January 25, 2025
Here we have three unconventional books about love and sex in the run-up to Valentine’s Day; the latest from a bestselling Caribbean American writer who uses a family heirloom to drive her narrative; and a stunning debut that is featured in the launch of our First Novel Fridays series (you won’t want to miss these!).
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The English Problem
By BEENA KAMLANI
Published by CROWN
Bombay in the ’30s. Young Shiv has been hand-picked by Gandhi to go to England, study law, and learn the British ways. He reluctantly moves to London (land of the incessant rain, cold, and damp), but soon finds himself straddling two cultures and his allegiances shifting between them. A decade later, Shiv is on a boat back to India after being shot in Glasgow giving a speech on British rule in India. Kamlani’s sweeping story shines a light on this period of history, pre-WWII and India’s independence, with all the challenges of a ‘stranger in a strange land.’ It is a very promising debut.
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Good Dirt
By BALLANTINE BOOKS
Published by CHARMAINE WILKERSON
Wilkerson (Black Cake) returns with a powerful story that traces trauma through generations from the 19th century to the present. We meet Ebony two decades after the murder of her older teenaged brother. During that horrendous incident, a precious ancestral jar—crafted by an enslaved person in South Carolina—was broken. Years later, on the day of her wedding, Ebony’s husband-to-be abandons her, compelling her to get far away from home. She flees to France where a friend’s cottage has been offered in exchange for greeting guests. It’s a place so off the map that she would never expect to run into her ex. You’ll want to find out what happens next.
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Blob
By MAGGIE SU
Published by HARPER
I loved this quirky novel. What at first feels like fun, absurdist fiction becomes something much more profound. Vi, whose mother is American and her father Taiwanese, finds herself working a dead-end job in a Midwestern hotel. Bereft after her boyfriend leaves her and she drops out of school, she comes upon a jellyfish-like blob that seems to be alive. At a loss, she scoops it off the street and takes it home. The transformation of this blob from a secret pet to something resembling a very handsome man is both surprising and delightful. Su, who subtitles her novel ‘A Love Story,’ investigates the desire for human connection in an entirely new fashion.
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The Harder I Fight the More I Love You
By NEKO CASE
Published by GRAND CENTRAL
You don’t have to be familiar with Case’s music (as a solo artist or in The New Pornographers) to be totally drawn into her exhilarating memoir. From a ghastly childhood to a peripatetic upbringing in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest (in “slummy one-horse towns”) through legal emancipation, we follow her trajectory to well-earned success as a musician. Did music save her life? Case writes, “‘I can’t help it’ is a good stopgap answer to most questions about pursuing a creative life.” This acclaimed “vocal tornado” has written a memoir that might just become a classic.
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The Loves of My Life
By EDMUND WHITE
Published by BLOOMSBURY
This prolific and supremely talented writer (my favorite novel is a later one, A Saint from Texas) is now in his 80s and was never one to shrink from descriptions of his (very) numerous sexual encounters. In the foreword to his latest book, White remarks, “I’ve always insisted I approached sex as a realist, not as a pornographer.” His new memoir is also an overview of gay history. He draws from his early experiences at a Midwestern boarding school, with gay hustlers, undergoing conversion therapy, Stonewall and the AIDS crisis, up to the present. Both bawdy and serious-minded, White’s often poignant accounts are also highly entertaining.
