Mentioned in:
Most Anticipated: The Great Spring 2024 Preview
April
April 2
Women! In! Peril! by Jessie Ren Marshall [F]
For starters, excellent title. This debut short story collection from playwright Marshall spans sex bots and space colonists, wives and divorcĂ©es, prodding at the many meanings of womanhood. Short story master Deesha Philyaw, also taken by the book's title, calls this one "incisive! Provocative! And utterly satisfying!" âSophia M. Stewart
The Audacity by Ryan Chapman [F]
This sophomore effort, after the darkly sublime absurdity of Riots I have Known, trades in the prison industrial complex for the Silicon Valley scam. Chapman has a sharp eye and a sharper wit, and a book billed as a "bracing satire about the implosion of a Theranos-like company, a collapsing marriage, and a billionairesâ 'philanthropy summit'" promises some good, hard laughsâhowever bitter they may beâat the expense of the ĂŒber-rich. âJohn H. Maher
The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso, tr. Leonard Mades [F]
I first learned about this book from an essay in this publication by Zachary Issenberg, who alternatively calls it Donoso's "masterpiece," "a perfect novel," and "the crowning achievement of the gothic horror genre." He recommends going into the book without knowing too much, but describes it as "a story assembled from the gossip of societyâs highs and lows, which revolves and blurs into a series of interlinked nightmares in which people lose their memory, their sex, or even their literal organs." âSMS
Globetrotting ed. Duncan Minshull [NF]
I'm a big walker, so I won't be able to resist this assemblage of 50 writersâincluding Edith Wharton, Katharine Mansfield, Helen Garner, and D.H. Lawrenceârecounting their various journeys by foot, edited by Minshull, the noted walker-writer-anthologist behind The Vintage Book of Walking (2000) and Where My Feet Fall (2022). âSMS
All Things Are Too Small by Becca Rothfeld [NF]
Hieronymus Bosch, eat your heart out! The debut book from Rothfeld, nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post, celebrates our appetite for excess in all its material, erotic, and gluttonous glory. Covering such disparate subjects from decluttering to David Cronenberg, Rothfeld looks at the dire culturalâand personalâconsequences that come with adopting a minimalist sensibility and denying ourselves pleasure. âDaniella Fishman
A Good Happy Girl by Marissa Higgins [F]
Higgins, a regular contributor here at The Millions, debuts with a novel of a young woman who is drawn into an intense and all-consuming emotional and sexual relationship with a married lesbian couple. Halle Butler heaps on the praise for this one: âSometimes I could not believe how easily this book moved from gross-out sadism into genuine sympathy. Totally surprising, totally compelling. I loved it.â âSMS
City Limits by Megan Kimble [NF]
As a Los Angeleno who is steadily working my way through The Power Broker, this in-depth investigation into the nation's freeways really calls to me. (Did you know Robert Moses couldn't drive?) Kimble channels Caro by locating the human drama behind freeways and failures of urban planning. âSMS
We Loved It All by Lydia Millet [NF]
Planet Earth is a pretty awesome place to be a human, with its beaches and mountains, sunsets and birdsong, creatures great and small. Millet, a creative director at the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, infuses her novels with climate grief and cautions against extinction, and in this nonfiction meditation, she makes a case for a more harmonious coexistence between our species and everybody else in the natural world. If a nostalgic note of âAuld Lang Syneâ trembles in Milletâs title, her personal anecdotes and public examples call for meaningful environmental action from local to global levels. âNathalie op de Beeck
Like Love by Maggie Nelson [NF]
The new book from Nelson, one of the most towering public intellectuals alive today, collects 20 years of her workâincluding essays, profiles, and reviewsâthat cover disparate subjects, from Prince and Kara Walker to motherhood and queerness. For my fellow Bluets heads, this will be essential reading. âSMS
Traces of Enayat by Iman Mersal, tr. Robin Moger [NF]
Mersal, one of the preeminent poets of the Arabic-speaking world, recovers the life, work, and legacy of the late Egyptian writer Enayat al-Zayyat in this biographical detective story. Mapping the psyche of al-Zayyat, who died by suicide in 1963, alongside her own, Mersal blends literary mystery and memoir to produce a wholly original portrait of two women writers. âSMS
The Letters of Emily Dickinson ed. Cristanne Miller and Domhnall Mitchell [NF]
The letters of Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest and most beguiling of American poets, are collected here for the first time in nearly 60 years. Her correspondence not only gives access to her inner life and social world, but reveal her to be quite the prose stylist. "In these letters," says Jericho Brown, "we see the life of a genius unfold." Essential reading for any Dickinson fan. âSMS
April 9
Short War by Lily Meyer [F]
The debut novel from Meyer, a critic and translator, reckons with the United States' political intervention in South America through the stories of two generations: a young couple who meet in 1970s Santiago, and their American-born child spending a semester Buenos Aires. Meyer is a sharp writer and thinker, and a great translator from the Spanish; I'm looking forward to her fiction debut. âSMS
There's Going to Be Trouble by Jen Silverman [F]
Silverman's third novel spins a tale of an American woman named Minnow who is drawn into a love affair with a radical French activistâa romance that, unbeknown to her, mirrors a relationship her own draft-dodging father had against the backdrop of the student movements of the 1960s. Teasing out the intersections of passion and politics, There's Going to Be Trouble is "juicy and spirited" and "crackling with excitement," per Jami Attenberg. âSMS
Table for One by Yun Ko-eun, tr. Lizzie Buehler [F]
I thoroughly enjoyed Yun Ko-eun's 2020 eco-thriller The Disaster Tourist, also translated by Buehler, so I'm excited for her new story collection, which promises her characteristic blend of mundanity and surrealism, all in the name of probingâand poking funâat the isolation and inanity of modern urban life. âSMS
Playboy by Constance Debré, tr. Holly James [NF]
The prequel to the much-lauded Love Me Tender, and the first volume in DebrĂ©'s autobiographical trilogy, Playboy's incisive vignettes explore the author's decision to abandon her marriage and career and pursue the precarious life of a writer, which she once told Chris Kraus was "a bit like Saint Augustine and his conversion." Virginie Despentes is a fan, so I'll be checking this out. âSMS
Native Nations by Kathleen DuVal [NF]
DuVal's sweeping history of Indigenous North America spans a millennium, beginning with the ancient cities that once covered the continent and ending with Native Americans' continued fight for sovereignty. A study of power, violence, and self-governance, Native Nations is an exciting contribution to a new canon of North American history from an Indigenous perspective, perfect for fans of Ned Blackhawk's The Rediscovery of America. âSMS
Personal Score by Ellen van Neerven [NF]
Iâve always been interested in books that drill down on a specific topic in such a way that we also learn something unexpected about the world around us. Australian writer Van Neerven's sports memoir is so much more than that, as they explore the relationship between sports and race, gender, and sexualityâas well as the paradox of playing a colonialist sport on Indigenous lands. Two Dollar Radio, which is renowned for its edgy list, is publishing this book, so I know itâs going to blow my mind. âClaire Kirch
April 16
The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins by Sonny Rollins [NF]
The musings, recollections, and drawings of jazz legend Sonny Rollins are collected in this compilation of his precious notebooks, which he began keeping in 1959, the start of what would become known as his âBridge Years,â during which he would practice at all hours on the Williamsburg Bridge. Rollins chronicles everything from his daily routine to reflections on music theory and the philosophical underpinnings of his artistry. An indispensable look into the mind and interior life of one of the most celebrated jazz musicians of all time. âDF
Henry Henry by Allen Bratton [F]
Brattonâs ambitious debut reboots Shakespeareâs Henriad, landing Hal Lancaster, whoâs in line to be the 17th Duke of Lancaster, in the alcohol-fueled queer party scene of 2014 London. Halâs identity as a gay man complicates his aristocratic lineage, and his dalliances with over-the-hill actor Jack Falstaff and promising romance with one Harry Percy, who shares a name with historyâs Hotspur, will have English majors keeping score. Donât expect a rom-com, though. Halâs fraught relationship with his sexually abusive father, and the fates of two previous gay men from the House of Lancaster, lend gravity to this Bard-inspired take. âNodB
Bitter Water Opera by Nicolette Polek [F]
Graywolf always publishes books that make me gasp in awe and this debut novel, by the author of the entrancing 2020 story collection Imaginary Museums, sounds like itâs going to keep me awake at night as well. Itâs a tale about a young woman whoâs lost her way and writes a letter to a long-dead ballet dancerâwho then visits her, and sets off a string of strange occurrences. âCK
Norma by Sarah Mintz [F]
Mintz's debut novel follows the titular widow as she enjoys her newfound freedom by diving headfirst into her surrounds, both IRL and online. Justin Taylor says, "Three days ago I didnât know Sarah Mintz existed; now I want to know where the hell sheâs been all my reading life. (Canada, apparently.)" âSMS
What Kingdom by Fine GrÄbÞl, tr. Martin Aitken [F]
A woman in a psychiatric ward dreams of "furniture flickering to life," a "chair that greets you," a "bookshelf that can be thrown on like an apron." This sounds like the moving answer to the otherwise puzzling question, "What if the Kantian concept of ding an sich were a novel?" âJHM
Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman [F]
Cotman, the author of three prior collections of speculative short stories, mines the anxieties of Black life across these seven tales, each of them packed with pop culture references and supernatural conceits. Kelly Link calls Cotman's writing "a tonic to ward off drabness and despair." âSMS
Presence by Tracy Cochran [NF]
Last year marked my first earnest attempt at learning to live more mindfully in my day-to-day, so I was thrilled when this book serendipitously found its way into my hands. Cochran, a New York-based meditation teacher and Tibetan Buddhist practitioner of 50 years, delivers 20 psycho-biographical chapters on recognizing the importance of the present, no matter how mundane, frustrating, or fortuitousâbecause ultimately, she says, the present is all we have. âDF
Committed by Suzanne Scanlon [NF]
Scanlon's memoir uses her own experience of mental illness to explore the enduring trope of the "madwoman," mining the work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Audre Lorde, and others for insights into the long literary tradition of women in psychological distress. The blurbers for this one immediately caught my eye, among them Natasha Trethewey, Amina Cain, and Clancy Martin, who compares Scanlon's work here to that of Marguerite Duras. âSMS
Unrooted by Erin Zimmerman [NF]
This science memoir explores Zimmerman's journey to botany, a now endangered field. Interwoven with Zimmerman's experiences as a student and a mother is an impassioned argument for botany's continued relevance and importance against the backdrop of climate changeâa perfect read for gardeners, plant lovers, or anyone with an affinity for the natural world. âSMS
