowitz calls upon the example of her own mother, feminist theorist Ellen Willis, to answer questions about “What exactly, do I want? And are my sexual and romantic desires even possible amid the horrors and bribes of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy?” Within Bad Sex, Aronowitz introduces readers to fervent sluts and ambiguous wives, radical lesbians and liberationist lovers, all to discover how we reconcile ourselves and our desires in this time when both are under assault. (Ed Simon) When We Were Bright and Beautiful by Jillian Medoff: Set on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Cassie, the only daughter to the uber wealthy Quinn family, returns home when her youngest brother, Billy, is accused of rape by his ex-girlfriend. As the family fights to get Billy acquitted and cleared of all charges, Cassie struggles with her privilege, belief in her brother, and the secrets in her past that threaten to unravel it all. Kirkus calls the novel “a layered and compelling peek into the darkest consequences of privilege,” while Publishers Weekly says “Medoff does a good job developing Cassie’s complicated feelings, and leaves readers reflecting on the family’s intergenerational abuse of power.” (Carolyn) Witches by Brenda Lozano (translated by Heather Cleary): “The two narrative voices in Brenda Lozano’s Witches, Zoé, a journalist from Mexico City and Feliciana, an indigenous curandera, or healer, based in a small town, are connected by the murder of a third. Paloma was Feliciana's cousin, as well as a curandera and a muxe, or trans woman, who mentored Feliciana in the curandera’s practices, a position usually reserved for men. Witches examines and intertwines a multitude of binaries-- the two Mexicos, white and indigenous cultures, and femininity and machista masculinity. The result “is a story of the world's repeated failure to control feminine power and the sheer magic of language itself,” proclaims Catherine Lacey. (Anne) All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews: Sneha graduates into the worst days of an American economic recession. Fortunately enough, she finds an entry-level company job and starts to explore new friendships and romance. But life never goes as one expects. Before long, Sneha steps into deep trouble which jeopardizes her job and everything else. All This Could Be Different captures the authentic adventure of an immigrant: how she manages to forge a bond with the US through love and community. Sarah Thankam Mathews’s tender and beautiful prose renders the story unforgettable. (Jianan Qian) Acting Class by Nick Drnaso: In a follow-up to his Booker-longlisted graphic novel, Sabrina, Drnaso’s newest follows ten strangers—including a bored married couple, a single mother, and an ex-con—who meet at a community center acting class and find themselves under the spell of their mysterious and dubious leader, John. Kevin Barry says: “"Masterfully told, artfully layered, and beautifully rendered, Acting Class shows again that Nick Drnaso is attuned to a particular American ennui and eeriness like no other artist currently at work.” (Carolyn) Touch by Olaf Olafsson: In this quiet drama an aging Icelandic restaurant owner isn’t about to allow the global pandemic to stop him from seeing his first love again. Along the way he discovers that their 50 years of separation and the distance from his home to hers in her native Japan are but the least of the obstacles to be overcome in any quest for resolution. (Il’ja) A Map for the Missing by Belinda Huijuan Tang: After years of living in the US, Tang Yitian receives a phone call from his mother: his father has disappeared from their native rural village in China. Yitian’s homecoming results in not only revealing the mystery of his family, but also a confrontation with a choice he made in his youth. Both he and his childhood friend Tian Hanwen made great efforts in trying to attend university in the city. But while Yitian successfully rose to a professorship in the US, Hanwen was left behind, becoming the housewife of a local bureaucrat. A Map for the Missing delves into China’s political landscape in recent decades and examines the price of making your own life decision. (Jianan Qian) Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu (translated by Julia Sanches): This lyrical novel is set in a working-class neighborhood in Tenerife, far from the Canary Islands’ posh resorts. During one oppressively hot summer, the 10-year-old narrator and her best friend Isora experience changes in their bodies and their volatile emotions — from love to jealousy, admiration, obsession and submission. The story, laced with Canary Islands dialect and bachata lyrics, builds to a crescendo when desire and violence fuse. (Bill) The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty: In Gunty’s debut novel, four teenagers formerly in the foster care system live in a run-down apartment building nicknamed the Rabbit Hutch. The novel expands and contracts temporally and spatially as Gunty delves into the lives, desires, dreams, and fates of the building’s residents. Mark Z. Danielewski says: “The Rabbit Hutch aches, bleeds, and even scars but it also forgives with laughter, with insight, and finally, through an act of generational independence that remains this novel’s greatest accomplishment, with an act of rescue, rescue of narrative, rescue from ritual, rescue of heart, the rescue of tomorrow.” (Carolyn) The Ghetto Within by Santiago H. Amigorena (translated by Frank Wynne): French-Argentine writer Amigorena’s English language debut, which won the Prix des libraires de Nancy, reimagines the life of his Jewish grandfather and the guilty silences that echoed throughout his family for generations. A starred review in Kirkus’ calls the autobiographical novel (one in a series by the author) “a bleak, affecting portrait that points to immeasurable collateral damage.” (Carolyn) The Hundred Waters by Lauren Acampora: Sometimes the suburbs aren’t so bad – nice yard, more space, settled feelings – but for Louisa, a semi-retired Manhattan photographer, they begin to feel like a stultifying “fairytale quicksand” sucking at everything she once lived for. Her efforts to revitalize her hometown’s art center help keep her head above water, but life only begins to regain some real interest when Gabriel, an intense young artist, comes to town and captivates both Louisa and her preteen daughter, Sylvie, to dangerous effect. The latest from Acampora, author of The Paper Wasp and The Wonder Garden, The Hundred Waters is “arresting,” “enjoyably offbeat,” (Publishers Weekly) and carried by the voice of Louisa, who’s many things but never your standard bored suburbanite. (Kaulie) Mother of Strangers by Suad Amiry: Set in Jaffa between 1947 and 1951, architect and non-fiction writer Amiry’s debut novel follows a young couple, Subhi and Shams, falling in love while the Palestine as they once knew it—bustling, beautiful, and prosperous—falls apart around them. Booklist's starred review calls the novel "a powerful story of love, loss, and the destruction of a nation.” (Carolyn) The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings: The Women Could Fly is set in an oppressive society in which witch trials occur and the State mandates women to marry at 30 or relinquish their autonomy. Josephine Thomas is almost 30 and ambivalent about marriage, but more concerned about her mother who disappeared more than ten years ago. The Women Could Fly has been compared to work by Octavia E. Butler, Shirley Jackson, and Margaret Atwood. As Alexandra Kleeman describes, “Born of a radical imagination and executed with piercing elegance and skill, The Women Could Fly recalls legendary works of dystopian fiction but casts a spell all its own. Giddings is a rare and utterly original voice bridging the speculative and the all-too-real.” (Zoë) The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid: A speculative imagining of widespread racial “turnover,” the novel takes its inspiration from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and adapts/shapes it for our times: “One morning Anders, a white man, woke up to find he had turned a deep and undeniable brown.” It turns out Anders is not alone. Havoc and reckonings of all kinds--– interpersonal, societal, psycho-emotional – ensue. (Sonya) Stories from The Tenants Downstairs by Sidik Fofana: Set in a low-income Harlem high rise, where the threat of gentrification looms large, Fofana’s debut collection features eight interconnected stories about the tenants as they deal with personal struggles and find hope amid precarity. Mateo Askaripour says: “Yes, Stories from the Tenants Downstairs is funny, and yes, it is a collection that will make your jaw drop several times, but its true power lies in what it has to say about community, and how this road called life is more bearable when we walk it together. What a gift Fofana’s writing is, especially now." (Carolyn) The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh: Vietnamese American women in Orange County fall victim to an ancestral curse brought on by a witch, the result of which is havoc wreaked on the love lives of three sisters and even the next generation. What do you do to get rid of a curse? Consult a psychic and never give up. Nancy Jooyoun Kim raves of the book “sharp, smart, and gloriously extra, The Fortunes of Jaded Women pays homage to the counterfeit-Louis-Vuitton queens of the Vietnamese diaspora and West Coast witches everywhere.” (Lydia) Cyclorama by Adam Langer: The past and present collide in a Chicago high school production of The Diary of Anne Frank, one in 1982 and one in 2017, where the longstanding abuses of power of the director finally surface, and the story at the heart of the play is interwoven with the grim dynamics of Trump-era America. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls the novel “an outstanding performance.” (Lydia) Meet us by the Roaring Sea by Akil Kumarasamy: A genrebending novel set in the near future, when a young woman deals with the fallout of a family catastrophe through translating an old manuscript and getting involved with a strange AI project. Cathy Park Hong raves, “"Akil Kumarasamy is a singular talent. In her novel Meet Us By the Roaring Sea, Kumarasamy has braided together stories that are original, fresh, and breathtakingly imaginative as she reflects on the ethics of care in the age of digital capitalism. I love this book.” (Lydia) Delphi by Clare Pollard: Prophecy has always appealed to the human mind because the terror of what comes next can otherwise only be satiated by the grueling process of just waiting to see. For those ancient Greeks who made their way to the Oracle at Delphi, there was the hope that those seers could answer appeals about what awaited the pilgrim. Madness, of course, also threatens the prophet and the pilgrim, for it’s easy for the required humility to be replaced by an understandable hubris regarding tealeaves, palms, or sheep livers. Clare Pollard’s ingenious novel Delphi acknowledges both the desire threat of prophecy in her tale of its unnamed narrator, an English classics professor writing about ancient oracles right as Covid-19 sequesters Londoners in their homes, the pestilence just beginning to unleash its sufferings upon the world. Plague and prophecy, two vestiges of the pre-modern world that Pollard shows can’t always be so easily repressed, for in Delphi there is a return to that March 2020 when all of us wished we could know how the days, weeks, and months ahead would unfold, though whether that would have made any difference or not is a question for Cassandra. (Ed Simon) Haven by Emma Donoghue: Bestselling author Donoghue returns with historical fiction about three monks who travel to a remote island—whose presence came to their leader in a dream—off the coast of Ireland. Esi Edugyan writes: “This is a patient, thoughtful novel with much to say about spirituality, hope, and human failure, and about the miracle of mercy.” (Carolyn) The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias: The decorated thriller writer Gabino Iglesias (author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs) may or may not have been channeling Walter White when he created his new protagonist Mario, a father who’s buried in debt due to his daughter’s cancer diagnosis. After agreeing to go to work as a hit man, Mario discovers, to his surprise, that he’s good at the job. This propulsive, gut punch of a thriller then teams Mario with an old friend and Mexican drug cartel insider who has a plan to snatch the cartel’s $2 million cash shipment. Mario accepts this suicide mission, figuring he’ll wind up rich or with a bullet in his head. (Bill) Boulder by Eva Baltasar (translated by Julia Sanches): Baltasar’s (Permafrost) newest novel the narrator “Boulder,” a cook on a merchant ship, as she falls in loved with Samsa, a young Icelandic woman. Eventually the two women move in together and Samsa decides, at 40, that she wants to have a child—though Boulder finds herself wanting to flee. Kirkus’ starred review says: “A novel that lionizes the desire to be alone even as it recognizes the beauty and grace found within a family.” (Carolyn) Moth by Melody Razak: Set during the Indian Partition in 1947, British Iranian writer Razak explores the devastation and tumult experienced by one Brahmin family. When their daughter Alma’s engagement is meddled with, their entire world—as a family, as a nation—is changed forever. Starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus call the literary debut “exceptional.” (Carolyn) Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah: Nobel laureate Gurnah’s latest is a multi-generational exploration of colonial violence and displacement in east Africa through the lives of three young people: siblings Ilyas and Afiya—who are endlessly brutalized by family, country, and war—and Hamza, a fellow townsperson who, upon his return from war, falls in love with Afiya. Phil Klay says: “A work of extraordinary power, giving us a colonial world with utmost intimacy, capturing its cruelties and complexities, immersing us in vividly evoked characters, showing us moments of incredible tenderness and beauty, and quietly reordering our sense of history.” (Carolyn) My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson: The coming-of-age debut by television writer and producer Newsom (The Chi, Narcos, Bel-Air) follows Earl “Trey” Singleton III, a gay, Black teenager, who flees his wealthy family and travels to 1980s New York City where he has personal, political, and social awakenings. About the novel, Xochitl Gonzalez writes, “Newson’s Trey and his determination to live life on his own terms, even in the face of death all around him, brings into three dimension an era of New York Queer life that, too often, has been flattened and whitewashed by history.” (Carolyn) A Career in Books by Kate Gavino: