May 3, 2025
This week’s column features four fiction debuts, all written by women. One speculates whether your name can influence the way you live your life; a novel set in Singapore pits two sisters against each other; a subversively comic road trip begins with a terminal diagnosis; and a novel told through letters reveals the inner heart and mind of a delightfully complicated protagonist. We also highlight a noteworthy Moroccan writer’s latest fiction that follows a young woman through to old age. You won’t forget these characters, each drawn with precision and compassion.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The Original Daughter
By JEMIMAH WEI
Published by DOUBLEDAY
In 2015 Singapore, Genevieve’s mother is dying from breast cancer and urges her daughter to call her sister Arin—a famous actress—home. The book then flashes back to 1996 and the origins of the sisters’ estrangement. Arin, who was born into their grandfather’s secret family, joined theirs when Genevieve was eight. They grow close despite their different temperaments. Under pressure to excel in academics, one fails; the other succeeds by betraying her sister. Modern Singapore, the rise of social media, and the glamour of the entertainment industry fill in Wei’s rich portrait of a family at a crossroads. The sisters’ journey—through rivalry and long harbored resentments which threaten to derail any possible rapprochement—is beautifully calibrated.
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The Names
By FLORENCE KNAPP
Published by PAMELA DORMAN BOOKS
What’s in a name? In Knapp’s debut she explores the power of names by positing the lives of a family in which a newborn son is named in three ways—one after his father Gordon, a horribly abusive control freak; one chosen by his sweet nine-year-old sister Maia; and one that mother Cora, a victim of recurring domestic violence, chooses for its etymological meaning (worried that this child could grow up to be like his father). Knapp’s intertwining storylines imagine the lives of this son over three decades and we follow their different paths, holding our breath, waiting for the next expected blow. It is marvel of imagination and structure.
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Living in Your Light
By ABDELLAH TAÏA
Published by SEVEN STORIES PRESS
Translated by Emma Ramadan
“There is nothing ahead of me now but memory, absence, love without you,” says Malika. As a young girl, she falls in love and marries Allal, who is killed in the war in Indochina. Her formative experiences are set against the backdrop of the Moroccan political climate from the 1950s into the 21st century. The novel focuses on three events in her life—the first at 17 when she loses her husband, then at 30 when she and Allal’s male lover recreate a burial for Allal, and again toward the end of her life when a thief, a friend of her estranged gay son, enters her home. What Taïa artfully accomplishes in under 150 pages is a whole lived life.
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Bad Nature
By ARIEL COURAGE
Published by HENRY HOLT & COMPANY
Turning forty as a single woman can be fraught, but it becomes exponentially harder when, on your birthday, you receive a diagnosis of terminal breast cancer. A successful New York lawyer, Hester, has a series of bad relationships behind her—from one-night stands to six-week (maximum) flings. After her surprising diagnosis she decides to drive cross-country to do what she has thought about since she was a teenager: kill her father. On the ensuing road trip west, she picks up an environmental activist and their journey across the U.S. results in some heartfelt realizations about the world we live in, what capitalism has wrought, and some much-needed introspection as she faces down mortality. An impressive debut!
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The Correspondent
By VIRGINIA EVANS
Published by CROWN
In this refreshing epistolary novel, we are introduced to Sybil—a 70-something woman who has lived a rich life and is in the obsessive habit of writing letters. She writes to friends, family, writers whom she admires—mostly sent but not always. Through these letters we learn about her life, her love of literature, and the people who have made a difference to her. “I am an old woman, and my life has been some strange balance of miraculous and mundane.…” Sometimes it is the little things, the simple things in life that add up to so much more. Such is the case in this charming book, which is her debut—after nine previous attempts!