April 23
Reboot by Justin Taylor [F]
Extremely online novels, as a rule, have become tiresome. But Taylor has long had a keen eye for subcultural quirks, so it's no surprise that PW's Alan Scherstuhl says that "reading it actually feels like tapping into the internetâs best celeb gossip, fiercest fandom outrages, and wildest conspiratorial rabbit holes." If that's not a recommendation for the Book Twitterâbrained reader in you, what is? âJHM
Divided Island by Daniela Tarazona, tr. Lizzie Davis and Kevin Gerry Dunn [F]
A story of multiple personalities and grief in fragments would be an easy sell even without this nod from Ălvaro Enrigue: "I don't think that there is now, in Mexico, a literary mind more original than Daniela Tarazona's." More original than Mario Bellatin, or Cristina Rivera Garza? This we've gotta see. âJHM
Prairie, Dresses, Art, Other by Danielle Dutton [NF]
Coffee House Press has for years relished its reputation for publishing âexperimentalâ literature, and this collection of short stories and essays about literature and art and the strangeness of our world is right up there with the rest of Coffee Houseâs edgiest releases. Donât be fooled by the simple cover artâDuttonâs work is always formally inventive, refreshingly ambitious, and totally brilliant. âCK
I Just Keep Talking by Nell Irvin Painter [NF]
I first encountered Nell Irvin Painter in graduate school, as I hung out with some Americanists who were her students. Painter was always a dazzling, larger-than-life figure, who just exuded power and brilliance. I am so excited to read this collection of her essays on history, literature, and politics, and how they all intersect. The fact that this collection contains Painterâs artwork is a big bonus. âCK
April 30
Real Americans by Rachel Khong [F]
The latest novel from Khong, the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, explores class dynamics and the illusory American Dream across generations. It starts out with a love affair between an impoverished Chinese American woman from an immigrant family and an East Coast elite from a wealthy family, before moving us along 21 years: 15-year-old Nick knows that his single mother is hiding something that has to do with his biological father and thus, his identity. C Pam Zhang deems this "a book of rare charm," and Andrew Sean Greer calls it "gorgeous, heartfelt, soaring, philosophical and deft." âCK
The Swans of Harlem by Karen Valby [NF]
Huge thanks to Bebe Neuwirth for putting this book on my radar (she calls it "fantastic") with additional gratitude to Margo Jefferson for sealing the deal (she calls it "riveting"). Valby's group biography of five Black ballerinas who forever transformed the art form at the height of the Civil Rights movement uncovers the rich and hidden history of Black ballet, spotlighting the trailblazers who paved the way for the Misty Copelands of the world. âSMS
Appreciation Post by Tara Ward [NF]
Art historian Ward writes toward an art history of Instagram in Appreciation Post, which posits that the app has profoundly shifted our long-established ways of interacting with images. Packed with cultural critique and close reading, the book synthesizes art history, gender studies, and media studies to illuminate the outsize role that images play in all of our lives. âSMS
May
May 7
Bad Seed by Gabriel Carle, tr. Heather Houde [F]
Carleâs English-language debut contains echoes of Denis Johnsonâs Jesusâs Son and Mariana Enriquezâs gritty short fiction. This story collection haunting but cheeky, grim but hopeful: a student with HIV tries to avoid temptation while working at a bathhouse; an inebriated friend group witnesses San Juan go up in literal flames; a sexually unfulfilled teen drowns out their impulses by binging TV shows. Puerto Rican writer Luis NegrĂłn calls this âan extraordinary literary debut.â âLiv Albright
The Lady Waiting by Magdalena Zyzak [F]
Zyzakâs sophomore novel is a nail-biting delight. When Viva, a young Polish Ă©migrĂ©, has a chance encounter with an enigmatic gallerist named Bobby, Vivaâs life takes a cinematic turn. Turns out, Bobby and her husband have a hidden agendaâthey plan to steal a Vermeer, with Viva as their accomplice. Further complicating things is the inevitable love triangle that develops among them. Victor LaValle calls this âa superb accomplishment," and Percival Everett says, "This novel popsâcosmopolitan, sexy, and funny." âLA
América del Norte by Nicolås Medina Mora [F]
Pitched as a novel that "blends the Latin American traditions of Roberto Bolaño and Fernanda Melchor with the autofiction of U.S. writers like Ben Lerner and Teju Cole," Mora's debut follows a young member of the Mexican elite as he wrestles with questions of race, politics, geography, and immigration. n+1 co-editor Marco Roth calls Mora "the voice of the NAFTA generation, and much more." âSMS
How It Works Out by Myriam Lacroix [F]
LaCroix's debut novel is the latest in a strong early slate of novels for the Overlook Press in 2024, and follows a lesbian couple as their relationship falls to pieces across a number of possible realities. The increasingly fascinating and troubling potentialitiesâB-list feminist celebrity, toxic employer-employee tryst, adopting a street urchin, cannibalism as relationship cureâform a compelling image of a complex relationship in multiversal hypotheticals. âJHM
Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang [F]
Ting's debut novel, which spans two continents and three timelines, follows two gay men in rural Chinaâand, later, New York City's Chinatownâwho frequent the Workers' Cinema, a movie theater where queer men cruise for love. Robert Jones, Jr. praises this one as "the unforgettable work of a patient master," and Jessamine Chan calls it "not just an extraordinary debut, but a future classic." âSMS
First Love by Lilly Dancyger [NF]
Dancyger's essay collection explores the platonic romances that bloom between female friends, giving those bonds the love-story treatment they deserve. Centering each essay around a formative female friendship, and drawing on everything from AnaĂŻs Nin and Sylvia Plath to the "sad girls" of Tumblr, Dancyger probes the myriad meanings and iterations of friendship, love, and womanhood. âSMS
See Loss See Also Love by Yukiko Tominaga [F]
In this impassioned debut, we follow Kyoko, freshly widowed and left to raise her son alone. Through four vignettes, Kyoko must decide how to raise her multiracial son, whether to remarry or stay husbandless, and how to deal with life in the face of loss. Weike Wang describes this one as âimbued with a wealth of wisdom, exploring the languages of love and family.â âDF
The Novices of Lerna by Ăngel Bonomini, tr. Jordan Landsman [F]
The Novices of Lerna is Landsman's translation debut, and what a way to start out: with a work by an Argentine writer in the tradition of Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares whose work has never been translated into English. Judging by the opening of this short story, also translated by Landsman, Bonomini's novel of a mysterious fellowship at a Swiss university populated by doppelgĂ€ngers of the protagonist is unlikely to disappoint. âJHM
Black Meme by Legacy Russell [NF]
Russell, best known for her hit manifesto Glitch Feminism, maps Black visual culture in her latest. Black Meme traces the history of Black imagery from 1900 to the present, from the photograph of Emmett Till published in JET magazine to the footage of Rodney King's beating at the hands of the LAPD, which Russell calls the first viral video. Per Margo Jefferson, "You will be galvanized by Legacy Russellâs analytic brilliance and visceral eloquence." âSMS
The Eighth Moon by Jennifer Kabat [NF]
Kabat's debut memoir unearths the history of the small Catskills town to which she relocated in 2005. The site of a 19th-century rural populist uprising, and now home to a colorful cast of characters, the Appalachian community becomes a lens through which Kabat explores political, economic, and ecological issues, mining the archives and the work of such writers as Adrienne Rich and Elizabeth Hardwick along the way. âSMS
Stories from the Center of the World ed. Jordan Elgrably [F]
Many in America hold onto broad, centuries-old misunderstandings of Arab and Muslim life and politics that continue to harm, through both policy and rhetoric, a perpetually embattled and endangered region. With luck, these 25 tales by writers of Middle Eastern and North African origin might open hearts and minds alike. âJHM
An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children by Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker [NF]
Two of the most brilliant minds on the planetâwriter Jamaica Kincaid and visual artist Kara Walkerâhave teamed up! On a book! About plants! A dream come true. Details on this slim volume are scantâsee for yourselfâbut I'm counting down the minutes till I can read it all the same. âSMS
Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov, tr. Angela Rodel [F]
I'll be honest: I would pick up this bookâby the International Booker Prizeâwinning author of Time Shelterâfor the title alone. But also, the book is billed as a deeply personal meditation on both Communist Bulgaria and Greek myth, soâyep, still picking this one up. âJHM
May 14
This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud [F]
I read an ARC of this enthralling fictionalization of Messudâs family historyâpeople wandering the world during much of the 20th century, moving from Algeria to France to North Americaâ and it is quite the story, with a postscript that will smack you on the side of the head and make you re-think everything you just read. I can't recommend this enough. âCK
Woodworm by Layla Martinez, tr. Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott [F]
Martinezâs debut novel takes cabin fever to the max in this story of a grandmother, granddaughter, and their haunted house, set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. As the story unfolds, so do the houseâs secrets, the two women must learn to collaborate with the malevolent spirits living among them. Mariana Enriquez says that this "tense, chilling novel tells a story of specters, class war, violence, and loneliness, as naturally as if the witches had dictated this lucid, terrible nightmare to MartĂnez themselves.â âLA
Self Esteem and the End of the World by Luke Healy [NF]
Ah, writers writing about writing. A tale as old as time, and often timeworn to boot. But graphic novelists graphically noveling about graphic novels? (Verbing weirds language.) It still feels fresh to me! Enter Healy's tale of "two decades of tragicomic self-discovery" following a protagonist "two years post publication of his latest book" and "grappling with his identity as the world crumbles." âJHM
All Fours by Miranda July [F]
In excruciating, hilarious detail, All Fours voices the ethically dubious thoughts and deeds of an unnamed 45-year-old artist whoâs worried about aging and her capacity for desire. After setting off on a two-week round-trip drive from Los Angeles to New York City, the narrator impulsively checks into a motel 30 miles from her home and only pretends to be traveling. Her flagrant lies, unapologetic indolence, and semi-consummated seduction of a rent-a-car employee set the stage for a liberatory inquisition of heteronorms and queerness. July taps into the perimenopause zeitgeist that animates Jen Beaginâs Big Swiss and Melissa Broderâs Death Valley. âNodB
Love Junkie by Robert Plunket [F]