In this graphic novel, recent NYU grads Silvia Bautista, Nina Nakamura, and Shirin Yap are roommates and friends who work in the publishing industry. They discover that Veronica Vo, their neighbor, is a Booker Prize winner whose books are out of print, and they take action to reissue her work. Booklist praises A Career in Books, stating that “While Gavino empathically showcases independent APA women in search of fulfillment, she also lovingly celebrates Asian American publishing with clever inclusions…Presented in delightful four-part, black-and-white panels, Gavino’s memorable characters manage the quotidian, dissect challenges, navigate change, and celebrate triumphs—together.” (Zoë) Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra (translated by Megan McDowell): This latest addition to the translated work of the author of the fabulous “Chilean Poet” is described by the Chilean press (Capital) as “Brief as a sigh and forceful as a blow.” Deceptively simple, this profound tale of ephemeral love will, despite the brevity of the telling, haunt you. (Il’ja) Perish by LaToya Watkins: A multi-generational, multi-perspective family novel set in Texas, about a Black family whose members gather at the death bed of their matriarch. Secrets, trauma, culpability, and forgiveness arise for each family member is various ways. The debut novel by Watkins, a Texas native. (Sonya) All the Ruined Men by Bill Glose: In his new linked story collection, combat veteran Glose writes about American soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq—and the physical, mental, and emotional battles they faced once off the battlefield. For fans of Phil Klay, Kevin Powers, and Tim O'Brien, according to the publisher, Kirkus’ starred review says the collection contains “painfully honest and consistently empathetic glimpses of modern American soldiers in war and peace.” (Carolyn) Bright by Kiki Petrosino: The first full-length essay collection from acclaimed poet Petrosino, a work of memoir, archival research, history, literary study, formal experimentation, and reflection on Petrosino's experience of girlhood in a Black and Italian family in Pennsylvania. Ross Gay calls it "an astonishing lyric archive of the body—who it’s made of; what’s imposed upon it; what’s extracted from it—the result of which is one of the most moving, and incisive documents on the brutalizing fictions of race that I’ve ever read." (Lydia) Tomorrow in Shanghai by May-lee Chai: A new collection of stories by the author of, most recently, Useful Phrases for Immigrants, following characters from the present day to the future, from China to France to a colony on mars. Charles Yu says of the book, "May-lee Chai's abundant gifts as a writer are on full display in this collection." (Lydia) The Performance by Claudi Petrucci (translated by Anne Milano Appel): All the world’s a stage…In this English-language debut, Claudia Petrucci provides a fresh take on an age-old issue: the blurred lines between art and life. In the novel, set in Milan, a woman working in a grocery store returns to the acting profession she once loved. She is an incandescent actor but soon suffers a complete breakdown, showing signs of life only when reading scripted scenes. What follows is a tangled Pygmalion story in which her boyfriend and her theater director conspire, each with his own motives, to shape her anew according to their own script. (Matt) Dead-End Memories by Banana Yoshimoto (translated by Asa Yoneda): Debuting in the US for the first time, but published originally in Japan twenty years ago, each of the five stories in this volume focus on women who endure "sudden and painful events" and then "quietly discover their ways back to recovery." (Nick M.) Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins: Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Wiggins returns with a novel about the Rhodes family. Set against the backdrop of World War II, Rocky Rhodes, the patriarch, mourns the death of his wife, protects his California ranch, and his children, Sunny and Stryker. When the war brings itself to their front door, the Rhodes family must navigate their ways through love, loss, and personal and national tragedies. Kirkus’ starred review writes: “This majestic novel will satisfy those thirsting for an epic saga of love, family, and the complexities of the American way.” (Carolyn) Water over Stones by Bernardo Atxaga (translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Thomas Bunstead): From the prolific author of Nevada Days, a new novel about a small village in the Basque country, spanning the 1970s to 2017, following boys whose lives are intertwined in an insular community in the shadow of Franco’s Spain. In a starred review, Kirkus calls it “a quietly remarkable offering.” (Lydia) American Fever by Dur e Aziz Amna: To balance on the hyphen between the word “American” and whatever nationality, race, or religion which precedes it can often be a precarious position, as centuries of literature about immigration has shown. Dur e Aziz Amna does what every great writer within this tradition does – indeed whatever immigrant to America has done – to retell that familiar story of exile and prejudice, discovery and glory once again, but to make it indelibly and completely her own. Her debut novel American Fever follows sixteen-year-old Pakistani exchange student Hira as she acclimates to the alien land of rural Oregon during the Obama years, discovering both her own fissures and complexities, as well as those of the nation that she’s to reside in for this long year. In a review of another book, she explains that it contains “some of the most haunting passages on exile, displacement, and the impossibility of return that I have ever read,” which is also an appropriate description of American Fever’s singular poetics of estrangement. (Ed Simon) September Voices in the Dead House by Norman Lock: Set in Washington, D.C., field hospitals between 1862 and 1863, Lock’s newest novel explores the interior lives, thoughts, and conflicted feelings of Walt Whitman and Louisa May Alcott as they care for wounded Civil War soldiers. Kirkus’ starred review calls Voices in the Dead House—the ninth installment in Lock’s American Novel Series (published by Bellevue Literary Press)—“a haunting novel that offers candid portraits of literary legends.” (Carolyn) Fen, Bog, and Swamp by Annie Proulx: Proulx brings her talents to nonfiction environmental writing and research, exploring the history of wetlands worldwide and how they have been maligned and drained, even while they are crucial to our planet's survival. A book that travels from Canada to Russia to England and to other damp, crucial patches of the planet, taking us on what Bill McKibben calls "an unforgettable and unflinching tour of past and present, fixed on a subject that could not be more important. A compact classic!" (Lydia) Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm by Laura Warrell: Circus Palmer, jazz trumpeter and old-school ladies’ man, is no stranger to the temptations of dangerous love. In her debut novel, Warrell assembles a lush orchestra of female voices to sing a story about passion and risk, fathers and daughters and the missed opportunities of unrequited love. When Circus learns that the woman closest to his heart, the free-spirited drummer Maggie, is pregnant by him, his reaction to the news sets the chorus of women to singing a song that’s soulful and gripping. The novel’s title comes from the great Jelly Roll Morton. (Bill) Tell Me I’m An Artist by Chelsea Martin: Joey has just started art school in San Francisco, and she isn’t sure she’s supposed to be there – her emotionally abusive mother certainly doesn’t think she is. Her friend Suz, on the other hand, seems born to be an artist, due in part to her privileged, sophisticated upbringing. Over the course of the school year, Joey tries to find her own creative identity while remaking Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, a movie she’s never seen, and navigating a complicated web of talent, privilege, and ambition. “Anyone who has ever tried to do meaningful work in spite of the growing suspicion that nothing matters will find a home in this hilarious, heart-piercing book, and a memorable companion in its young but wise narrator,” writes Emily Gould. (Kaulie) The Furrows by Namwali Serpell: At a beach in the Baltimore suburbs, a sister watches her brother disappear into the waves: “You were alone out there and the world took you back in, reclaimed you into its endless folding.” Serpell’s latest novel, which follows her expansive debut The Old Drift, begins with an epigraph from Marcel Proust: “People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive.” The Furrows chronicles the overpowering “aura of life” of the presumably drowned boy as he swims through the consciousnesses of those who mourn him. (Matt) If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery: In the 1970s, when political violence swept over their native Kingston, Topper and Sanya moved to Miami. But before long, the couple and their two children witness the discrepancy between the American dream and the stark reality. They fight their way against racism and natural and financial disasters. In the family’s worst days, even their pet fish commits suicide perhaps out of despair. Delicately crafted with irony and love, these linked stories explore the home and a sense of belonging in an age governed by the caprice of whiteness and capitalism. (Jianan Qian) Runaway by Erin Keane: A memoir by the poet and current EIC of Salon, telling the story of her mother's experience as a teenage runaway, leaving home and ending up in New York at age 15, only to marry a man many years her senior, and exploring the cultural and personal currents that contribute to our formation. (Lydia) The Means by Amy Fusselman: Amy Fussleman, the author of multiple nonfiction books such as Idiophone, Savage Park, and The Pharmacist’s Mate, has written her first novel. The basic plot: “Shelly Means, a wealthy stay-at-home mom and disgraced former PTA president, is poised to get the one thing in life she really wants: a beach house in the Hamptons.” The Means is such a fast-paced, breezy comedic novel that you may find yourself surprised that Fusselman deftly and directly leads you to existential dilemmas and the absurdity of capitalism and striving for more. The Means has received advanced praise from John Hodgman, Sarah Manguso, A.M. Homes, and more. (Zoë) Broken Summer by J. M. Lee (translated by An Seon Jae): On his 43rd birthday, Lee Hanjo wakes up to find that his wife has disappeared. Moreover, she has secretly written a novel about the sordid true self of a famous artist who in every way resembles Hanjo. Upon the publishing of that novel, Hanjo has to reckon on a particular summer in his younger days when he chose to cover up a tragic event with lies. As one of Korea’s best storytellers, J. M. Lee is famous for creating twists after shocking twists. Notedly, the charm of Lee’s stories originates from not only a mastery of craft but also a deep understanding of human nature. (Jianan Qian) The Backstreets by Perhat Tursun (translated by Darren Byler and Anonymous): To get away from the misery and poverty of the countryside, an unnamed Uyghur man moves to the Chinese capital of Xinjiang. However, his new life is rife with cold stares and rejections. While roaming the streets in the thick fog of winter pollution, his mind also wanders between desires and reality, memories and imaginations. Written by a leading Uyghur writer, poet, social critic, and a native of Xinjiang, The Backstreets is a sobering fable about contemporary society: how the halos of a major city gloss over political surveillance, social violence, and the racialization of ethnicity. Sadly, the astonishing absurdities in the story capture the stark realities. (Anonymous) Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Once you learn about poet, filmmaker, and artist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, it's hard not to feel the pull of her presence and influence, still as strong as ever decades after the publication of Dictee. The restored edition of her groundbreaking work features the original cover and high-quality reproductions of the interior layout as Cha intended them, "faithfully [rendering] the book as an art object in its authentic form." Whether you already have a beat-up copy of the book from college or not, this edition is worth getting for your shelf as yet another way to keep Cha's unparalleled work alive, still here, still thriving. (Kate) Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-jin (translated by Jamie Chung): A mother-daughter story told from the perspective of a socially conservative Korean mother who struggles to accept her daughter's sexual identity and the idea of a nontraditional life & family. Those values come into question again as she cares for a female patient at the nursing home where she works -- a professionally successful woman with no children. The world has changed, and everyone's coping & evolving; this specific cultural & generational perspective surely has universal resonance and poignancy. (Sonya) All That's Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien: After her brother is murdered inside a crowded restaurant, Ky, a young Vietnamese-Australian woman, returns home to find out what happened and why. “All That's Left Unsaid is a stunning debut, an unputdownable mystery combined with a profoundly moving family drama about the ways we hurt and hide from those we love most—and how we mend and strengthen those lifelong bonds,” says Angie Kim. (Carolyn) How We Disappear by Tara Lynn Masih: A collection of stories about disappearance and absence that range from Belgium to the Siberian Taiga and even feature a cameo from Agatha Christie, a book that Claire Boyles calls “a powerful collection.” (Lydia) What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri: The debut collection from Kolluri, What We Fed to the Manticore is “a dazzling, daring bestiary” (Aimee Nezhukumatathil) and “a world of incredible imagination and daring” (Claire Comstock-Gay). Animals narrate these nine stories – there’s a hound in mourning, existential vultures, pigeons and donkeys and rhinos, oh my – but that doesn’t mean they’re Disney-cute. Instead, Publishers Weekly writes in a starred review, they weave together into an “exquisite” whole that explores climate change and natural disruption as well as human kindness and animal joy. (Kaulie) Sacrificio by Ernesto Mestre-Reed: The first novel from Mestre-Reed (The Second Death of Unica Aveyano) in nearly two decades is set in Cuba in 1998, and follows a group of young, HIV-positive counterrevolutionaries who are planning to violently overthrow the Casto regime. Kimberly King Parsons says, “Compelling and sinuous, bleak and darkly funny, Sacrificio is a book about queer desire, the