January 18, 2025
This week we have a nonfiction book about the second wave of the Civil Rights Movement in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day; Nobel Laureate Han Kang’s eagerly awaited latest; a story collection from one of our most important and perhaps underappreciated writers; a buoyant New York-set comic novel with theatrical underpinnings; and a major historical novel set in a school for Indigenous people. These books contain both darkness and light, struggle and hope, all evincing the range and gifts of these five quite remarkable writers.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
-
.
New Prize for These Eyes
By JUAN WILLIAMS
Published by SIMON & SCHUSTER
Published to celebrate Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Williams’s new book is also timely for its subject matter. It updates his classic history, Eyes on the Prize, published over almost forty years ago. He charts the rise of the second wave of the Civil Rights Movement into the 21st century from the lows—with repeated killings of young Black men and police violence—to the highs, including the election of our first Black president. Dubbed the ‘post-racial’ era, this second movement “had to deal with persistent, deep-seeded cultural issues” unresolved by the first. This is an important contribution to the ongoing struggle.
-
.
We Do Not Part
By HAN KANG
Published by HOGARTH
Translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris
Han Kang is as prolific as she is talented. Her new novel revisits her exploration of the violence and torture during South Korea’s political uprisings (the 1980s Gwangju uprising in Human Acts and now the Jeju uprising in the 1940s). As her friend and journalist Yung In Chae said recently in the Yale Review, “With little more than paper and ink, she acts as a conduit for the memories of generations that suffered state violence.” In We Do Not Part, Kyungha, who, like the author, wrote about Gwangju and is haunted by the mass killings, is asked a favor by a friend in the hospital to go care for her pet bird on Jeju Island. Traveling there in a snowstorm, Kyungha’s journey becomes an enigmatic and lyrical book about friendship.
.
-
.
To Save the Man
By JOHN SAYLES
Published by MELVILLE HOUSE
Sayles’s new emotionally powerful novel uses the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania as a setting for his wrenching story of the abusive treatment of Native peoples. Founded in 1879, it was the first Indian boarding school. Intended by its founder Captain Richard Henry Pratt to assimilate the students (“to save the man, we must kill the Indian”), it offered opportunities for them to learn trades, but it also dismantled identity and culture. Today its cemetery contains 186 students who died there (think Nickel Boys). Sayles’s richly deep portraits of his characters help bring this shameful chapter of our history to life.
-
.
The Uncollected Stories of Mavis Gallant
By MAVIS GALLANT
Published by NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
Edited by Garth Risk Hallberg
Gallant, born in Montreal, is associated with her adopted home of Paris and remains one of the world’s most respected and beloved short-fiction writers. Thirty stories that have never been collected in one volume are presented here, including the incomparable “The Accident,” published in the New Yorker in 1967, about a honeymoon that ends in tragedy when the husband is killed on his bike in Italy. His wife tells us, “I thought that the only success of my life, my sole achievement, would be this marriage.” This is a must-have for any serious reader.
.
-
.
Mona Acts Out
By MISCHA BERLINSKI
Published by LIVERIGHT
Perhaps a delicious comedy of manners is just what we need right now. Set in New York, starring a Shakesperean actress with serious doubts about her career, Berlinski’s novel takes place on Thanksgiving Day. Mona lies in bed, worrying that she is not up to her upcoming role as Cleopatra. She and her husband Phil have been seeing a pot-vaping marriage counselor in sessions her mother-in-law bought on Groupon. Throw in her recently “Me Too’d” mentor, and things are at a breaking point. Mona slips out of the house with her dog for a surprising overnight journey that makes this funny and wise novel much more than just a romp.