When a picture-perfect suburban housewife's life is turned upside down, a chance brush with New York City's gay scene launches her into gainful, albeit unconventional, employment. Set at the dawn of the AIDs epidemic, Mimi Smithers, described as a "modern-day Madame Bovary," goes from planning parties in Westchester to selling used underwear with a Manhattan porn star. As beloved as it is controversial, Plunket's 1992 cult novel will get a much-deserved second life thanks to this reissue by New Directions. (Maybe this will finally galvanize Madonna, who once optioned the film rights, to finally make that movie.) âDF
Tomorrowing by Terry Bisson [F]
The newest volume in Duke Universityâs Practices series collects for the first time the late Terry Bissonâs Locus column "This Month in History," which ran for two decades. In it, the iconic "Theyâre Made Out of Meat" author weaves an alt-history of a world almost parallel to ours, featuring AI presidents, moon mountain hikes, a 196-year-old Walt Disneyâs resurrection, and a space pooch on Mars. This one promises to be a pure spectacle of speculative fiction. âDF
Chop Fry Watch Learn by Michelle T. King [NF]
A large portion of the American populace still confuses Chinese American food with Chinese food. What a delight, then, to discover this culinary history of the worldwide dissemination of that great cuisineâwhich moonlights as a biography of Chinese cookbook and TV cooking program pioneer Fu Pei-mei. âJHM
On the Couch ed. Andrew Blauner [NF]
AndrĂ© Aciman, Susie Boyt, Siri Hustvedt, Rivka Galchen, and Colm TĂłibĂn are among the 25 literary luminaries to contribute essays on Freud and his complicated legacy to this lively volume, edited by writer, editor, and literary agent Blauner. Taking tacts both personal and psychoanalytical, these essays paint a fresh, full picture of Freud's life, work, and indelible cultural impact. âSMS
Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace [NF]
Wallace is one of the best journalists (and tweeters) working today, so I'm really looking forward to his debut memoir, which chronicles growing up Black and queer in America, and navigating the world through adulthood. One of the best writers working today, Kiese Laymon, calls Another Word for Love as âOne of the most soulfully crafted memoirs Iâve ever read. I couldnât figure out how Carvell Wallace blurred time, region, care, and sexuality into something so different from anything Iâve read before." âSMS
The Devil's Best Trick by Randall Sullivan [NF]
A cultural history interspersed with memoir and reportage, Sullivan's latest explores our ever-changing understandings of evil and the devil, from Egyptian gods and the Book of Job to the Salem witch trials and Black Mass ceremonies. Mining the work of everyone from Zoraster, Plato, and John Milton to Edgar Allen Poe, Aleister Crowley, and Charles Baudelaire, this sweeping book chronicles evil and the devil in their many forms. --SMS
The Book Against Death by Elias Canetti, tr. Peter Filkins [NF]
In this newly-translated collection, Nobel laureate Canetti, who once called himself death's "mortal enemy," muses on all that death inevitably touchesâfrom the smallest ant to the Greek godsâand condemns death as a byproduct of war and despots' willingness to use death as a pathway to power. By means of this book's very publication, Canetti somewhat succeeds in staving off death himself, ensuring that his words live on forever. âDF
Rise of a Killah by Ghostface Killah [NF]
"Why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? Why did Judas rat to the Romans while Jesus slept?" Ghostface Killah has always asked the big questions. Here's another one: Who needs to read a blurb on a literary site to convince them to read Ghost's memoir? âJHM
May 21
Exhibit by R.O. Kwon [F]
It's been six years since Kwon's debut, The Incendiaries, hit shelves, and based on that book's flinty prose alone, her latest would be worth a read. But it's also a tale of awakeningâof its protagonist's latent queerness, and of the "unquiet spirit of an ancestor," that the author herself calls so "shot through with physical longing, queer lust, and kink" that she hopes her parents will never read it. Tantalizing enough for you? âJHM
Cecilia by K-Ming Chang [F]
Chang, the author of Bestiary, Gods of Want, and Organ Meats, returns with this provocative and oft-surreal novella. While the story is about two childhood friends who became estranged after a bizarre sexual encounter but re-connect a decade later, itâs also an exploration of how the human body and its excretions can be both pleasurable and disgusting. âCK
The Great State of West Florida by Kent Wascom [F]
The Great State of West Florida is Wascom's latest gothicomic novel set on Florida's apocalyptic coast. A gritty, ominous book filled with doomed Floridians, the passages fly by with sentences that delight in propulsive excess. In the vein of Thomas McGuane's early novels or Brian De Palma's heyday, this stylized, savory, and witty novel wields pulp with care until it blooms into a new strain of American gothic. âZachary Issenberg
Cartoons by Kit Schluter [F]
Bursting with Kafkaesque absurdism and a hearty dab of abstraction, Schluterâs Cartoons is an animated vignette of life's minutae. From the ravings of an existential microwave to a pencil that is afraid of paper, Schluterâs episodic outrĂ© oozes with animism and uncanniness. A grand addition to City Lightâs repertoire, it will serve as a zany reminder of the lengths to which great fiction can stretch. âDF
May 28
Lost Writings by Mina Loy, ed. Karla Kelsey [F]
In the early 20th century, avant-garde author, visual artist, and gallerist Mina Loy (1882â1966) led an astonishing creative life amid European and American modernist circles; she satirized Futurists, participated in Surrealist performance art, and created paintings and assemblages in addition to writing about her experiences in male-dominated fields of artistic practice. Diligent feminist scholars and art historians have long insisted on her cultural significance, yet the first Loy retrospective wasnât until 2023. Now Karla Kelsey, a poet and essayist, unveils two never-before-published, autobiographical midcentury manuscripts by Loy, The Child and the Parent and Islands in the Air, written from the 1930s to the 1950s. It's never a bad time to be re-rediscovered. âNodB
I'm a Fool to Want You by Camila Sosa Villada, tr. Kit Maude [F]
Villada, whose debut novel Bad Girls, also translated by Maude, captured the travesti experience in Argentina, returns with a short story collection that runs the genre gamut from gritty realism and social satire to science fiction and fantasy. The throughline is Villada's boundless imagination, whether she's conjuring the chaos of the Mexican Inquisition or a trans sex worker befriending a down-and-out Billie Holiday. Angie Cruz calls this "one of my favorite short-story collections of all time." âSMS
The Editor by Sara B. Franklin [NF]
Franklin's tenderly written and meticulously researched biography of Judith Jonesâthe legendary Knopf editor who worked with such authors as John Updike, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bowen, Anne Tyler, and, perhaps most consequentially, Julia Childâwas largely inspired by Franklin's own friendship with Jones in the final years of her life, and draws on a rich trove of interviews and archives. The Editor retrieves Jones from the margins of publishing history and affirms her essential role in shaping the postwar cultural landscape, from fiction to cooking and beyond. âSMS
The Book-Makers by Adam Smyth [NF]
A history of the book told through 18 microbiographies of particularly noteworthy historical personages who made them? If that's not enough to convince you, consider this: the small press is represented here by Nancy Cunard, the punchy and enormously influential founder of Hours Press who romanced both Aldous Huxley and Ezra Pound, knew Hemingway and Joyce and Langston Hughes and William Carlos Williams, and has her own MI5 file. Also, the subject of the binding chapter is named "William Wildgoose." âJHM
June
June 4
The Future Was Color by Patrick Nathan [F]
A gay Hungarian immigrant writing crappy monster movies in the McCarthy-era Hollywood studio system gets swept up by a famous actress and brought to her estate in Malibu to write what he really cares aboutâand realizes he can never escape his traumatic past. Sunset Boulevard is shaking. âJHM
A Cage Went in Search of a Bird [F]
This collection brings together a who's who of literary writersâ10 of them, to be preciseâ to write Kafka fanfiction, from Joshua Cohen to Yiyun Li. Then it throws in weirdo screenwriting dynamo Charlie Kaufman, for good measure. A boon for Kafkaheads everywhere. âJHM
We Refuse by Kellie Carter Jackson [NF]
Jackson, a historian and professor at Wellesley College, explores the past and present of Black resistance to white supremacy, from work stoppages to armed revolt. Paying special attention to acts of resistance by Black women, Jackson attempts to correct the historical record while plotting a path forward. Jelani Cobb describes this "insurgent history" as "unsparing, erudite, and incisive." âSMS
Holding It Together by Jessica Calarco [NF]
Sociologist Calarco's latest considers how, in lieu of social safety nets, the U.S. has long relied on women's labor, particularly as caregivers, to hold society together. Calarco argues that while other affluent nations cover the costs of care work and direct significant resources toward welfare programs, American women continue to bear the brunt of the unpaid domestic labor that keeps the nation afloat. Anne Helen Petersen calls this "a punch in the gut and a call to action." âSMS
Miss May Does Not Exist by Carrie Courogen [NF]
A biography of Elaine Mayâwhat more is there to say? I cannot wait to read this chronicle of May's life, work, and genius by one of my favorite writers and tweeters. Claire Dederer calls this "the biography Elaine May deserves"âwhich is to say, as brilliant as she was. âSMS
Fire Exit by Morgan Talty [F]
Talty, whose gritty story collection Night of the Living Rez was garlanded with awards, weighs the concept of blood quantumâa measure that federally recognized tribes often use to determine Indigenous membershipâin his debut novel. Although Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, his narrator is on the outside looking in, a working-class white man named Charles who grew up on Maineâs Penobscot Reservation with a Native stepfather and friends. Now Charles, across the river from the reservation and separated from his biological daughter, who lives there, ponders his exclusion in a novel that stokes controversy around the terms of belonging. âNodB
June 11
The Material by Camille Bordas [F]
My high school English teacher, a somewhat dowdy but slyly comical religious brother, had a saying about teaching high school students: "They don't remember the material, but they remember the shtick." Leave it to a well-named novel about stand-up comedy (by the French author of How to Behave in a Crowd) to make you remember both. --SMS
Ask Me Again by Clare Sestanovich [F]
Sestanovich follows up her debut story collection, Objects of Desire, with a novel exploring a complicated friendship over the years. While Eva and Jamie are seemingly oppositesâshe's a reserved South Brooklynite, while he's a brash Upper Manhattaniteâthey bond over their innate curiosity. Their paths ultimately diverge when Eva settles into a conventional career as Jamie channels his rebelliousness into politics. Ask Me Again speaks to anyone who has ever wondered whether going against the grain is in itself a matter of privilege. Jenny Offill calls this "a beautifully observed and deeply philosophical novel, which surprises and delights at every turn." âLA
Disordered Attention by Claire Bishop [NF]
Across four essays, art historian and critic Bishop diagnoses how digital technology and the attention economy have changed the way we look at art and performance today, identifying trends across the last three decades. A perfect read for fans of Anna Kornbluh's Immediacy, or the Style of Too Late Capitalism (also from Verso).