mutability of language, and layer upon layer of deceit: self-deception, family betrayals, and the disinformation of spies and governments.” (Carolyn) On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton: Award-winning novelist Sexton follows her luminous books A Kind of Freedom and The Revisioners with a novel of music, family, gentrification, and mid-century San Francisco, told via the story of a mother who dreams of musical success through her daughters' girl group, The Salvations, as the landscape of the city shifts all around them. Kaitlyn Greenidge says of the novel "“On the Rooftop further cements Margaret Wilkerson Sexton as a deft chronicler of Blackness in America. A deeply felt, big hearted exploration of family, sisterhood and gentrification, this is the kind of expansive, lush novel that envelops with charm while provoking with its fierce intelligence.” (Lydia) I Walk Between the Raindrops by T.C. Boyle: Titled after a 2018 story first published in The New Yorker, I Walk Between the Raindrops collects a number of the famously prolific author’s most recent works of short fiction. In the title story, a woman in a bar takes a seat beside a man trying to celebrate Valentine’s Day with his wife, then tries to convince him that she has ESP. In “Thirteen Days,” passengers on a cruise ship are quarantined off from the rest of the world, to disastrous effect. And in “Hyena”, Boyle introduces the reader to a zoological curiosity – a hyena living in the South of France. (Thom) Bliss Montage by Ling Ma: This story collection, from the author of the brilliant novel Severance, offers eight tales with wild, fantastical premises. In one, a pregnant woman has an arm protruding from her vagina, and, in another, a film professor has a Narnia-like world inside his office wardrobe. Publishers Weekly says most of the stories are "enchanting, full of intelligence, dry humor, and an appealing self awareness." In its starred review, Kirkus calls the collection "haunting and artful." (Edan) The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li: Yiyun Li is perhaps best known for her short stories, often published in the New Yorker, whose quiet elegance and emotional power recall the likes of another master of the form, William Trevor. But she’s an equally remarkable novelist, and returns in September with The Book of Goose, a moving story of female friendship. This intricate story begins in the postwar rural provinces of Paris, where Fabienne and Agnes develop a writing game: bold Fabienne will come up with stories and timid Agnes will write them out. Now, adult Agness is telling their story in The Book of Goose, a beguiling tale of intimacy and obsession from one of our most capacious and generous talents. (AOP) Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson: London, 1926, in the glittering world of Soho nightclubs. A grand dame of this world, club owner Nellie Coker, mother of six, advances and defends both her empire and her clan. Fans of Atkinson (Life After Life, the Jackson Brody detective novels) will bask in her vividly drawn characters and intricate plot. (Sonya) Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout: Rejoice! A new Elizabeth Strout novel. In her latest, the Pulitzer Prize winning author revisits her protagonists from My Name is Lucy Barton and Oh William! This time, it's the COVID pandemic, and Lucy’s ex-husband William has taken her from Manhattan to a small town in Maine. In its starred review, Publishers Weekly describes it this way: "Loneliness, grief, longing, and loss pervade intertwined family stories as Lucy and William attempt to create new friendships in an initially hostile town." (Edan) Ti Amo by Hanne Ørstavik (translated by Martin Aitken): The unnamed narrator of Ørstavik’s newest novel takes care of her husband, who has late stage cancer, and meditates on their life together and apart. “A remarkably frank and finely sieved account of two people approaching the ultimate parting of the ways,” writes Kirkus’ starred review. (Carolyn) Days Come and Go by Hemley Boum (translated by Nchanji Njamnsi): A chronicle about a rapidly changing Cameroon, this novel tells the story of three generations of women. Anna, a matriarch in Paris, Abi, her daughter, and Tina, a teen who comes under the influence of a militant terrorist faction. In different ways, they all confront, love and politics, tradition and modernity. “A page-turner,” says the publisher, “by way of Frantz Fanon and V. S. Naipaul.” And Radio France Internationale says it’s as epic as it is gripping, promising “something of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.” (Claire) How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz: A new novel from the author of Dominicana, the life of a woman told through her required sessions of job counseling following her Great Recession layoff in middle age from the factory she had worked for years. Carolina De Robertis says of the novel, "This book is a miracle; prepare to be astonished.” (Lydia) Lessons by Ian McEwan: In recent years, McEwan has specialized in short, sharply observed extended novellas (Nutshell, The Children Act, The Cockroach), but here the British Booker-winner goes big, turning in a 450-page epic spanning 70 years in the life of one man caught in the web of late 20th century history, from the Suez Canal Crisis to the Covid-19 pandemic. (Michael) The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell: Able to pull off a memoir as well as contemporary fiction, O’Farrell continues with historical fiction. Her previous novel, Hamnet, was a The New York Times best seller and National Book Award winner, and now The Marriage Portrait travels to Renaissance Italy in the 1550s. Lucrezia de’ Medici is the third daughter to a grand duke. When her older sister dies, Lucrezia’s fight becomes not just for a kind of autonomy, but for her very survival. As the publisher says, it’s, “Full of … beauty and emotion.” (Claire) Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer: If you, as I did, loved the Pulitzer-Prize winning Less, then you’ll be excited to learn that Greer has penned a sequel about the lovable writer, Arthur Less. This time, Less is on a road trip in the States with a famous science fiction author and his black pug named Dolly. Hilarity ensues. Publishers Weekly says, “Fans will eat this up.” (Edan) Natural History by Andrea Barrett: In six interconnected stories, National Book Award winner Barrett’s (Ship Fever) new collection features cherished characters from other works and completes narrative arcs she began weaving decades (and multiple books) ago. Kirkus’ starred review writes: “Barrett depicts the natural world and the human heart with wonder, tenderness, and deep understanding. More superb work from an American master.” (Carolyn) Three Muses by Martha Anne Toll: A debut by The Millions contributor and winner of the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction, Three Muses tells the story of John Curtin, a Holocaust survivor who was forced to sing for the kommandant at a concentration camp. His life intertwines with Katya Symanova, the Prima Ballerina of the New York State Ballet who is struggling with a controlling choreographer in her life. The novel is billed by the publisher as a, “love story that enthralls,” and Paul Harding says it, “captivates…from the first page to the last.” (Claire) Stay True by Hua Hsu: A memoir from the brilliant New Yorker staff writer, who describes a formative friendship he had as a young man in the Bay Area--a friendship formed around what the two young men had in common and what they didn't, and one that ended when his friend suffered a violent and early death. Rachel Kushner calls the book, "exquisite and excruciating and I will be thinking about it for years and years to come.” (Lydia) The Family Izquierdo by Rubén Degollado: A story of family told through three generations of a Mexican American family suffering from misfortune that feels like a curse. Luis Alberto Urrea writes, "anyone with a family will find themselves in these pages." (Lydia) Lungfish by Meghan Gilliss: A mother takes her child to an uninhabited Island off the coast of Maine while her husband detoxes, forced to rely on the gifts and nature and her own memories to survive a period of exile. Paul Yoon calls Lungfish “a force of nature—a deeply felt marvel of a book that navigates grief, parenthood, and the mysteries of family with unrelenting power and precision. Here is a story about the islands we build and carry with us. Here is storytelling at its best.” (Lydia) The Deceptions by Jill Bialosky: Plutarch claims that an ancient Greek fishermen, out for his day’s catch, heard a thundering proclamation delivered from the heavens – “The great god Pan is dead.” For early Christians it was taken as a sign of the obsolescence of the gods, that the oracles had fallen mute. Except those old gods never died, not really. In Jill Bialosky’s latest novel The Deceptions, her unnamed narrator discovers this only too well in her incantatory, hallucinogenic, and ecstatic perambulations through the white-marble halls of the Metropolitan Museums of Art’s Greek and Roman collections. A soon-to-be-published poet grappling with both the collapse of her marriage and the departure of her child, the narrator finds refuge in the echoing halls of the museum, the wells of Parnassus perhaps running unseen down Fifth Avenue. Poetry and inspiration, obsession and divinity, all come under Bialosky’s purview in her elegantly constructed fable of trying to create while everything else falls apart. (Ed Simon) The Village Idiot by Steve Stern: Award-winning author Stern’s newest novel offers a luminous and extraordinary portrait of artist Chaim Soutine (1893-1943), whose artistic ambition was the fire he tended to, in spite of everything, his entire life. Kirkus’ starred review calls the book “poignant,” “richly colorful,” and “outstanding.” (Carolyn) Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan: Kathryn Scanlan’s voice is “original” (per master of the short story, Amy Hempel) and her writing both economic and innovative, as demonstrated in her third book, Kick the Latch, and her first to be published by literary tastemakers New Directions. Interviews with a horse trainer named Sonia forms the basis of this novel that captures the arc of the rough and joyous life of a trainer at the racetrack. In this feat of synthesis reminiscent of Charles Reznikoff's Testimony, Scanlan “has performed a magical act of empathic ventriloquy,” according Lydia Davis. (Anne) Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie: The author Home Fire and winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction returns with a story of a relationship between two women that starts in youth in Karachi and picks up in London in middle age, when they must come to terms with an unresolved conflict of the past. Ali Smith calls the book, "A shining tour de force about a long friendship’s respects, disrespects, loyalties and moralities.” (Lydia) The Complicities by Stacey D'Erasmo: The Complicities is a suspenseful, compelling novel that raises the questions: How do we reckon with corruption and our own complicity? Samantha Hunt describes The Complicties as a “gripping, human tale of our crimes—financial, environmental, self-delusional” and adds that “D’Erasmo weaves a thriller of a tale, exposing sticky webs of corruption that entangle our lives and fates, even those who fantasize about their innocence, redemption and escape." (Zoë) No Windmills in Basra by Diaa Jubaili (translated by Chip Rosetti): Prolific Iraqi novelist and short story writer Jubaili now publishes a collection of shorter flash fiction, set in southern Iraq and incorprating fantasy, magical realism, and humor to tell brief and dazzling stories that touch on the city's long years of war. (Lydia) The Logos by Mark de Silva: When a frustrated artist / jilted lover is offered a gig that’s too good to be true, he does what comes naturally and takes it. With the revelation that the line between creativity and exploitation (and obscurity and fame) is really not all that fine, the price of one’s soul seems fair. Coming in over 1,000 pages, the novel may depress your annual "I've read" count but will offer hefty insight on the limits of human perception and the limitlessness of human vanity the likes of which we haven’t enjoyed since William Gaddis was around to make us think. (Il’ja) It Won't Always Be Like This by Malaka Gharib: The growing landscape of Asian American literature is staking captivating ground within graphic novels, and this is no more apparent than in the work of Malaka Gharib. As the follow up to her irresistible debut, I Was Their American Dream, It Won't Always Be Like This explores Gharib's experiences growing up with her Egyptian father's new family and her observations about language and culture, all told through her signature humor, specificity, and eagle-eyed reflections on identity. (Kate) October Pretend It's My Body by Luke Dani Blue: A debut collection of ten short stories exploring dysphoria, transition, and life itself in a fantastic and surreal vein. A.E. Osworth calls the book "a twisted, tense triumph of a book that at once resists a cis gaze and insists that everyone, regardless of gender, has experienced moments of intense transition. The stories are imaginative, the characters idiosyncratic, and the sentences delicious.” (Lydia) Home Bound by Vanessa A. Bee: Fans of Bee's writing know her as a gifted, astute essayist on matters political and personal for Current Affairs and other outlets, but she is also a lawyer who has lived around the world in many different settings. Her debut, a memoir, explores these journeys through space, class, circumstance from babyhood in Cameroon, to life with her adoptive family in France, to life with her mother in London and then Nevada during the housing crisis, to Harvard Law school and a break with young marriage and evangelical Christianity. I cannot wait to read this. (Lydia) Stroller by Amanda Parrish Morgan: Morgan’s entry in Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series is about all things stroller: its history as both a parenting and status symbol; the ways strollers aid and impede parents; and how, as an object, the stroller has come under scrutiny by those who believe more firmly in baby wearing. The stroller, like most things associated with parenting, is deeply political and emotional and cultural. Lynn Steger Strong says: “Part object history, part capitalist critique, a consistently acute and deeply felt depiction of the pleasures, traps, thrills, and dangers of early parenthood, Amanda Parrish Morgan's Stroller compellingly depicts the history and taxonomy of this most weighty and unruly device, ally, and antagonist.” (Carolyn) Before All the World by Moriel Rothman-Zecher: Original, daring, experimental, moving, poignant, engaging – Moriel