War by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, tr. Charlotte Mandell [F]
For years, literary scholars mourned the lost manuscripts of CĂ©line, the acclaimed and reviled French author whose work was stolen from his Paris apartment after he fled to Germany in 1944, fearing punishment for his collaboration with the Nazis. But, with the recent discovery of those fabled manuscripts, War is now seeing the light of day thanks to New Directions (for anglophone readers, at leastâthe French have enjoyed this one since 2022 courtesy of Gallimard). Adam Gopnik writes of War, "A more intense realization of the horrors of the Great War has never been written."Â âDF
The Uptown Local by Cory Leadbeater [NF]
In his debut memoir, Leadbeater revisits the decade he spent working as Joan Didion's personal assistant. While he enjoyed the benefits of working with Didionâher friendship and mentorship, the more glamorous appointments on her social calendarâhe was also struggling with depression, addiction, and profound loss. Leadbeater chronicles it all in what ChloĂ© Cooper Jones calls "a beautiful catalog of twin yearnings: to be seen and to disappear; to belong everywhere and nowhere; to go forth and to return home, andâabove all elseâto love and to be loved." âSMS
Out of the Sierra by Victoria Blanco [NF]
Blanco weaves storytelling with old-fashioned investigative journalism to spotlight the endurance of Mexico's RarĂĄmuri people, one of the largest Indigenous tribes in North America, in the face of environmental disasters, poverty, and the attempts to erase their language and culture. This is an important book for our times, dealing with pressing issues such as colonialism, migration, climate change, and the broken justice system. âCK
Any Person Is the Only Self by Elisa Gabbert [NF]
Gabbert is one of my favorite living writers, whether she's deconstructing a poem or tweeting about Seinfeld. Her essays are what I love most, and her newest collectionâfollowing 2020's The Unreality of Memoryâsees Gabbert in rare form: witty and insightful, clear-eyed and candid. I adored these essays, and I hope (the inevitable success of) this book might augur something an essay-collection renaissance. (Seriously! Publishers! Where are the essay collections!) âSMS
Tehrangeles by Porochista Khakpour [F]
Khakpour's wit has always been keen, and it's hard to imagine a writer better positioned to take the concept of Shahs of Sunset and make it literary. "Like Little Women on an ayahuasca trip," says Kevin Kwan, "Tehrangeles is delightfully twisted and heartfelt."Â Â âJHM
Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers [NF]
The moment I saw this book's titleâwhich comes from the opening (and, as it happens, my favorite) track on Mitchell's 1971 masterpiece BlueâI knew it would be one of my favorite reads of the year. Powers, one of the very best music critics we've got, masterfully guides readers through Mitchell's life and work at a fascinating slant, her approach both sweeping and intimate as she occupies the dual roles of biographer and fan. âSMS
All Desire Is a Desire for Being by René Girard, ed. Cynthia L. Haven [NF]
I'll be honestâthe title alone stirs something primal in me. In honor of Girard's centennial, Penguin Classics is releasing a smartly curated collection of his most poignantâand timelyâessays, touching on everything from violence to religion to the nature of desire. Comprising essays selected by the scholar and literary critic Cynthia L. Haven, who is also the author of the first-ever biographical study of Girard, Evolution of Desire, this book is "essential reading for Girard devotees and a perfect entrĂ©e for newcomers," per Maria Stepanova. âDF
June 18
Craft by Ananda Lima [F]
Can you imagine a situation in which interconnected stories about a writer who sleeps with the devil at a Halloween party and can't shake him over the following decades wouldn't compel? Also, in one of the stories, New York Cityâs Penn Station is an analogue for hell, which is both funny and accurate. âJHM
Parade by Rachel Cusk [F]
Rachel Cusk has a new novel, her first in three yearsâthe anticipation is self-explanatory. âSMS
Little Rot by Akwaeke Emezi [F]
Multimedia polymath and gender-norm disrupter Emezi, who just dropped an Afropop EP under the name Akwaeke, examines taboo and trauma in their creative work. This literary thriller opens with an upscale sex party and escalating violence, and although pre-pub descriptions leave much to the imagination (promising âthe elite underbelly of a Nigerian cityâ and âa tangled web of sex and lies and corruptionâ), Emezi can be counted upon for an ambience of dread and a feverish momentum. âNodB
When the Clock Broke by John Ganz [NF]
I was having a conversation with multiple brilliant, thoughtful friends the other day, and none of them remembered the year during which the Battle of Waterloo took place. Which is to say that, as a rule, we should all learn our history better. So it behooves us now to listen to John Ganz when he tells us that all the wackadoodle fascist right-wing nonsense we can't seem to shake from our political system has been kicking around since at least the early 1990s. âJHM
Night Flyer by Tiya Miles [NF]
Miles is one of our greatest living historians and a beautiful writer to boot, as evidenced by her National Book Awardâwinning book All That She Carried. Her latest is a reckoning with the life and legend of Harriet Tubman, which Miles herself describes as an "impressionistic biography." As in all her work, Miles fleshes out the complexity, humanity, and social and emotional world of her subject. Tubman biographer Catherine Clinton says Miles "continues to captivate readers with her luminous prose, her riveting attention to detail, and her continuing genius to bring the past to life." âSMS
God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer by Joseph Earl Thomas [F]
Thomas's debut novel comes just two years after a powerful memoir of growing up Black, gay, nerdy, and in poverty in 1990s Philadelphia. Here, he returns to themes and settings that in that book, Sink, proved devastating, and throws post-service military trauma into the mix. âJHM
June 25
The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing [NF]
I've been a fan of Laing's since The Lonely City, a formative read for a much-younger me (and I'd suspect for many Millions readers), so I'm looking forward to her latest, an inquiry into paradise refracted through the experience of restoring an 18th-century garden at her home the English countryside. As always, her life becomes a springboard for exploring big, thorny ideas (no pun intended)âin this case, the possibilities of gardens and what it means to make paradise on earth. âSMS
Cue the Sun! by Emily Nussbaum [NF]
Emily Nussbaum is pretty much the reason I started writing. Her 2019 collection of television criticism, I Like to Watch, was something of a Bible for college-aged me (and, in fact, was the first book I ever reviewed), and I've been anxiously awaiting her next book ever since. It's finally arrived, in the form of an utterly devourable cultural history of reality TV. Samantha Irby says, "Only Emily Nussbaum could get me to read, and love, a book about reality TV rather than just watching it," and David Grann remarks, "Itâs rare for a book to feel alive, but this one does." âSMS
Woman of Interest by Tracy O'Neill [NF]
OâNeill's first work of nonfictionâan intimate memoir written with the narrative propulsion of a detective novelâfinds her on the hunt for her biological mother, who she worries might be dying somewhere in South Korea. As she uncovers the truth about her enigmatic mother with the help of a private investigator, her journey increasingly becomes one of self-discovery. ChloĂ© Cooper Jones writes that Woman of Interest âsolidifies her status as one of our greatest living prose stylists.â âLA
Dancing on My Own by Simon Wu [NF]
New Yorkers reading this list may have witnessed Wu's artful curation at the Brooklyn Museum, or the Whitney, or the Museum of Modern Art. It makes one wonder how much he curated the order of these excellent, wide-ranging essays, which meld art criticism, personal narrative, and travel writingâand count Cathy Park Hong and Claudia Rankine as fans. âJHM
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Tuesday New Release Day: Smith; Campbell; Moore; Brooks; Marra; Će; Niffeneger
Out this week: M Train by Patti Smith; Mothers, Tell Your Daughters: Stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell; 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories edited by Lorrie Moore; The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks; The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra; Death by Water by KenzaburĆ Će; and Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories by Audrey Niffenegger. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview
If you like to read, we've got some news for you. The second-half of 2015 is straight-up, stunningly chock-full of amazing books. If someone told you, "Hey, there are new books coming out by Margaret Atwood, Lauren Groff, Elena Ferrante, John Banville, and Jonathan Franzen this year," you might say, "Wow, it's going to be a great year for books." Well, those five authors all have books coming out in September this year (alongside 22 other books we're highlighting that month). This year, you'll also see new books from David Mitchell, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Aleksandar Hemon, Patti Smith, Colum McCann, Paul Murray, and what we think is now safe to call a hugely anticipated debut novel from our own Garth Risk Hallberg.
The list that follows isnât exhaustive -- no book preview could be -- but, at 9,100 words strong and encompassing 82Â titles, this is the only second-half 2015 book preview you will ever need. Scroll down and get started.
July:
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee: Fifty-five years after the publication of Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird, this ânewly discoveredâ sequel picks up 20 years after the events of the first novel when Jean Louise Finch -- better known to generations of readers as Scout -- returns to Maycomb, Ala., to visit her lawyer father, Atticus. Controversy has dogged this new book as many have questioned whether the famously silent Lee, now pushing 90 and in poor health, truly wanted publication for this long-abandoned early effort to grapple with the characters and subject matter that would evolve into her beloved coming-of-age novel. (Michael)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates: A journalist who learned the ropes from David Carr, Coates is one of our most incisive thinkers and writers on matters of race. Coates is unflinching when writing of the continued racial injustice in the United States: from growing up in Baltimore and its culture of violence that preceded the Freddie Gray riots, to making the case for reparations while revealing the systematic racism embedded in Chicago real estate, to demanding that South Carolina stop flying the Confederate flag. In Between the World and Me, Coates grapples with how to inhabit a black body and how to reckon with Americaâs fraught racial history from a more intimate perspective -- in the form of a letter to his adolescent son. Given the current state of affairs, this book should be required reading. Originally slated for September, the book was moved up to July. Spiegel & Grau Executive Editor Chris Jackson said, "We started getting massive requests from people [for advance copies.] It spoke to this moment. We started to feel pregnant with this book. We had this book that so many people wanted." Publishers Weekly's review dispensed with any coyness, saying, "This is a book that will be hailed as a classic of our time." (Anne)
A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball: Elegant and spooky, dystopian and poetic, Jesse Ballâs follow-up to the well-reviewed Silence Once Begun follows a man known only as âthe claimantâ as he relearns everything under the guidance of an âexaminer,â a woman who defines everything from the objects in their house to how he understands his existence. Then he meets another woman at a party and begins to question everything anew. A puzzle, a love story, and a tale of illness, memory, and manipulation, A Cure for Suicide promises to be a unique novel from a writer already known for his originality. (Kaulie)
The Dying Grass by William T. Vollmann: Volume number five of Vollmannâs Seven Dreams series expands on the author's epic portrayal of the settlement of North America. In his latest, Vollmann depicts the Nez Perce War, a months-long conflict in 1877 that saw the eponymous Native American tribe defend their mountain territories from encroachment by the U.S. Army. According to Vollmann, who spoke with Tom Bissell about the series for a New Republic piece, the text consists of mostly dialogue. (Thom)
Armada by Ernest Cline: Billy Mitchell, the âgreatest arcade-video-game player of all time,â devoted 40 hours a week to the perfection of his craft, but he says he never skipped school or missed work. That was 35 years ago, before video games exploded not only in size and complexity, but also in absorptive allure. Recently, things have changed. It was only a year ago that a California couple was imprisoned for locking their children in a dingy trailer so the two of them could play 'World of Warcraft" uninterrupted. (By comparison, Mitchellâs devotion seems pedestrian.) This year, programmers are working on "No Manâs Sky," a âgalaxy-sized video gameâ thatâll allow players to zip around a full-scale universe in the name of interplanetary exploration. It sounds impossibly gigantic. And with escalation surely comes a reckoning: Why are people spending more time with games than without? Across the world, a new class of professional gamers are earning lucrative sponsorships and appearing on slickly produced televised tournaments with tuition-sized purses. But surely more than money is at stake. (Full disclosure: I made more real money selling virtual items in "Diablo IIIâs" online marketplace than I did from writing in '12.) As increasingly rich worlds draw us in, what are we hoping to gain? It canât just be distraction, can it? Are there practical benefits, or are we just hoping there are? This, to me, sounds like the heart of Ernest Clineâs latest novel, Armada, which focuses on a real life alien invasion that can only be stopped by gamers whoâve been obediently (albeit unknowingly) training for this very task. (Nick M.)
The Small Backs of Children by Lidia Yuknavitch: The visionary editor of Chiasmus Press and first to publish books by Kate Zambreno and Lily Hoang is herself a fierce and passionate writer. Yuknavitch is the author of a gutsy memoir, The Chronology of Water, and Dora: A Headcase, a fictional re-spinning of the Freudian narrative. Her new novel, Small Backs of Children, deals with art, violence, and the very real effects of witnessing violence and conflict through the media. According to Porochista Khakpour, the novel achieves âmoments of sĂ©ance with writers like Jean Rhys and Clarice Lispector,â a recommendation destined to make many a reader slaver. (Anne)
Lovers on All Saintsâ Day by Juan Gabriel VĂĄsquez: The Colombian writer Juan Gabriel VĂĄsquez has been compared to Gabriel GarcĂa MĂĄrquez and Roberto Bolaño. Winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Award for his novel The Sound of Things Falling, VĂĄsquez is bringing out a collection of seven short stories never before published in English (nimbly translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean). The twinned themes of this collection are love and memory, which VĂĄsquez unspools through stories about love affairs, revenge, troubled histories -- whole lives and worlds sketched with a few deft strokes. Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has called VĂĄsquez âone of the most original new voices of Latin American literature.â (Bill)
Among the Wild Mulattos and Other Tales by Tom Williams: The recent passing of B.B. King makes Williams's previous book, Don't Start Me Talkin' -- a comic road novel about a pair of traveling blues musicians -- a timely read. His new story collection also skewers superficial discussions of race; admirers of James Alan McPherson will enjoy Williams's tragicomic sense. The book ranges from the hilarious âThe Story of My Novel,â about an aspiring writer's book deal with Cousin Luther's Friend Chicken, to the surreal âMovie Star Entrances,â how one man's quest to remake himself with the help of an identity consulting company turns nefarious. Williams can easily, and forcefully, switch tragic, as in âThe Lessons of Effacement.â When the main character is followed, he thinks âWhen your only offenses in life were drinking out of the juice carton and being born black in these United States, what could warrant such certain persecution?â Williams offers questions that are their own answers, as in the final story, when a biracial anthropologist discovers that a hidden mulatto community is more than simply legend. (Nick R.)
August:
Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh: Following Sea of Poppies (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) and River of Smoke, Calcutta-born Ghosh brings his Ibis Trilogy to a rousing conclusion with Flood of Fire. Itâs 1839, and after China embargoes the lucrative trade of opium grown on British plantations in India, the colonial government sends an expeditionary force from Bengal to Hong Kong to reinstate it. In bringing the first Opium War to crackling life, Ghosh has illuminated the folly of our own failed war on drugs. Historical fiction doesnât get any timelier than this. (Bill)
Fortune Smiles by Adam Johnson: Johnson is best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about North Korea, The Orphan Masterâs Son, but heâs also the author of a terrific and off-kilter story collection called Emporium, a literary cousin to the sad-comic work of George Saunders, Sam Lipsyte, and Dan Chaon. This new collection of six stories, about everything from a former Stasi prison guard in East Germany to a computer programmer âfinding solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States,â echoes his early work while also building upon the ambition of his prize-winning tome. Kirkus gave the collection a starred review, calling it, âBittersweet, elegant, full of hard-won wisdom.â (Edan)
Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami: A reissue of Murakami's first novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, which form the first half of the so-called (four-book) Trilogy of the Rat. Written in 1978 and 1980, these books were never published outside of Japan, evidently at Murakami's behest. He seems to have relented. (Lydia)
The State Weâre In: Maine Stories by Ann Beattie: Fifteen stories -- connected by their depictions of a number of shared female characters â make up this new collection by short story master Beattie. In âMajor Maybe,â which originally appeared in The New Yorker, two young roommates navigate Chelsea in the '80s. In âThe Repurposed Barn,â readers glimpse an auction of Elvis Presley lamps, and in âMissed Calls,â a writer meets a photographerâs widow. Though most of the stories take place in Beattieâs home state of Maine, the author says they required her to call on the work of memory, as they took place in a ârecalledâ Maine rather than the Maine âoutside her window.â (Thom)
The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman: Describing Rachel, the protagonist of Alice Hoffmanâs 34th novel, as the mother of Camille Pissarro, the Father of Impressionism, feels like exactly the kind of thing I shouldnât be doing right now. Thatâs because The Marriage of Opposites isnât about an artist. Itâs about the very real woman who led a full and interesting life of her own, albeit one that was profoundly shaped by decisions she didnât make. Growing up in 19th-century St. Thomas, among a small community of Jewish refugees whoâd fled the Inquisition, Rachel dreams of worlds sheâs never known, like Paris. No doubt she yearns for a freedom sheâs never known, too, after her father arranges her marriage to one of his business associates. What happens next involves a sudden death, a passionate affair, and an act of defiance signaling that perhaps Rachel is free, and that certainly sheâs got her own story to tell. (Nick M.)
The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector: For readers who worship at the altar of Lispector, the appearance of new work in translation is an event. Her writing has long been celebrated across her homeland, Brazil, and Latin America, but it wasnât until recently that her name became common currency among English readers thanks to New Directionsâs reissue of her novels and Benjamin Moser's notable biography. To add to the allure of âBrazilâs great mystic writer,â Moser offers, she was âthat rare woman who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf.â Calling the release of Lispectorâs Complete Stories in English an âepiphanyâ in its promotional copy may sound like hyperbole. Itâs not. (Anne)
Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings by Shirley Jackson: Shirley Jackson has been a powerhouse in American fiction ever since her haunting 1948 short story âThe Lottery,â which showcased her talent for turning the quotidian into something eerie and unnerving. Although she died 50 years ago, her family is still mining her archives for undiscovered gems, resulting in this new collection of 56 pieces, more than 40 of which have never been published before. From short stories to comic essays to drawings, Jacksonâs full range is on display, yet her wit and sharp examination of social norms is present throughout. (Tess)
Three Moments of an Explosion by China MiĂ©ville: MiĂ©ville, the author of more than a dozen novels, is the sort of writer that deftly leaps across (often artificially-imposed) genre divides. He describes his corner of speculative fiction as âweird fiction,â in the footsteps of H.P. Lovecraft. (Tor.com mocked the desire to endlessly subcategorise genre by also placing his work in âNew Weird!â âFantastika!â âLiterary Speculation!â âHauntological Slipstream!â âTentacular Metafusion!â) His first short story collection was published a decade ago; his second, with 10 previously-published stories and 18 new ones, is out in the U.S. in August. (Elizabeth)
The Daughters by Adrienne Celt: Celt, who is also a comics artist, writes in her bio that she grew up in Seattle, and has both worked for Google and visited a Russian prison. Her debut novel covers a lot of ground, emotionally and culturally: opera, Polish mythology, and motherhood/daughterhood. Kirkus has given The Daughters a starred review -- âhauntingâ and âpsychologically nuancedâ -- and she was a finalist for the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award, among others. Celtâs web comics appear weekly here, and she sells t-shirts! One to watch.(Sonya)
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh: If anyoneâs a Paris Review regular itâs Ottessa Moshfegh, with a coveted Plimpton Prize and four stories to her name (in only three yearâs time). Her narrators have a knack for all kind of bad behavior: like the algebra teacher who imbibes 40s from the corner bodega on school nights, who smokes in bed and drunk dials her ex-husband, or the woman who offers to shoot a flock of birds for her apartment-manager boyfriend. Moshfeghâs novels track the lives of characters who are equally and indulgently inappropriate. Moshfeghâs first full-length novel Eileen follows a secretary at a boys prison (whose vices include a shoplifting habit) who becomes lured by friendship into committing a far larger crime. (Anne)
Shipbreaking by Robin Beth Schaer: Schaer worked as a deckhand on the HMS Bounty, which sank during Hurricane Sandy, so I entered Shipbreaking feeling that I would be in credible hands. I often read poetry to find phrases and lines to hold with me beyond the final page, and Schaer, who once wrote that âto leave the shore required surrender,â delivers. âI am / forgiven by water, but savaged by skyâ says one narrator. Another: âEven swooning / is a kind of fainting, overwhelmed / by bliss, instead of pain.â Shipbreaking is a book about being saved while recognizing loss. Schaerâs words apply equally to marine and shore moments, as so often life is âa charade that only deepens / the absence it bends to hide.â Schaerâs long poems are especially notable; âMiddle Flightâ and âNatural Historyâ remake pregnancy and motherhood: âBefore now, he floated in dark water...Someday he too will chase his lost lightness / half-remembered toward the sky.â If we trust our poets enough, we allow them cause wounds and then apply the salves: âThe world without us / is nameless.â (Nick R.)
Last Mass by Jamie Iredell: "I am a Catholic." So begins Iredell's book, part memoir about growing up Catholic in Monterey County, Calif., part historical reconsideration of Blessed Father Fray JunĂperro Serra, an 18th-century Spanish Franciscan who will be canonized by Pope Francis later this year. Structured around the Stations of the Cross, Iredell's unique book reveals the multitudinous complexities of Catholic identity, and how the tensions between those strands are endemic to Catholic culture. Think of Last Mass as William Gass's On Being Blue recast as On Being Catholic: Iredell's range is encyclopedic without feeling stretched. Delivered in tight vignettes that capture the Catholic tendency to be simultaneously specific and universal, the book's heart is twofold. First, how faith is ultimately a concern of the flesh, as seen in the faithfulâs reverence for the body of Christ and struggles over experiencing sexuality (Catholics pivot between the obscene and the divine without missing a step). Second, in documenting Catholic devotion to saintly apocrypha, Iredell carries the reader to his most heartfelt note: his devotion and love for his father and family. (Nick R.)