Rothman-Zecher’s Before All the World asks if since we can’t go home again, might it just be possible to build a new one? With shades of Tony Kushner and Cynthia Ozick, Rothman-Zecher envisions the denizens of the Philadelphia speakeasy Cricket’s at the tale end of Prohibition, an establishment catering to gay men. This is where the Jewish immigrant Leyb has an awakening from the torpor of his traumatic childhood, one of the few survivors from an eastern European shtetl destroyed by pogrom. Poetic and magical, Before all the World understands how our worlds are made by words, and in the altering of the later we may as yet redeem the former, a central commandment, axiom, and incantation being "ikh gleyb nit az di gantze velt iz kheyshekh" – “I do not believe that all the world is darkness.” (Ed Simon) Is Mother Dead by Vigids Hjorth (translated by Charlotte Barslund): Hjorth has written a fascinating tale about the Norwegian postal system (Long Live the Post Horn!) and composed a best-selling work of autofiction revolving around incest that caused her sister (who also writes novels) to sue her. In her latest work to appear in English, an ex-pat artist returns to Norway to oversee a retrospective of her work and attempts to contact, and then stalks, her estranged mother. Publishers Weekly called this “a gripping tale of obsession about an artist and her frayed relationship with her family.” (Matt) Singer Distance by Ethan Chatagnier: Ethan Chatagnier’s Singer Distance tells the story of Crystal Singer, a 1960s MIT grad student set on solving mathematical proofs some Martian intelligence has been carving on the surface of the red planet. With the help of her boyfriend, Rick, she intends to put her answer to the test, but her disappearance sets Rick on a different path. Singer Distance is the best kind of literary sci-fi, the kind of novel that makes the reader appreciate the mystery and beauty of our little, infinite universe. As Adrienne Celts says, "Singer Distance pulled me in from the very first page… this book is a love song to our desire for understanding, the scientific drive for progress, and the thread of faith that runs through both. An outstanding debut novel." (AOP) Lech by Sara Lippmann: Lech is the ambitious debut novel of an excellent new prose stylist. On one level, it's about a woman recovering from an abortion at a vacation property in Sullivan County NY. But Lippmann expertly weaves together many voices—among them an eccentric aging landlord, a grief-stricken Hasid, a scheming real estate agent looking for her break, her dogged daughter longing for her way out, and her addict boyfriend—to explore themes of community, parenthood, and overcoming the legacy and burden of the past. No less of an expert in multi-POV novels set in the Catskills (me) blurbed Lech as following, “Sara Lippmann's Lech is a superb Jewish gothic, an expertly pitched polyvocal tale of family, loss, and redemption. By turns funny, beautiful, lewd and heartbreaking, Lippmann delivers a literary performance with all the timing and energy of a great Borscht Belt comic.” (AOP) When We Were Sisters by Fatimah Asghar: The debut novel from poet Fatimah Asghar is a lyrical Bildungsroman, tracing the lives of orphaned siblings raising themselves and one another as Muslims in America. (Nick M.) The Visible Unseen by Andrea Chapela (translated by Kelsi Vanada): Chapela, one of Granta’s Best Young Spanish-Language Novelists of 2021, uses her scientific and literary background to explore the cultural schism between these two worlds. In this lyrical, formally-unique essay collection, she uses mirrors as a way to explore ideas of perception, meaning, and reality. Jazmina Barrera writes: “Andrea Chapela lends us her eyes—the clear, intimate gaze of a chemist and writer—to help us delve into the matter that we are made of and the mysteries surrounding us. Literature and science merge in the substance of these essays—these wise, beautiful, soulful, astonishing experiments.” (Carolyn) The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken: The latest from the award-winning and compulsively readable author of Bowlaway and The Souvenir Museum, The Hero of This Book follows an unnamed narrator (McCracken?) as she wanders the streets of London and grieves her mother, who loved the city. It’s more than that, though – of course it is – and as the narrator tells story after story about her extraordinary, determined mother and the quirky family they shared, the novel expands, spiraling outwards and in to include meditations on memory, memoir, and all the complexity of a remarkable parent-child relationship. As Kirkus puts it – “Novel? Memoir? Who cares. It’s a great story, beautifully told.” (Kaulie) Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng: This story is set in a world that is dystopian -- a society being consumed by fear – and close to our own. A twelve-year-old named Bird lives with his father, who is a former linguist who now shelves books at Harvard University’s library. Bird’s mother, a Chinese American poet, seemingly abandoned the family three years before. A mysterious letter leads Bird on a search to find her. Ng barely needs an introduction as the author of the number one bestseller Little Fires Everywhere and the much-loved Everything I Never Told You. (Claire) Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet: The National Book Award finalist builds a surreal and finely textured world in her new novel, which follows Gil, a man who walks all the way from New York to Arizona in a Hail Mary bid to recover from heartbreak. Not long after he arrives in the desert, new neighbors move into the (literal) glass house next door, kicking off a strange and unsettling process that sees Gil’s life begin to mesh with theirs. (Thom) The Impatient by Djaili Amadou Amal (translated by Emma Ramadan): Author and activist Amal’s English language debut follows three women living in Cameroon who seek freedom from the cultural traditions that bind them—and the happiness they hope is on the other side of oppression. The Impatient was shortlisted for the 2020 Prix Goncourt and won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. (Carolyn) Liberation Day by George Saunders: The Booker Prize winner (for Lincoln in the Bardo) is back with his first new collection of short fiction since 2015’s Tenth of December. In “Love Letter,” an elderly man in a dystopian, uncannily believable future sends a letter to his grandson urging him not to take righteous actions that might endanger him with the unnamed fascists running their country. In “Ghoul,” the author returns to amusement parks as a setting, bringing readers to a Hell-themed section of an underground park in Colorado. And in “Elliott Spencer”, an eighty-nine-year-old finds himself brainwashed and stripped of his memory so he can be forced to work as an astroturfed political protester. (Thom) Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver: The famed author of The Poisonwood Bible returns with an Appalachian story inspired by the Dickens classic David Copperfield. In a single-wide trailer, the protagonist is born to a teenaged single mother, bereft of any wealth apart from his late father’s good looks and scrappy talent for staying alive. As the novel follows his life, he moves through foster care, takes jobs that break child labor laws, tries to learn in crumbling schools, and runs into painful addictions familiar to anyone with firsthand knowledge of the opioid crisis. Throughout, the protagonist reflects on his own invisibility in a culture with a waning interest in rural life. (Thom) Get ’em Young, Treat ’em Tough, Tell ’em Nothing by Robin McClean: In Robin McClean’s first novel Pity the Beast, an adulterous woman is beaten, raped and left for dead in a lime pit, after which she escapes and is pursued by her attackers across a sublime, pitiless Western landscape. The revenge plot may feel familiar but McLean’s language is anything but: antiquated, ribald, mythic, intense and always surprising. This second book is a collection of stories in which McClean deploys her unique orotund style in more concentrated doses. (Matt) Hugs and Cuddles by João Gilberto Noll (translated by Edgar Garbelotto): In this posthumous genre- and gender-bending novel, Noll (1946–2017) writes about a man embarking on a transgressive journey of self-discovery while his nation is ravaged around him. “Noll is a hero of Brazilian literature who deserves to be widely known in the English-speaking world,” says Jenny Offill. (Carolyn) Blood Red by Gabriela Ponce (translated by Sarah Booker): In Ponce’s English language debut, an unnamed narrator details the aftermath of her failed marriage— and the bloody, impulsive, and provocative nature of seeking autonomy above all else. Mónica Ojeda writes: “This book is savage. Ponce’s prose is full of passion, that is, full of desire and pain. That’s why it feels so alive, like a bleeding heart pumping inside your head.” (Carolyn) The Consequences by Manuel Muñoz: A collection of stories set mostly around Fresno in the 1980s, telling the stories of Mexican and Mexican Americans in California, many of them farmworkers who feed the country while facing deportation, abuse, and poverty imposed by an inhuman economy. Muñoz tells both the large and the small struggles, and illuminates moments of love and care alongside pain and hauntings figurative and literal. Sandra Cisneros raves of the book “Haunting, powerful, humble, precise, this collection shook my being. Manuel Muñoz is a great American writer who sees with his heart—as great as Juan Rulfo in writing about the poor. I wish I had written these stories.” (Lydia) Life Is Everywhere by Lucy Ives: Ives’ (Cosmogony) newest novel takes place on a warm November night in Manhattan 2014. In the midst of a breakup with her husband, Erin finds herself locked out of her apartment, so she goes to the next best place: the university library where she’s a grad student. Inside her bag, she has documents that may just change her entire life. Jesse Ball says, "The superb Lucy Ives slays enemy and friend alike in this multivalent successor to Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution." (Carolyn) A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt: In Belcourt’s debut novel, an unnamed narrator returns to northern Canada intent on writing “an autobiography of his rural hometown.” In conversations with its ostensibly lonely, disconnected residents, connections are made, and secrets discovered. (Nick M.) The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler: Nayler’s debut novel follows marine biologist Ha Nguyen, who has just received a career-changing invitation: to study a species of recently discovered octopus in the waters of the Con Dao Archipelago. These exceptionally intelligent and dangerous creatures hold the key to potential scientific breakthroughs and absolute fortunes for those that harness their powers—but those studying and hunting them may have underestimated their true capabilities. Kawai Strong Washburn writes: "With a thriller heart and a sci-fi head, The Mountain in the Sea delivers a spooky smart read. Artificial intelligence, nascent animal sentience, murderous flying drones: like the best of Gibson or Atwood, it brings all of the plot without forgetting the bigger questions of consciousness, ecocide, and scientific progress.” (Carolyn) Nights of Plague by Orhan Pamuk (translated by Ekin Oklap): The Nobel Prize laureate, Orhan Pamuk imagines a plague wreaking havoc on the fictional island of Mingheria in the Ottoman Empire. To control the epidemic, the Ottoman sultan sends off his most trustworthy medical expert, an Orthodox Christian. But some of the residents of the island, because of their religious beliefs, refuse to follow the quarantine mandates. To make things worse, a mysterious murder happens. With themes that feel weirdly relevant, Nights of Plague helps us to reflect on our chaotic realities with a sobering distance and perspective. (Jianan Qian) The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy: Now pushing 90, the poet laureate of American violence has written not one, but two new books for this fall. In the first, salvage diver Bobby Western finds a wrecked plane containing nine bodies still buckled into their seats, but missing the pilot’s flight bag, the plane’s black box, and the flight’s tenth passenger. How is this possible? It’s Cormac McCarthy, so the answer is likely to be terse, perverse, and quite bloody. (Michael) The Singularities by John Banville: In this, his 20th novel, Banville brings back a character from an earlier read, convicted murderer Felix Mordaunt. Recently released from prison, the pseudonymous Mordaunt returns to his childhood home to wreak havoc on the idiosyncratic family with ties to his past now residing there. Throw in some highly imaginative esoteric physics and Banville’s stylistic gift and the menacing edge of this novel should prove a good accompaniment to when the heavy weather sets in this autumn. (Il’ja) The Enhancers by Anne K. Yoder: Brilliant, longtime Millions staff writer Yoder publishes a dizzying, kaleidoscopic novel of three teenage friends navigating the journey to adulthood in a techno-pharmaceutical society that looks a lot like reality. Patrick Cottrell says of the book “The Enhancers asks, 'How do I distinguish between what’s me and what’s chemical?' Animated by the absurdity of a Yorgos Lanthimos film, The Enhancers is a wildly original and contemporary tale about chemical augmentation, memory, yearning, and loss. Imagine the fearlessness and wild imagination of Jenny Erpenbeck if she had a background in the pharmaceutical industry and you might come close to approximating the tremendous brilliance of Anne Yoder.” (Lydia) The Revivalists by Christopher M. Hood: The Icelandic permafrost is thawing, the Shark Flu is decimating the planet, and a loving couple’s only daughter has joined a cult in far off California. There is no doubt about what to do: when the going gets tough, the tough go to California to save their girl proving that though the grid be shaky and the currency fragile, yet greater than these is love. (Il’ja) Which Side Are You On by Ryan Lee Wong: A curator and bicultural writer & critic, Wong centers his debut novel on the relationship between an Asian American activist and his once-activist mother, during this current time of racially-motivated police brutality. A novel about family roots, Black-Asian relations, morality, and pleasure. Apparently it’s funny too. (Sonya) Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro: After years of memoirs, Shapiro returns to fiction with her new book, a novel she revived from an old manuscript she started a decade ago. As befitting the host of the podcast, “Family Secrets,” Shapiro’s new novel circles around the hidden past of a constellation of characters who are haunted by a fatal car crash. We meet her characters at