September:
Purity by Jonathan Franzen: Known for his mastery of the modern domestic drama and his disdain for Internet things, Franzen, with his latest enormous novel, broadens his scope from the tree-lined homes of the Midwest and the Mainline to variously grim and paradisiacal domiciles in Oakland, East Germany, and Bolivia; alters his tableaux from the suburban nuclear family to fractured, lonely little twosomes; and progresses from cat murder to human murder. The result is something odd and unexpected -- a political novel that is somehow less political than his family novels at their coziest, and shot through with new strains of bitterness. Expect thinkpieces. (Lydia)
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff: Groffâs highly anticipated third novel follows married couple Lotto and Matthilde for over two decades, starting with an opening scene (published on The Millions), of the young, just-hitched duo getting frisky on the beach. The book was one of the galleys-to-grab at BookExpo America this spring, and itâs already received glowing reviews from Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus. Meg Wolitzer writes of Groff: âBecause she's so vitally talented line for line and passage for passage, and because her ideas about the ways in which two people can live together and live inside each other, or fall away from each other, or betray each other, feel foundationally sound and true, Fates and Furies becomes a book to submit to, and be knocked out by, as I certainly was.â (Edan)
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood: A hotly anticipated story about âa near-future in which the lawful are locked up and the lawless roam free,â this is Atwoodâs first standalone novel since The Blind Assassin, which won the Man Booker in 2000 (The Penelopiad was part of the Canongate Myth Series). Charmaine and Stan are struggling to make ends meet in the midst of social and economic turmoil. They strike a deal to join a âsocial experimentâ that requires them to swap suburban paradise for their freedom. Given Atwoodâs reputation for wicked social satire, I doubt it goes well. Publishers Weekly notes, "The novel is set in the same near-future universe as Atwoodâs Positron series of four short stories, released exclusively as e-books. The most recent Positron installment, which was published under the same name as the upcoming novel, came out in 2013." (Claire)
The Blue Guitar by John Banville: Banvilleâs 16th novel takes its title from a Wallace Stevens poem about artistic imagination and perception: âThings as they are/ Are changed upon the blue guitar.â Banvilleâs protagonist, Oliver Otway Orme, is a talented but blocked painter, an adulterer, and something of a kleptomaniac who returns to his childhood home to ruminate on his misdeeds and vocation. With such an intriguing, morally suspect central character as his instrument, Banville should be able to play one of his typically beguiling tunes. (Matt)
The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante: Ferrante writes what James Wood called "case histories, full of flaming rage, lapse, failure, and tenuous psychic success." In the fourth and final of the reclusive global publishing sensation's Neapolitan novels, we return to Naples and to the tumultuous friendship of Lila Cerullo and Elena Greco. (Lydia)
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick DeWitt: DeWittâs second novel, The Sisters Brothers, was short-listed for the Man Booker and just about every Canadian prize going, and for good reason. It took the grit, melancholy, and wit of the Western genre and bent it just enough toward the absurd. This new work, billed as âa fable without a moral,â is about a young man named Lucien (Lucy) Minor who becomes an undermajordomo at a castle full of mystery, dark secrets, polite theft, and bitter heartbreak. Our own Emily St. John Mandel calls it, âunexpectedly moving story about love, home, and the difficulty of finding oneâs place in the world.â (Claire)
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie: A new Rushdie novel is an event -- as is a new Rushdie tweet for that matter, especially after his vigorous defense of PENâs decision to honor Charlie Hebdo. His latest follows the magically gifted descendants of a philosopher and a jinn, one of those seductive spirits who âemerge periodically to trouble and bless mankind.â These offspring are marshaled into service when a war breaks out between the forces of light and dark that lasts, you got it, two years, eight months, and 28 nights. You can read an excerpt at The New Yorker. (Matt)
Sweet Caress by William Boyd: Boyd is one of those Englishmen who changes hats as effortlessly as most people change socks. A novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and movie director, Boyd has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for 1982âs An Ice-Cream War), and he recently wrote the James Bond novel Solo. His new novel, Sweet Caress, is the story of Amory Clay, whose passion for photography takes her from London to Berlin in the decadent 1920s, New York in the turbulent '30s, and France during World War II, where she becomes one of the first female war photographers. This panoramic novel is illustrated with âfoundâ period photographs. (Bill)
The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories by Joy Williams: The âdefinitiveâ collection from an acknowledged mastress of the short story -- Rea Award Winner alongside Donald Barthelme, Alice Munro, Robert Coover, Deborah Eisenberg, James Salter, Mary Robison, Amy Hempel, et alia -- The Visiting Privilege collects 33 stories from three previous collections, and 13 stories previously unpublished in book form. Joy Williams has been a writerâs writer for decades, yet never goes out of fashion. Her stories are sometimes difficult, bizarre, upsetting even; and always funny, truthful, and affecting. Williams once exhorted student writers to write something âworthy, necessary; a real literature instead of the Botox escapist lit told in the shiny prolix comedic style that has come to define us.â Would-be writers perplexed by what is meant by an original âvoiceâ should read Williams, absolutely. Read her in doses, perhaps, but read her, for godssakes. (Sonya)
Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg: By day, Clegg is a glamorous New York literary agent known for snagging fat book deals for literary authors like Matthew Thomas and Daniyal Mueenuddin. At night, he peels off the power suit and becomes a literary author himself, first with two memoirs about his descent into -- and back out of -- crack addiction, and now a debut novel. In Did You Ever Have a Family, tragedy strikes a middle-aged woman on the eve of her daughterâs wedding, setting her off on a journey across the country from Connecticut to the Pacific Northwest, where she hides out in a small beachside hotel. (Michael)
The Lost Landscape by Joyce Carol Oates: Volcanically prolific Oates has produced another memoir, The Lost Landscape: A Writerâs Coming of Age, which focuses on her formative years growing up on a hard-scrabble farm in upstate New York. We learn of young Oatesâs close friendship with a red hen, her first encounters with death, and the revelation, on discovering Alice in Wonderland, that life offers endless adventures to those who know how to look for them. Witnessing the birth of this natural storyteller, we also witness her learning harsh lessons about work, sacrifice and loss -- what Oates has called âthe difficulties, doubts and occasional despair of my experience.â (Bill)
The Double Life of Liliane by Lily Tuck: The only child of a German movie producer living in Italy and an artistic mother living in New York, Liliane also has ancestors as varied as Mary Queen of Scots, Moses Mendelssohn, and a Mexican adventurer. In this sixth, semi-autobiographical novel from Lily Tuck, winner of the National Book Award for The News from Paraguay, the imaginative Liliane uncovers her many ancestors, tracing and combining their histories as she goes. The result is a writerly coming-of-age that spans both World Wars, multiple continents, and all of one very diverse family. (Kaulie)
This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison: A writer with a reputation for having a big heart takes on Harriet Chance who, at 79 years old and after the death of her husband, goes on a Alaskan cruise. Soon she discovers that sheâs been living under false pretenses for the past 60 years. In other hands, this story might turn out as schmaltzy as the cruise ship singer, but Evisonâs previous novels, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, West of Here, and All About Lulu have established him as a master of the wistfully wise and humanely humorous. As Evison said in a recent interview, fiction is âan exercise in empathy.â (Claire)
Gold, Fame, Citrus, by Claire Vaye Watkins: Set in an increasingly plausible-seeming future in which drought has transformed Southern California into a howling wasteland, this debut novel by the author of the prize-winning story collection Battleborn finds two refugees of the water wars holed up in a starletâs abandoned mansion in L.A.âs Laurel Canyon. Seeking lusher landscape, the pair head east, risking attack by patrolling authorities, roving desperadoes, and the unrelenting sun. (Michael)
Cries for Help, Various by Padgett Powell: Back when the working title for his new story collection was Cries for Help: Forty-Five Failed Novels, Padgett Powell proclaimed the book âunsalable.â He was wrong. Itâs coming out as Cries for Help, Various, and itâs a reminder that with Padgett Powell, anything is possible. In âJoplin and Dickens,â for instance, the titular singer and writer meet as emotionally needy students in an American middle school. Surreal wackiness canât disguise the fact that these 44 stories are grounded in such very real preoccupations as longing, loneliness, and cultural nostalgia. The authorial voice ranges from high to low, from cranky to tender. Itâs the music of a virtuoso. (Bill)
The Marvels by Brian Selznick: You know a book is eagerly awaited when you witness an actual mob scene full of shoving and elbows for advance copies at BookExpo America. (In case thereâs any doubt, I did witness this.) Selznick, the Caldecott-winning author and illustrator of dozens of childrenâs books, is best known for The Invention of Hugo Cabret, published in 2008. His newest work weaves together âtwo seemingly unrelated storiesâ told in two seemingly unrelated forms: a largely visual tale that begins with an 18th-century shipwreck, and a largely prose one that begins in London in 1990. (Elizabeth)
Scrapper by Matt Bell: Set in a re-imagined Detroit, Bellâs second novel follows Kelly, a âscrapper,â who searches for valuable materials in the cityâs abandoned buildings. One day Kelly finds an orphaned boy, a discovery that forces Kelly to reexamine his own past and buried traumas. Advance reviews describe Scrapper as âharrowingâ and âgrim,â two adjectives that could also be used to describe Bellâs hypnotic debut, In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods. (Hannah)
Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash: For his sixth novel, Ron Rash returns to the beautiful but unforgiving Appalachian hills that have nourished most of his fiction and poetry. In Above the Waterfall, a sheriff nearing retirement and a young park ranger seeking to escape her past come together in a small Appalachian town bedeviled by poverty and crystal meth. A vicious crime will plunge the unlikely pair into deep, treacherous waters. Rash, a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award finalist, is one of our undisputed Appalachian laureates, in company with Robert Morgan, Lee Smith, Fred Chappell, and Mark Powell. He has called this âa book about wonder, about how nature might sustain us.â (Bill)
The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli: This young Mexican writer and translator was honored last year with a National Book Foundation âFive Under 35â Award for her 2013 debut, Faces in the Crowd. Her essay collection Sidewalks, published the same year, was also a critical favorite. Her second novel, The Story of My Teeth, is a story of stories, narrated by Gustavo âHighwayâ SĂĄnchez SĂĄnchez, a traveling auctioneer whose prize possession is a set of Marilyn Monroeâs dentures. Set in Mexico City, it was written in collaboration with Jumex Factory Staff -- which is a story in and of itself. (Hannah)
Marvel and a Wonder by Joe Meno: The author of Hairstyles of the Damned and The Boy Detective Fails has taken an ambitious turn with Marvel and a Wonder. The book follows a Korean War vet living with his 16-year-old grandson on a farm in southern Indiana. They are given a beautiful quarterhorse, an unexpected gift that transforms their lives, but when the horse is stolen they embark on a quest to find the thieves and put their lives back together. (Janet)
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta: Okparanta was born in Nigeria and raised as a Jehovahâs Witness. She emigrated to the United States at age 10, but her fiction often returns to Nigeria, painting a striking portrait of the contemporary nation. Her first book, the 2013 short story collection Happiness, Like Water, was shortlisted for many prizes and won the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Her debut novel, Under the Udala Trees, tells the story of two young girls who fall in love against the backdrop of the Nigerian Civil War. (Elizabeth)
After the Parade by Lori Ostlund: This assured debut tells the story of Aaron, an ESL teacher who decides, at age 40, to leave his lifelong partner, the older man who âsaved himâ from his Midwestern hometown. But in order to move on, Aaron has to take a closer look at his Midwestern past and find out if thereâs anything worth salvaging. Readers may know Ostlund from her award-winning 2010 short story collection, The Bigness of the World. (Hannah)
The Hundred Year Flood by Matthew Salesses: Like the titular flood that churns through the second half of the novel, The Hundred Year Flood is a story of displacement. Salesses, whose non-fiction examines adoption and identity, tells the story of Tee, a Korean-American living in Prague in late 2001. The attacks of 9/11 are not mere subtext in this novel; Teeâs uncle commits suicide by plane, and the entire novel dramatizes how the past binds our present. âAnywhere he went he was the only Asian in Prague,â but Tee soon finds friendship in Pavel, a painter made famous during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, and Katka, his wife. Tee becomes Pavelâs subject, and soon, Katkaâs lover. âIn the paintings, [Tee] was more real than life. His original self had been replaced:â Salesses novel dramatically documents how longing can turn, painfully, into love. (Nick R.)