three pivotal moments in their lives: NYE 2000, on the eve of Y2K; December 2010; and early 2020, right before the pandemic began to take over. (Hannah) Some of Them Will Carry Me by Giada Scodellaro: In her genre-, tone-, and style-defying debut collection, Scodellaro’s short stories center Black women in moments of change, upheaval, and disruption. Katie Kitamura writes: “This is a book of wonders, full of intricate beauty, and Giada Scodellaro is an extraordinary talent.” (Carolyn) Entry Level by Wendy Wimmer: Winner of the Autumn House 2021 Fiction Prize, Wimmer’s debut story collection features 15 stories centered around people who are underemployed—and how they confront, subvert, and navigate the systems and forces hellbent on keeping them down. Deesha Philyaw, who selected the book for this prize, says: “The stories are, at turns, heartfelt and hilarious, wry and whimsical, full of magic and mayhem. These are well-crafted love stories, ghost stories, and stories of everyday people just trying to navigate life’s cruelties and impossibilities.” (Carolyn) Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada (translated by David Boyd): The acclaimd author of The Factory and The Hole, whose work Hilary Leichter called "surreal and mesmerizing" returns with a novel of marriage and gender roles in contemporary Japan, revisiting the same characters in different settings, including an exotic pet store and a home infested with weasels. (Lydia) Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell): Samanta Schweblin’s collection Seven Empty Houses announced her arrival in 2015 at the vanguard of a new generation of terrific Latin American writers, and in late-October it will finally be published in English. The proximity to Halloween is appropriate, given Schweblin’s idiosyncratic mode of tense and unsettling literary horror. As in Fever Dream and Little Eyes, two of my favorite books of the last two years, something is always creeping around these empty houses: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, a child’s first encounter with a dark choice or the fallibility of parents. In the words of O, the Oprah magazine, Seven Empty Houses is “A blazing new story collection that will make you feel like the house is collapsing in on you.” (AOP) Cocoon by Zhang Yueran (translated by Jeremy Tiang): Cheng Gong and Li Jiaqi are childhood friends. After many years of separation, they reunite and find a shared interest in the stories of their grandparents’ generation. What happened on that rainy night in the deserted water tower in 1967? How did that event impact both families and the generations after? Zhang Yueran, one of the most renowned young writers from China, tells the story of the country’s past in a different perspective and with a unique insight. In her beautiful and meaningful prose, hope and love reside where trauma heals. (Jianan Qian) On a Horse at Night by Amina Cain: “Without planning it, I wrote a diary of sorts. Lightly. A diary of fiction. Or is that not what this is?” writes author Amina Cain, in her first book of nonfiction and her second book with Dorothy, On a Horse at Night: On Writing. In a series of essayistic inquiries, Cain meditates on her own cannon of writers, which includes Marguerite Duras, Elena Ferrante, Renee Gladman, and Virginia Woolf, as well as topics like female friendship, so that encountering this book feels like an intimate conversation on books and reading and life. Turkish author Ayşegül Savaş compares the book to “light from a candle in the evening: intimate, pleasurable, full of wonder," with Cain acting “as our generous, gentle guide.” (Anne) November Toad by Katherine Dunn: The previously unpublished novel of Katherine Dunn, a novelist and boxing journalist who died in 2016. Toad tells the story of Sally Gunnar, who is reclusive but keeps company with a goldfish, a garden toad, and a door-to-door salesman. It’s billed as the perfect precursor to Dunn’s Geek Love, which, published in 1989, was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Bram Stoker Prize. Toad has the “same keen observations, taboo-shirking verve, and singular characters,” the publisher says, “that made Geek Love a cult classic.” (Claire) The Islands by Dionne Irving: A collection of stories of women in diaspora, leaving Jamaica and the effects of colonialism and looking for new places to set down roots, from 1950s London to 1960s Panama to the New Jersey of today, in a collection that Vanessa Hua calls “"By turns mordant and poignant…a deeply moving exploration of diaspora. Her dazzling cast of characters search for home and belonging. Incisive and impressive." (Lydia) They're Going to Love You by Meg Howrey: Howrey’s (The Wanderers) newest novel oscillates between New York City during the AIDS crisis and present-day Los Angeles. Growing up, Carlisle would travel from Ohio to New York to spend a few weeks in the summer with her father Robert and his partner James in their Greenwich Village brownstone. Drawn to the ballet world, like her mother before her, Carlisle dreams of living with her father full time—until an affair irreparably changes their family dynamic forever. Chloe Angyal says: “Howrey’s moving, taut prose has captured the sacredness and profanity of ballet, family, and of life itself.” (Carolyn) Aesthetica by Allie Rowbottom: An Instagram influencer past her prime at 35 considers a life-changing, life-altering new surgery to return her to original self in a novel that takes on mainstream aesthetics in the era of #metoo, and arrives not a moment too soon, from the author of the acclaimed JELL-O Girls. Samantha Leach says of the novel "Much will be made of how perfectly Aesthetica captures influencer culture, but the genius of this novel is how far it extends past our current moment. In biting yet empathetic prose, Allie Rowbottom explores the ethos of American image making." (Lydia) Small Game by Blair Braverman: From the author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, a memoir about learning to drive sled dogs in the arctic, comes a debut novel about a Survivor-style reality TV show. In this page-turner, Mara, a “survival school” teacher, is shocked when she is cast in a competition show in which she and three other strangers will have to survive on their own for six weeks in an undisclosed, wild location. There’s a big payday for her if everything goes right. When things go wrong, Mara can’t tell if it’s the producers’ doing, or if she’s wrapped up in something worse. (Hannah) We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman: You’re probably already familiar with Newman from her blogging, her memoirs, or her children’s books. If you’re a parent, someone has definitely emailed one of her essays to you. (“It Gets Better” is a classic.) We All Want Impossible Things is her first book for adults, a tearjerker about two lifelong friends, Edith and Ashley, who have known each other since they went to their first R.E.M. concerts. But now Edi is dying from ovarian cancer, and Ashley is trying to figure out how she’s going to get through the rest of her life without her best friend. KJ Dell'Antonia calls it “The funniest, most joyful book about dying—and living—that I have ever read.” (Hannah) Now Is Not The Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson: In an interview for Entertainment Weekly, Wilson says that his fourth book is the one he’s been trying to write for years. It follows Zeke and Frankie, two teenaged kids who meet one summer in small-town Tennessee and forge a connection making art together. Years later, the events of that summer threaten to upend Frankie’s settled adult life. If you haven’t read a Kevin Wilson book, novelist and bookseller Emma Straub sums it up best: “just like all of Kevin’s books, Now Is Not The Time to Panic is totally its own thing: mysterious, hypnotic, wonderful. I love following his brain, wherever it goes.” (Hannah) Flight by Lynn Steger Strong: Flight, the third novel by the author of the much-lauded Want, centers on a family reuniting for Christmas, their first holiday after the matriarch has died. Over three days they must face old conflicts and resentments, and figure out what to do with their mother’s house—and then a child from the town goes missing. Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney promises, “You will want to gulp this down in one sitting,” and Rumaan Alam calls it, “Suspenseful, dazzling, and moving.” (Edan) Participation by Anna Moschovakis: Author, poet, and translator Anna Moschovakis, in conversation about her first novel, Eleanor, or, the Rejection of the Progress of Love, asks, “What is the political value of a feeling? To feel bad about events in the world. To feel guilty. To feel implicated in the systems we participate in. What is the status of those feelings?” It seems that her second novel, Participation, is an elaboration upon these questions, as it examines communication in the time of rupture. Within, two reading groups, Love and Anti-Love, fall apart among political upheaval and environmental collapse and results in a mirroring and refraction of out current state of being. As Dana Spiotta says, “Moschovakis is a brilliant and singular writer with a terrific feel for this cultural moment.” (Anne) Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood: In this Atwood-edited serial novel, a cast of characters navigate the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns in a Lower East Side apartment building together and apart. The twist? Each chapter is anonymously written by literary darlings including Meg Wolitzer, Luis Alberto Urrea, R. O. Kwon, and Louise Erdrich. (Carolyn) Dr. No by Percival Everett: What’s it mean to be an expert on nothing? In my life, not much, but in mathematics, something cool. However it seems professor Wala Kitu can be manipulated—by a villain who wants convinces him to help break into Fort Knox and steal a box of nothing. Once attained, nothing is going to spread… but you’ll need to read Everett’s caper to see exactly how. (Nick M.) Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm: A group of nine teenagers go to work in a Gothic Alpine hotel where things go awry and one of them disappear in a novel that was short-listed for the European Union Prize for Literature. (Lydia) The Magic Kingdom by Russell Banks: Two-time Pulitzer finalist Banks returns with a novel about Harley Mann, a property speculator, who is recording his life story. As he remembers his past, Harley ruminates on his participation in a Shaker community in the Florida swamplands—and how his life was forever changed by the search for utopia. Paul Auster says: “Banks is still working at full blast, creating work as good as anything he has ever done and—is it possible?—perhaps even better.” (Carolyn) My Pinup by Hilton Als: The electric critic, essayist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Als follows White GIrls with a two-part memoir, ranging over his own life and others, including Prince and Dorothy Parker, with scenes from queer nightlife and the AIDS crisis. (Lydia) A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by Lászlo' Krasznahorkai (translated by Ottilie Mulzet): Described by the publisher as “an unforgettable meditation on nature, life, history, and being”, I can offer that this is the author’s most vatic work, which is saying something. It’s the simple story of a prince who sets off in search of the most sublime garden of all and indeed, may have found it in an ancient Kyoto monastery. In this brief novel, Krasznahorkai’s studied stream of consciousness narrative style is marked by the hermeneutic gaps characteristic of haiku and its requirements to read between the lines and devote time for silent contemplation of what is read. Quite beautiful. – (Il’ja) The Age of Goodbyes by Li Zi Shu (translated by YZ Chin): The Age of Goodbyes explores how politics distort, erase, and scandalize personal memory. The novel contains three storylines: a conventional omniscient voice in the first narrative tells the fate of a woman—Du Li An—after Malaysia’s 1969 race riots; the second follows a close third-person narrative of a critic who investigates a writer also named Du Li An; the third thread is a second person narrative which assumes that “you” are trying to discover the truth of “your” family after “your” mother’s death. An acclaimed debut of one of Southeast Asia’s most renowned young writers, The Age of Goodbyes is an absolute gem that the Chinese literary world has to offer. (Jianan Qian) December Scatterlings by Resoketswe Martha Manenzhe: South African author Manenzhe’s award-winning debut novel is about an interracial family whose lives are upended by South Africa’s Immorality Act of 1927, which outlawed sexual and marital relationships between white and Black people. With their family now criminalized, they must come to terms with their past and struggle against their uncertain future. (Carolyn) Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy: In this second part of McCarthy’s surprise two-volume novel, Alicia Western – sister of Bobby, the salvage diver from the first volume, The Passenger – admits herself to the hospital carrying $40,000 in a plastic bag. A doctoral candidate in math at the University of Chicago, Alicia is a paranoid schizophrenic and she refuses to talk about her brother. McCarthy has long been knocked for the relative thinness of his female characters, so it will be interesting to see how he handles a complex, grieving woman in the grip of psychosis. (Michael) Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion by Bushra Rehman: A Pakistani-American, coming-of-age queer love story set in Corona, NY in the 80’s, from the former poet laureate of Queens. From novelist Karen Russell: “Rehman’s storytelling shares the elliptical grace of poetry. Her deeply sensitive protagonist, Razia, comes into sharp-focus like a shaken photograph, and Queens rears off the page in all its glorious vibrancy and complexity… A stunning novel from a vital writer.” (Sonya) No One Left to Come Looking for You by Sam Lipsyte: A punk rock mystery set in a bygone New York of 1993 by the author of The Ask. Steven Soderbergh says of the book "Reading this book is like being duct-taped to a chair with wheels and shoved down a steep hill into eight lanes of oncoming traffic." (Lydia) A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley: Set in 1851 in Gold Rush California, as the country creeps toward Civil War, Smiley’s latest is a murder mystery that follows widow Eliza Ripple, who has turned to prostitution to make ends meet. Although Eliza enjoys the financial secucrity in her new line of work, she gets scared when young women start turning up dead outside of town and decides to look into the murders on her own with the help of her friend Jean. Does the title refer to Ripple’s investigation? Or is it just what it means to be a woman in America? (Hannah) [millions_email]