Not on Fire, but Burning by Greg Hrbek: An explosion has destroyed San Francisco. Twelve-year-old Dorian and his parents have survived it, but where is his older sister, Skyler? She never existed, according to Dorianâs parents. Post-incident America is a sinister place, where Muslims have been herded onto former Native American reservations and parents deny the existence of a boyâs sister. According to the publisher, Hrbekâs sophomore novel is âunlike anything you've read before -- not exactly a thriller, not exactly sci-fi, not exactly speculative fiction, but rather a brilliant and absorbing adventure into the dark heart of...America.â Joining the Melville House family for his third book, Hrbek, whose story âPaternityâ is in the current issue of Tin House, may be poised to be the next indie breakout. (Sonya)
Dryland by Sara Jaffe: Jaffe has lived many lives it seems, one as a guitarist for punk band Erase Errata, another as a founding editor of New Herring Press (which just reissued a bang-up edition of Lynne Tillman's Weird Fucks with paintings by Amy Sillman). Proof of Jaffeâs life as a fiction-writer can be found online, too, including gems like âStormchasers.â This fall marks the publication of Jaffeâs first novel, Dryland, a coming-of-age tale set in the '90s that depicts a girl whose life is defined by absences, including and especially that of her not-talked about older brother, until she has a chance to find him and herself. (Anne)
Hotel and Vertigo by Joanna Walsh: British critic, journalist, and fiction writer Walsh kickstarted 2014 with the #readwomen hashtag phenomenon, declaring it the year to read only women. It seems that 2015 is the year to publish them, and specifically Walsh, who has two books coming out this fall. Hotel is âpart memoir part meditationâ that draws from Walshâs experience as a hotel reviewer -- and that explores âmodern sites of gathering and alienation.â The inimitable Dorothy Project will publish Vertigo, a book of loosely linked stories that channels George Perec and Christine Brooke-Rose, and which Amina Cain claims, âquietly subvert(s) the hell out of form.â (Anne)
October:
City on Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg: Garth is a contributing editor to the site, where he has written masterful essays over nearly a decade, while teaching and putting out his novella Field Guide to the North American Family. He is a keen and perfect reader of novels, and of critics -- he told us about Roberto Bolaño. We trust him to steer us through difficult books. (He is, additionally, a champion punner.) When his debut novel, a 900-pager written over six years, was purchased by Knopf, we felt not only that it couldn't happen to a nicer guy, but that it couldn't happen to a more serious, a more bona fide person of letters. City on Fire is the result of his wish to write a novel that took in "9/11, the 1977 blackout, punk rock, the fiscal crisis," which explains the 900 pages. Read the opening lines, evoking a modern Inferno, here. I think we're in for something special. (Lydia)
Slade House by David Mitchell: Slade House started out with âThe Right Sort,â a short story Mitchell published via 280 tweets last summer as publicity for The Bone Clocks. That story, which was published in full, exclusively here at The Millions, is about a boy and his mother attending a party to which theyâd received a mysterious invitation. The story âambushedâ him, said Mitchell, and, before he knew it, it was the seed of a full-fledged novel, seemingly about years of mysterious parties at the same residence that we can assume are connected to each other and to characters weâve already met. The book is said to occupy the same universe as The Bone Clocks and, by extension, Mitchellâs increasingly interconnected body of work. (Janet)
M Train by Patti Smith: The follow-up to Just Kids, Smithâs much-beloved (and National Book Award-winning) 2010 memoir about her youthful friendship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe as they made their way in 1960s New York City. In a recent interview, Smith said M Train is ânot a book about the past so much. Itâs who I am, what I do, what Iâm thinking about, what I read and the coffee I drink. The floors I pace. So weâll see. I hope people like it.â Oh Patti, we know weâre gonna like it. (Hannah)
Behind the Glass Wall by Aleksandar Hemon: Hemon has lived in the U.S. since the war in his native Bosnia made it impossible for him to return from what should have been a temporary visit. So he came to his role as the U.N.âs first writer-in-residence in its 70-year history with a lot of baggage. Given unprecedented access to the organizationâs inner working -- from the general assembly to the security council -- his book portrays a deeply flawed but vitally necessary institution. (Janet)
A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk: Nobel laureate Pamukâs ninth novel follows Mevlut, an Istanbul street vendor. Beginning in the 1970s, the book covers four decades of urban life, mapping the cityâs fortunes and failures alongside Mevlutâs, and painting a nostalgic picture of Pamuk's beloved home. (Hannah)
Mothers, Tell Your Daughters: Stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell: In Once Upon a River, Campbell introduced us to the wily and wise-beyond-her-years Margo Crane, a modern-day female Huck Finn taking to the river in search of her lost mother. The strong and stubborn protagonists that the Michigan author excels at writing are back in her third short story collection. The working-class women in these stories are grief-addled brides, phlebotomists discovering their sensuality, and vengeful abused wives, all drawn with Campbellâs signature dark humor and empathy. (Tess)
100 Years of the Best American Short Stories edited by Lorrie Moore: For 100 years, the Best American series has collected the strongest short stories, from Ernest Hemingway to Sherman Alexie. As editor, Lorrie Moore, a virtuoso of the genre herself, combed through more than 2,000 stories to select the 41 featured in this anthology. But this is not just a compilation, itâs also an examination of how the genre has evolved. Series editor Heidi Pitlor recounts the literary trends of the 20th century, including the rise of Depression-era Southern fiction to the heyday of the medium in the 1980s. The result is collection featuring everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Lauren Groff. (Tess)
The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks: The author of March and Calebâs Crossing, known for her abilities to bring history to life, has turned her attention to David King of Israel. Taking the famous stories of his shephardic childhood, defeat of Goliath, and troubled rule as king, Brooks fills in the gaps and humanizes the legend in a saga of family, faith, and power. (Janet)
Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann: With a title borrowed from the iconic Wallace Stevens poem âThirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,â McCann explores disparate points of view in this collection of short stories. The title story follows a retired judge going about his day, not realizing itâs his last. Other stories peek into the life of a nun, a marine, and a mother and son whose Christmas is marked by an unexpected disappearance. (Hannah)
The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray: Murrayâs 2010 novel Skippy Dies earned the Irishman worldwide acclaim as a writer enviably adept at both raucous humor and bittersweet truth. His new novel, perhaps the funniest thing to come out of the Irish economic collapse, follows Claude, a low-level bank employee who, while his employers drive the country steadily towards ruin, falls in with a struggling novelist intent on making Claudeâs life worthy of telling. (Janet)
The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Marraâs first novel about war-torn Chechnya during the Second Chechen War, was not only a New York Times bestseller, it was also a longlist selection for the National Book Award and on a bevy of best-of lists for 2013. His second book is a collection of short stories that, like his novel, span a number of years, and take place in the same part of the world. Thereâs a 1930s Soviet censor laboring beneath Leningrad, for example, as well as a chorus of women who, according to the jacket copy, ârecount their stories and those of their grandmothers, former gulag prisoners who settled their Siberian mining town.â The characters in these stories are interconnected, proving that Marra is as ambitious with the short form as he is with the novel. (Edan)
Death by Water by KenzaburĆ Će: Six years after Sui Shi came out in his native Japan, the 1994 Nobel Prize laureateâs latest is arriving in an English translation. In the book, which features Oeâs recurring protagonist Kogito Choko, a novelist attempts to fictionalize his fatherâs death by drowning at sea. Because the memory was traumatic, and because Chokoâs family refuses to talk about his father, the writer begins to confuse his facts, eventually growing so frustrated he shelves his novel altogether. His quest is hopeless, or so it appears, until he meets an avant-garde theater troupe, which provides him with the impetus to keep going. (Thom)
Submission by Michel Houellebecq: This much-discussed satirical novel by the provocative French author is, as Adam Shatz wrote for the LRB, a "melancholy tribute to the pleasure of surrender." In this case, the surrender is that of the French intelligentsia to a gently authoritarian Islamic government. The novel has been renounced as Islamophobic, defended against these charges in language that itself runs the gamut from deeply Islamophobic to, er, Islam-positive, and resulted in all kinds of moral-intellectual acrobatics and some very cute titles ("Colombey-les-deux-Mosquées" or "Slouching towards Mecca"). (Lydia)
Golden Age by Jane Smiley: The third volume in Smileyâs Last Hundred Years trilogy follows the descendants of a hard-striving Iowa farming family through the waning years of the last century to the present day. The first two installments covered the years 1920-52 (in Some Luck) and 1953-86 (in Early Warning), mixing lively characters and sometimes improbable plot twists with gently left-of-center political analysis of the American century. With characters who are serving in Iraq and working in New York finance, expect more of the same as Smiley wraps up her ambitious three-book project. (Michael)
Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories by Audrey Niffenegger: From a contemporary master of spooky stories comes an anthology of the best ghost stories. Niffeneggerâs curation shows how the genre has developed from the 19th century to now, with a focus on hauntings. Each story comes with an introduction from her, whether itâs a story by a horror staple like Edgar Allan Poe or the unexpected like Edith Wharton. Also look for a Niffenegger original, âA Secret Life with Cats.â (Tess)
The Hours Count by Jillian Cantor: In Cantorâs previous novel, Margot, Anne Frankâs sister has survived World War II, and is living under an assumed identity in America. Cantorâs new book once again blends fact and fiction, this time delving into the lives of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the only Americans executed for spying during the Cold War. The day Ethel was arrested, her two young children were left with a neighbor, and in The Hours Count Cantor fictionalizes this neighbor, and we understand the Rosenbergs and their story through the eyes of this young, naĂŻve woman. Christina Baker Kline calls the novel âTaut, atmospheric and absorbing...â (Edan)
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Sarah Vowell: As a teenager, the Marquis de Lafayette was an officer in the Continental Army at the right hand of George Washington. Returning home to his native France after the war, he continued to socialize with his friends Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin, and never lost his place in Americaâs affections. The author of Assassination Vacation tells the true story of the young French aristocrat who inserted himself into the American Revolution, his long and eventful life on both sides of the Atlantic, and his triumphant return to America at the end of his life. (Janet)
The Early Stories of Truman Capote: As any teacher can tell you, fiction written by 14-year-olds is not something youâd typically pay money to read. (Itâs hard enough to find people you can pay to read the stuff, at that.) But what about fiction written by a 14-year-old who started writing seriously at age 11? And one whoâd go on to write some of the most memorable stories of the modern age? That certainly changes things, and thatâs the case at hand with The Early Stories of Truman Capote, which is said to contain 17 pieces written during the authorâs teenage years. âWhen [Capote] was 23, he used to joke that he looked like he was 12,â journalist Anuschka Roshani told Die Zeit after she had discovered the forgotten stories in the New York Public Library. âBut when he was 12 he wrote like others did aged 40.â (Nick M.)