Year in Reading

A Year in Reading: 2020

Editor - 12.1.2020 | 1 book mentioned 2

We were worried that no one would want or be able to participate in this, the 16th annual Year in Reading at The Millions. What is there to say about this pandemic year, a year so strange and horrible that its very appellation has become a bitter joke? People are mourning their dead, homeschooling their children, juggling responsibilities, worrying about money, worrying about politics, worrying about people, stultifying with loneliness or despair. And yet this Year in Reading is one of the best we've had. Entries poured forth from readers--readers who are mourning, homeschooling, juggling, worrying, stultifying. This series becomes part of the historical record of an experience that is collective even though its effects are unevenly and unfairly felt. This is a record of how a few people managed and what they read and what moved them during difficult days. We are grateful to have it. And we are grateful for you, and we are hoping for better things for all of us in the months to come. The names of our 2020 contributors will be unveiled throughout the month as entries are published--starting with our traditional opener from Languagehat’s Stephen Dodson later this morning, and ending on December 24. Bookmark this post, load up the main page, subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter to make sure you don’t miss an entry — we’ll run three or four every day. Stephen Dodson, proprietor of Languagehat.Maisy Card, author of These Ghosts Are Family.Elaine Castillo, author of America Is Not the Heart.Salar Abdoh, author of Out of Mesopotamia. Carvell Wallace, co-author of The Sixth Man.Mira Assaf Kafantaris, Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the Ohio State University.Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want.Andrew Valencia, author of Lord of California.Paul Tremblay, author of Survivor Song.Katherine D. Morgan, assistant features editor for The Rumpus.Zak Salih, author of the forthcoming novel Get Back to the Party. Emily Adrian, author of Everything Here Is Under Control.Kathy Wang, author of the forthcoming novel Impostor Syndrome. Anneliese Mackintosh, author of Bright and Dangerous Objects.Greg Afinogenov, author of Spies and Scholars: Chinese Secrets and Imperial Russia's Quest for World Power.Jon Mooallem, author of This is Chance!.Edan Lepucki, staff writer and contributing editor for The Millions, author of Woman No. 17.Nick Ripatrazone, contributing editor for The Millions, author of Longing for an Absent God.Sonya Chung, staff writer for The Millions, author of The Loved Ones.Matt Seidel, staff writer for The Millions.Jianan Qian, staff writer for The Millions.Ed Simon, staff writer for The Millions, author of America and Other Fictions.Carolyn Quimby, associate editor for The Millions.K-Ming Chang, author of Bestiary.Brontez Purnell, author of Since I Laid My Burden Down.Diane Cook, author of The New Wilderness.Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, author of House of Stone.Natalie Bakopoulos, author of Scorpionfish.Lillian Li, author of Number One Chinese Restaurant.Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field. Christopher Gonzalez, author of the forthcoming collection I'm Not Hungry but I Could Eat. Kevin Young, editor of African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song. David Heska Wanbli Weiden, author of Winter Counts.Mohamed Asem, author of Stranger in the Pen.Jesse Paddock, writer, filmmaker, and co-host of the Fans Notes podcast.Rachel Yoder, author of the forthcoming novel Nightbitch.Caroline Kim, author of The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories.Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Parakeet.Sunisa Manning, author of A Good True Thai.Destiny O. Birdsong, author of Negotiations.Jennifer Acker, author of The Limits of the World.J. Howard Rosier, National Book Critics Circle board member.Shruti Swamy, author of A House Is a Body: Stories.Claire Cameron, staff writer for The Millions, author of The Last Neanderthal.Zoë Ruiz, staff writer for The Millions.Hannah Gersen, author ofHome Field. Kaulie Lewis, staff writer for The Millions.Nick Moran, special projects editor for The Millions.Anne K. Yoder, staff writer for The Millions.Lysley Tenorio, author of The Son of Good Fortune.Adam Dalva, author of Olivia Twist.Jenny Bhatt, author of Each of Us Killers, translator of Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu.Aatif Rashid, author of Portrait of Sebastian Khan.Miranda Popkey, author of Topics of Conversation.Ruth Franklin, author of Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life.Nadia Owusu, author of the forthcoming memoir Aftershocks.Sabrina Orah Mark, author of Wild Milk.Sara Fan, a writer in California.Lauren Oyler, author of the forthcoming novel Fake Accounts.Farooq Ahmed, author of Kansastan.Megan Giddings, author of Lakewood.Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies.Willa Paskin, TV critic at Slate and the host of the Decoder Ring podcast.Blair McClendon, writer, film editor and filmmaker.Jean Chen Ho, author of the forthcoming collection Fiona and Jane.Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau.Sarah Thankam Mathews, a writer featured in Best American Short Stories 2020.Angela Chen, author of Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. Kevin Barry, author of That Old Country Music. Kate Gavino, social media editor for The Millions and author of Sanpaku.Michael Bourne, staff writer for The Millions and contributing editor for Poets & Writers.Thomas Beckwith, staff writer for The Millions.Garth Risk Hallberg, contributing editor for The Millions, author of City on Fire.Bill Morris, staff writer for The Millions, author of Motor City Burning.Lydia Kiesling, contributing editor for The Millions, author of The Golden State. Jacqueline Krass, staff writer for The Millions.Mahogany L. Browne, author of Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice.Adam Wilson, author of Sensation Machines.Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot.Eloisa Amezcua, author of From the Inside Quietly.Katherine Hill, author of A Short Move.Joseph Lee, 2020 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Silvia Killingsworth, series editor of Best American Food Writing. Sejal Shah, author of This is One Way to Dance.Vanessa Veselka, author of The Great Offshore Grounds.Iľja Rákoš, staff writer for The Millions.Davey Davis, author of the forthcoming novel X.Mamta Chaudhry, author of Haunting Paris. Martha Anne Toll, author of the forthcoming Three Muses.Anthony Veasna So, author of Afterparties. Do you love Year in Reading and the amazing books and arts content that The Millions produces year round? We are asking readers for support to ensure that The Millions can stay vibrant for years to come. Please click here to learn about several simple ways you can support The Millions now. Don't miss: A Year in Reading 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005[millions_ad]