Upright Beasts by Lincoln Michel: Thereâs a good chance youâve encountered Michelâs stories, scattered far and wide across the Internet, and featured in the most reputable and disreputable journals alike. And if not his stories, then perhaps one of his many editorial or side projects, as co-founder of Gigantic, online editor of Electric Literature and, (delightfully) as creator of the Monsters of Literature trading cards. Michelâs stories are often an uncanny combination of sinister and funny, tender and sad. Laura van den Berg calls them âmighty surrealist wonders, mordantly funny and fiercely intelligent,â and many of them will soon be released together in Michelâs first story collection Upright Beasts. (Anne)
November:
The Mare by Mary Gaitskill: In 2012, Gaitskill read for a student audience from the novel-in-progress The Mare, which was then described as âan adult fairy-tale unsuitable for childrenâs ears.â The clichĂ©d publicity blurb gives one pause -- âthe story of a Dominican girl, the white woman who introduces her to riding, and the horse who changes everything for herâ -- but also, for this Gaitskill fan, induces eagerness to see what will surely be Gaitskillâs intimate and layered take on this familiar story trope. The young girl, Velveteen, is a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn who spends time with a married couple upstate and the horses down the road. Drug addiction, race, and social-class collisions make up at least some of the layers here. (Sonya)
The Givenness of Things: Essays by Marilynne Robinson: Robinson is one of the most beloved contemporary American writers, and sheâs also one of our most cogent voices writing about religion and faith today. âRobinson's genius is for making indistinguishable the highest ends of faith and fiction,â Michelle Orange wrote of Robinsonâs last novel, Lila, and this talent is on display across her new essay collection, 14 essays that meditate on the complexities of Christianity in America today. (Elizabeth)
Beatlebone by Kevin Barry: IMPAC-winner Barry -- who weâve interviewed here at The Millions -- follows John Lennon on a fictional trip to Ireland. In the story, which takes place in 1978, Lennon sets out to find an island he purchased nine years earlier, in a bid to get the solitude he needs to break out of a creative rut. His odyssey appears to be going according to plan -- until, that is, he meets a charming, shape-shifting taxi driver. (Thom)
The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya: The Big Green Tent -- at 592 pages and dramatizing a panorama of life in the USSR in the 1950s through the story of three friends -- is a Russian novel, at the same time that it is a âRussian novel.â An orphaned poet, a pianist, and a photographer each in his own way fights the post-Joseph Stalin regime; you might guess that the results are less than feel-good. This may be the Big Book of the year, and Library Journal is calling it âA great introduction to readers new to Ulitskaya,â who, along with being the most popular novelist in Russia, is an activist and rising voice of moral authority there. For more on Ulitsakya, read Masha Gessenâs 2014 profile. (Sonya)
Hotels of North America by Rick Moody: For writers both motivated and irked by online reviews, the comment-lurking hero of Moodyâs sixth novel should hit close to home. Reginald Edward Morse writes reviews on RateYourLodging.com, yet they arenât just about the quality of hotel beds and room service -- but his life. Through his comments, he discusses his failings, from his motivational speaking career to his marriage to his relationship with his daughter. When Morse disappears, these comments become the trail of breadcrumbs Moody follows to find him in this clever metafictional take on identity construction. (Tess)
Avenue of Mysteries by John Irving: Although Irving feels a little out of vogue these days, his novels have inflected the tenor of modern American literature -- open a novel and see a glimpse of T.S. Garp, a flash of Owen Meany, a dollop of Bogus Trumper. His 14th novel is based, confusingly, on an original screenplay for a movie called Escaping Maharashtra, and takes us to Mexico and the Philippines. (Lydia)
Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise by Oscar Hijuelos: When Hijuelos, author of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, passed away in 2013, he left behind Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise, a novel heâd been working on for more than 12 years. In it, the author imagined a fictitious manuscript containing correspondence between Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley, the artist Dorothy Tennant, and Mark Twain. In a virtuoso performance, Hijuelos displays his ability to use a high 19th-century writing style while preserving the individual voices that made each of his subjects so unique. (Nick M.)
A Wild Swan: And Other Tales by Michael Cunningham: Pulitzer Prize-winning Cunningham, best known for The Hours, a creative take on Mrs. Dalloway that was itself adapted into a prize-winning movie starring Nicole Kidman and a prosthetic nose, has chosen a new adaptation project: fairy tales. In A Wild Swan, all the familiar fairy tale characters are present, but clearly modernized -- Jack of beanstalk fame lives in his motherâs basement, while the Beast stands in line at the convenience store. Their stories receive similar updates and include all the questions and moments our childhood tales politely skimmed over. (Kaulie)
Numero Zero by Umberto Eco: The Italian writer, best known in the U.S. for The Name of the Rose and Foucaultâs Pendulum, takes on modern Italy's bete noire -- Benito Mussolini -- in Numero Zero. Moving deftly from 1945 to 1992 and back again, the book shows both the death of the dictator and the odyssey of a hack writer in Colonna, who learns of a bizarre conspiracy theory that says Il Duce survived his own murder. Though its plot is very different, the book pairs naturally with Look Whoâs Back, the recent German novel about a time-traveling Adolf Hitler. (Thom)
The Past by Tessa Hadley: Hadleyâs fifth novel, the well-received Clever Girl, was released just over a year ago, but sheâs already back with another delicately crafted novel of generational change in an English family. In The Past, four grown siblings -- three sisters and their brother -- return to their grandparentsâ house for three sticky summer weeks. While there, they face collected childhood memories, the possibility of having to sell the house, and each other. Their families cause considerable chaos as well -- the sisters dislike their brotherâs wife, while one sisterâs boyfriendâs son attempts to seduce her niece. (Kaulie)
January:
Good on Paper by Rachel Cantor: Cantorâs first novel, A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employeeâs Guide to Saving the World, garnered a devoted following for its madcap, time-traveling chutzpah. Her second novel, Good on Paper, also published by Melville House, sounds a bit different -- but just as enticing. According to the jacket copy, itâs about âa perpetual freelancer who gets an assignment that just might change her life,â and there are echoes of A.S. Byattâs Possession. (Edan)
Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens: Reportage by LĂĄszlĂł Krasznahorkai: Nine out of 10 doctors agree: Hungarian fiction is the cure for positivity, and few doses are as potent as the ones written by Krasznahorkai, recent winner of the Man Booker International Prize. âIf gloom, menace and entropy are your thing,â Larry Rohter wrote in his profile of the author for The New York Times, âthen Laszlo is your man.â And our interview with Krasznahorkai garnered the headline âAnticipate Doom.â Ominous for Chinese officials, then, that Krasznahorkaiâs latest effort can be described not as a work of fiction, but instead as a travel memoir, or a series of reports filed while journeying through the Asian country. Because if thereâs one guy you want to write about your country, itâs someone Susan Sontag described as the âmaster of the apocalypse.â (Nick M.)
Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt: In Huntâs fictions, imagination anchors the real and sometimes calls mutiny. Her tales earned her a spot in Tin Houseâs coterie of âFantastic Women,â and The Believer has called her âa master of beautiful delusions.â Whether the delusion involves believing oneself to be a mermaid or a wife who becomes a deer at night or the eccentric life and ideas of the oft-overlooked inventor Nikola Tesla (who among other things, harbored pigeons in New York City hotel rooms), Hunt delivers them with what an essence akin to magic. Mr. Splitfoot, Huntâs third novel, promises more in this vein. It's a gothic ghost story, involving two orphaned sisters, channeling spirits, and an enigmatic journey across New York State. (Anne)
February:
The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel: The fourth novel by Martel is touted as an allegory that asks questions about loss, faith, suffering, and love. Sweeping from the 1600s to the present through three intersecting stories, this novel will no doubt be combed for comparison to his blockbuster -- nine million copies and still selling strong -- Life of Pi. And Martel will, no doubt, carry the comparisons well: âOnce Iâm in my little studioâŠthereâs nothing here but my current novel,â he told The Globe and Mail. âIâm neither aware of the success of Life of Pi nor the sometimes very negative reviews Beatrice and Virgil got. Thatâs all on the outside.â (Claire)
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee: Weâve been awaiting Cheeâs sophomore novel, and here it finally is! A sweeping historical story -- âa night at the opera youâll wish never-ending,â says Helen Oyeyemi -- and the kind I personally love best, with a fictional protagonist moving among real historical figures. Lilliet Berne is a diva of 19th-century Paris opera on the cusp of world fame, but at what cost? Queen of the Night traffics in secrets, betrayal, intrigue, glitz, and grit. And if you can judge a book by its cover, this oneâs a real killer. (Sonya)
The Lost Time Accidents by John Wray: In his fourth novel, Lowboy author Wray moves out of the confines of New York City, tracing the history of an Eastern European family not unlike his own. Moving all the way from fin-de-siĂšcle Moravia up to the present day, the book tracks the exploits of the Toula family, who count among their home cities Vienna, Berlin, and finally New York City. As the story progresses, the family struggles to preserve their greatest treasure, an impenetrable theory with the potential to upend science as we know it. For a sense of Wrayâs eye, take note that Znojmo, the Moldovan town from which the family hails, is the gherkin capital of Austria-Hungary. (Thom)
Alice & Oliver by Charles Bock: Bockâs first novel, Beautiful Children, was a New York Times bestseller and won the Sue Kaufman prize for First Fiction from the Academy of Arts and Letters. His second novel, Alice & Oliver, which takes place in New York City in the year 1994, is about a young mother named Alice Culvert, who falls ill with leukemia, and her husband Oliver, who is âdoing his best to support Alice, keep their childcare situation stabilized, handle insurance companies, hold off worst case scenario nightmares, and just basically not lose his shit.â Joshua Ferris writes, âI was amazed that such a heartbreaking narrative could also affirm, on every page, why we love this frustrating world and why we hold on to it for as long as we can.â Richard Price calls it âa wrenchingly powerful novel.â (Edan)
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