Curiosities

Glory Edim’s Empire of Knowledge

Kate Gavino - 2.12.2019 | 1 book mentioned

The founder of Well-Read Black Girl, Glory Edim, spoke to HuffPost's "We Built This" series on her passion for literacy and the urgency of protecting black women: "There’s a vastness to blackness that needs to be recognized, especially in media, especially in literature, in film. […] We need more artists who are willing to share their imaginations with us and see blackness in a more beautiful and profound way." Our own Martha Anne Toll recently spoke to Edim as well about the recent Well-Read Black Girl anthology.

The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: September 2018

Nick Moran - 10.11.2018 | 1 book mentioned

We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for September. This Month Last Month Title On List 1. 1. Less 5 months 2. 5. The Overstory 4 months 3. 2. Lost Empress 5 months 4. 8. There There 3 months 5. 7. The Incendiaries 2 months 6. 4. Frankenstein in Baghdad 6 months 7. 3. The Ensemble 3 months 8. 6. The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath 6 months 9. - Washington Black 1 month 10. - Transcription 1 month Pulitzer-winner Andrew Sean Greer holds this month's top spot with his latest novel, Less. Two more months of strong sales and he'll ascend to our Hall of Fame, just as Leslie Jamison (The Recovering) and Ahmed Saadawi (Frankenstein in Baghdad) seem poised to do in October. One of two newcomers this month is Esi Edugyan, whose Booker-shortlisted novel Washington Black is based on a famous 19th-century criminal case and tells the story of an 11-year-old slave's incredible journey from the cane fields of the Caribbean to the Arctic, London, and Morocco. "In its rich details and finely tuned ear for language," wrote Martha Anne Toll for our site last week, "the book creates a virtual world, immersing the reader in antebellum America and Canada as well as in Victorian England." Edugyan is joined on our list by Kate Atkinson, whose new period novel Transcription focuses on a female spy, recruited by MI5 at age 18 to monitor fascist sympathizers. "As a fangirl of both the virtuosic Life After Life and of her Jackson Brody detective novels, I barely need to see a review to get excited about a new Atkinson novel," wrote Sonya Chung in our Great Second-Half 2018 Book Preview, and evidently her feelings are shared by many Millions readers alike. Spots for both books were opened when Warlight and The Mars Room dropped from our ranks. Elsewhere on the list, shuffling abounds. The Overstory rose to second position after being shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and There There rose as well after being longlisted for the National Book Award. Meanwhile, if you'll turn your attention to this month's "near misses" below, you'll see The Golden State, the debut novel from Lydia Kiesling, our intrepid editor. Longtime readers of this site are no doubt familiar with Lydia's brand of antic, incisive writing – she's one of the few authors who've made me laugh and tear up in the same piece – but prepared as I was, I'll admit this book floored me in the best way. Not only is it an engrossing depiction of a very particular parent's mind, but it's also an exploration of what it means to connect with others, raise them, be influenced and repulsed by them, as well as overwhelmed by them alike. As a bonus, there's also an absolutely ruthless and necessary skewering of modern university administrative work, and the entire story vibrates with an extreme sense of place. I cannot wait to read what Lydia writes next and in the meantime I encourage you all to check this one out. This month’s near misses included: Severance, The Practicing Stoic, and The Golden State. See Also: Last month's list. [millions_ad]

In Person

Working with What You’ve Got: An Interview with Lydia Kiesling

Martha Anne Toll - 9.4.2018 | 1 book mentioned 1

Readers of The Millions know Lydia Kiesling as its current editor, corralling an eclectic group of writers and readers into a daily book blog circulated to thousands of book lovers. Lydia’s first novel, The Golden State, arrives today from Farrar, Straus and Giroux’s MCD imprint. An unusually accomplished debut, the book has all the elements this interviewer reads for: flow, language, ideas, surprises, humor, and a great big heart. The Golden State's protagonist is a young mother named Daphne, separated from her Turkish husband through an immigration screw-up, struggling to support her family in San Francisco. Overwhelmed with her situation, Daphne takes baby Honey and retreats to the family’s ancestral mobile home in rural California, the site of an enthusiastic separatist movement gunning for the new State of Jefferson. As Daphne revisits memories from her family of origin, she faces a thousand small and large obstacles in raising Honey. She follows a trail of longing through the fallout from America’s Kafkaesque immigration system so that she can create a family that coheres. I was lucky enough to catch up with Lydia via email over the summer. Martha Anne Toll (MAT): How did you first come to writing? Lydia Kiesling (LK): I was always a reader. I had a corresponding, mostly submerged, urge to write, but I wasn’t sure how to start or what to write about. When I was 25, I decided to set up a Wordpress blog to write…something. Books seemed like the best entry point, so I started out writing short posts about books in a semi-facetious style. C. Max Magee, who founded The Millions as his personal blog and grew it into what it is today, read the posts (via emeritus staffer Ben Dooley), and kindly invited me to make the site a home for my writing. For a long time I only wrote about books, but I was constitutionally unable to avoid bringing in personal elements—writing about my particular experience of reading—which didn't always translate to the classic book review (there are many strong opinions about this!). I quickly started doing more writing in the category of personal essay, but I didn’t presume to give fiction a try until about six or seven years in. MAT: Readers are always interested in process. What is the genesis of your novel and how did it unfold? LK: I started feeling that my available venues and structures for writing were limiting. I had a full-time job, so digging into deeply reported or researched pieces was not realistic. I also found that some of what I wanted to explore didn’t fit neatly into an essay format—at least one that I knew how to write or sell. I saw that fiction was where you could range as far as you wanted with a particular theme, provided you put it into a story that made sense, and that’s where I started to focus my energies. I felt that the day-to-day experience of parenthood, and certain kinds of professional and political frustrations, were rich fodder for a novel, and that I might have the tools and material available to write about them in that format. MAT: With your more than full time position at The Millions how do you fit your own writing in? LK: I’m glad I give the illusion that The Millions is full-time, but it’s really extremely part-time! The reason I could write this book is that my increasingly urgent desire to try a long fiction project coincided with Max’s feeling that running every aspect of The Millions while doing his own full-time job and raising children was untenable—he had been doing it for more than a decade! He offered me a position that worked out to about two hours per weekday, with a stipend that almost covered daycare for one kid (now I have two—whoops). My husband and I figured that we could make the arrangement work for a year, at the end of which I would have to either sell a book, or have a clear indication that it would happen soon. I’m incredibly fortunate that my husband had health insurance and a salary that covered our rent, and that I could mostly cover childcare with my stipend. I was writing against the clock, at a pace I’m sure I’ll never sustain again, and I made the deadline with a couple of months to spare. MAT: One of your book’s most unusual aspects is Daphne’s experience with the Turkish language and her commentary about its joys and challenges. Can you say more about that? LK: I started learning Turkish in Turkey in 2005 when I was there teaching English to kindergarteners. I moved back to California after a year to be closer to my family, but I regretted not going further with Turkish, and I missed Turkey dearly. In 2009, when my now-husband and I were living in Pittsburgh while he went to graduate school, I decided that my job prospects were such that I was basically only qualified for miscellaneous admin jobs just outside what I wanted to do, so I went back to school to work on Turkish and get a Middle Eastern Studies degree. The decision made no sense since our plan was to move back to California, but I have been able to use it in different ways. Putting Turkish into the novel was both a form of domestic economy—working with what you’ve got—and also a way to live in a world where I used a language I sincerely love. MAT: Turkish has everything to do with Daphne’s husband Engin, who is marooned in Turkey due to a green card calamity at the San Francisco airport. How do you think of their relationship? Do you see it as a metaphor? LK: I think Turkey and America have a lot in common as relatively young countries—the way our social currents affect governance, in particular—but realistically, it’s probably only a metaphor for my own sense of…regret isn’t quite the word, but melancholy that I can’t see a future when I’m going to live in Turkey or speak Turkish. I’m losing my Turkish all the time, and I knew this as I was writing. I was anxious not to make Engin too much of a fantasy boyfriend, life-not-lived kind of thing. That said, as someone who unwittingly followed the practice of “assortative mating”—my husband and I grew up in very different regional contexts, but our demographic and class backgrounds are similar—I am interested in other kinds of couples. Many people feel social pressure, either explicit or implicit, to marry someone from a similar background, but marriages happen every day between people who didn’t grow up speaking the same language, and where neither party will assimilate into the other’s culture—they build something new. I did hesitate about trying to portray an experience that I haven’t had. Then again, since we only have Daphne’s narration, we only hear her side. One reader was really incensed about Daphne, on Engin’s behalf. “Imagine being him, helplessly watching your child’s mother melt down on the other side of the world via Skype.” She had a point! MAT: A central theme in The Golden State is new motherhood and childrearing. Daphne’s relationship with her baby daughter Honey is at times laugh-out-loud funny, at times poignant, and always heartrending. You were in the throes of new motherhood when you wrote this novel. How did that affect your writing? Was part of the challenge to protect your real-life child/ren from appearing on the pages of this book? LK: I started sketching out vignettes when my eldest daughter was about six months old, and I started writing in earnest when she was 17 months old, about Honey’s age. The book owes everything to her; I simply wouldn’t have written it if I hadn’t had her and if she hadn’t transformed the way I experience time—both the huge anxiety of seeing her new-babyness turn into toddlerhood so quickly, and the slowness of individual moments with her. I didn’t feel any angst about representing her; obviously individual parents know their individual children’s quirks, but babies and toddlers tend to operate within a spectrum of familiar behavior, so Honey is kind of an Every-baby. I was more interested in describing a particular parent’s psyche and behavior as she interacts with a toddler, not in imbuing a lot of specificity to the toddler herself. I now have a second baby, and it’s an experience I don’t seem to urgently need to translate to fiction the same way. I suppose I could worry that my babies will grow up and read the book and worry that I was miserable, but Daphne isn’t me, and her life is much harder than mine, and she isn’t totally miserable in any case. My children don’t make me miserable—the way American society fails parents of every background is much more immiserating. I love them, and I think and hope that will supersede whatever weirdness they feel if they ever read this book. MAT: Novels are often about memory. Daphne finds herself on that most personal of journeys—revisiting a critical place in her childhood. Can you talk about Daphne’s encounters with memory, particularly memories of her mother and grandparents who are everywhere in the house to which she escapes? LK: I grew up moving around a lot in a Foreign Service family, as well as visiting the same places over and over without living permanently in them, so memories of place are central to the book. Along with the baby stuff, it was the nostalgia and love you can feel for particular places, both as the sites where you interacted with particular people, but also as their own, stand-alone forces—smells and sounds and sensations—that I wanted to get on the page. MAT: Writers are admonished to be observant. Can you talk about that admonition with regard to this heart stopping sentence: “…observation is violence as any Orientalist knows.” LK: I think about this all the time, particularly because I was in an “area studies” program both as a student and later as an employee, that has roots both in the discipline of Oriental Studies and in the Cold War-era belief that America would materially benefit from Americans learning about other languages and cultures. And my childhood in the Foreign Service was full of mythology that if you travel to a lot of places you will be more informed, more empathetic, more adaptable. There is truth to that, but the more saccharine and platitudinous version of this mythology ignores the fact that gaze is everything. Part of what has been breathtaking about adulthood, in ways good and painful, is seeing how my own gaze has been shaped by social and political forces, many of them malign. This is pertinent to area studies, but also to literature, as we see again and again in conversations that take place in the literary community. So yes, you have to be observant to be a novelist, but you also have to understand that what feels to you like objectivity or interest, or even love, can be ignorance, and can be violence. (Phrenologists considered themselves very observant!) Also, this may seem like a tangent, but women are socialized to be observant. Observation in that sense is rarely neutral—trading observations is currency in female friendships, particularly among girls and young women, and wielding observation cruelly is part of that. I’m still not sure where the line is as far as fiction goes, but I try to keep it in mind. MAT: The personal becomes political in The Golden State. Daphne is confronted with a militant secessionist group fighting to break off from California and establish the State of Jefferson. How did you come up with that idea? How much did contemporary politics shape the plot of your novel? LK: I started seeing the State of Jefferson signs on drives up north and east in the last few years and found them surprising, but it turns out this regional movement to create a 51st state out of part of northern California (and Oregon, in some iterations) has been around for a long time. The neo-Sagebrush Rebellion activities as characterized by the Bundys and their supporters are their own thing, but the rhetoric overlaps, and the ideological roots are similar. So I conflated a few things in this book—I took a State of Jefferson action that took place in 1941 and gave it a kind of Malheur standoff spin. I didn’t devote a lot of the book to the State of Jefferson, but I wanted to show that something that seems to have nothing to do with you can brush up against your life in a variety of ways. I didn’t really see until recently how much Daphne’s feeling that if she can be alone with her child she can be safe, can manage her life, even though all signs point to the contrary, somewhat mirrors the belief that if people can break off and form a state that matches their politics perfectly things will just work out (again, all signs point to the contrary). MAT: The Golden State begs the question: What does this novel say about the virulent fight over immigration we are experiencing in Trump’s America? LK: I wrote the novel during the Obama years and the immigration story is loosely based on that of people I know. One of many things that alarmed me then about our immigration system is that it often seems to come down to the individual frame of mind or set of prejudices of the border agent you come across. You have absolutely no power, regardless of whether you follow the law (such as it is) or not. Our immigration policy was exclusionary and difficult before Trump. But now everything that was previously subtext is text. It seems clear that the people in Trump’s coterie want to end birthright citizenship, and that is sickening. If they take that, they take any remaining pretense of American being the land of opportunity. The American Dream becomes Stephen Miller’s dream realized. MAT: What’s next for you? Do you have another novel/book in the works, and if so can you tell us about it? LK: I’m early in another book, about American efforts at soft power abroad! But there’s no way I’ll be able to finish it before my daycare money runs out. I’ll need to rearrange, again.

Curiosities

What Labor Is

Bruna Dantas Lobato - 5.4.2016 | 1 book mentioned

Over at Slate, Pamela Erens explores how descriptions of childbirth have disappeared from contemporary novels. Also check out Claire Cameron’s Millions interview with the author and Martha Anne Toll’s review of Erens’s new novel, Eleven Hours.

The Millions Top 10

The Millions Top Ten: March 2016

Nick Moran - 4.8.2016 | 1 book mentioned 2

We spend plenty of time here on The Millions telling all of you what we’ve been reading, but we are also quite interested in hearing about what you’ve been reading. By looking at our Amazon stats, we can see what books Millions readers have been buying, and we decided it would be fun to use those stats to find out what books have been most popular with our readers in recent months. Below you’ll find our Millions Top Ten list for March. This Month Last Month Title On List 1. 2. Fortune Smiles 4 months 2. 3. Slade House 6 months 3. 4. The Big Green Tent 5 months 4. 5. What Belongs to You 3 months 5. 6. My Name is Lucy Barton 3 months 6. 10. The Past 2 months 7. 9. A Brief History of Seven Killings 4 months 8. - Girl Through Glass 1 month 9. 8. City on Fire 6 months 10. - The Lost Time Accidents 1 month Ascend, ascend Lauren Groff and Margaret Atwood! Set forth and lay claim to your spots within our Millions Hall of Fame. For one of these authors, it's their second time making the list. For the other, it's their debut. Can you guess which is which? The answer may surprise you. And with the ascension of Fates and Futures and The Heart Goes Last, we welcome two newcomers to our monthly Top Ten: Girl Through Glass by Sari Wilson and The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray. In his write-up for our Most Anticipated Book Preview three months ago, Matt Seidel described how Wilson's novel "alternates between late-1970s New York, where its heroine works her way into George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet, and the present day, where she is a dance professor having an affair with a student." It's a novel ripe with dramatic tension, and one more than a little fixated on body type, as Martha Anne Toll noted in her recent exploration of women -- lost, thin, and small -- in fiction. Joining Wilson on the list this month is John Wray, whose newest novel, The Lost Time Accidents, covers a great many topics, such as physics, the Czech Republic, watch factories, Nazi war criminals, the Church of Scientology (but not really), and science fiction, among others. In her write-up for the Book Preview, Anne K. Yoder called it a "mash-up of sci-fi, time-travel, and family epic [that's] both madcap and ambitious." The novel was also covered by Michael Schaub in a recent edition of The Book Report -- come for the overview, but stay for Bong Crosby! Stay tuned for next month's list, in which two more newcomers are poised to join our ranks. This month's near misses included: The Queen of the Night, Mr. Splitfoot, The Turner House, Eternity Street: Violence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles, and The Sellout. See Also: Last month's list.

Prizes

The 2014 Pulitzer for Fiction Goes to Donna Tartt’s Goldfinch

Editor - 4.14.2014 | 1 book mentioned

Following last year's win for The Orphan Master's Son, Adam Johnson's novel of North Korea, the Pulitzer jury named Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch this year's winner in the fiction category. The Son by Philipp Meyer and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis were the other finalists for the fiction prize. Here are this year's Pulitzer winners and finalists with bonus links: Fiction: Winner: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (excerpt, Adam Dalva's essay on the novel, casting the upcoming movie) The Son by Philipp Meyer (our review, our interview with Meyer) The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis (excerpt, an essay by Martha Anne Toll) General Nonfiction: Winner: Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide by Gary J. Bass (excerpt) The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War by Fred Kaplan (excerpt) History: Winner: The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 by Alan Taylor (review) A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama's America by Jacqueline Jones (excerpt) Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser (excerpt Biography: Winner: Margaret Fuller: A New American Life by Megan Marshall Jonathan Swift: His Life and His World by Leo Damrosch (excerpt) Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life by Jonathan Sperber Winners and finalists in other categories are available at the Pulitzer Web site.

Prizes

2013 Man Booker Prize Winner Announced

Editor - 10.15.2013 | 1 book mentioned 4

Eleanor Catton has claimed the 2013 Man Booker Prize – as well as its £50,000 payout – for her second novel, The Luminaries. Catton had 11/4 odds to win this year’s prize according to popular bookmakers, Ladbrokes, and she has now become the youngest author to ever win the prestigious award. The four judges read 151 novels before deciding on Catton’s work, and chairman Robert Macfarlane estimates that the reading amounted to “about 21 kilometres of prose” at “12-pt Adobe Garamond.” In a recent review for our site, Martha Anne Toll referred to Catton’s novel as “that rarest literary treasure, a book of such dazzling breadth and scope that it defies any label short of masterpiece.” She continued: Deeply entrenched in New Zealand’s South Island, The Luminaries makes clear that this author commands the world at her fingertips. Her literary ancestry derives less from her homeland and more from the British and American giants of the nineteenth century. Catton deserves their company. Nodding to Melville, she’s nailed the tormented sea captain and the revenge obsessed “Chinaman.” With so many characters taking on false identities and trying to out-cheat each other in New Zealand’s gold rush, Catton, too, has mined the seamy underside of greed and poverty so beloved by Dickens. Like George Eliot, Catton looks behind the stereotype of the whore and the opium dealer and forces us to question where the real morality lies. By the novel’s end, every character’s initial presentation has been destabilized. Reader, Catton instructs, don’t judge a book by its cover. Next year will be the first year in which American authors will be eligible to win the Man Booker Prize, which has previously been open only to authors from the British Commonwealth. You can take a glimpse at the other books on the 2013 Man Booker Prize longlist and shortlist as well.