September 28, 2024
The writers in this selection are all ambitious witnesses, contemplating the universe and their characters’ places within. Two have written sequels, and two can be seen on our stage at The Center this week. What binds them all is each author’s profound observations about the worlds they create for us, looking inside and out, both in fiction and in autobiographical stories.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The Position of Spoons
By Deborah Levy
Published by FSG
Marguerite Duras, Colette, Lee Miller, Francesca Woodman—these are just four of the subjects in Levy’s essay collection—all iconic women. The author admires them as we do her, whose talent and style are at once stubbornly feminine/feminist; singular; and opinionated. One piece extols the genius of the English writer J.G. Ballard; another, the melancholy of a rainy gray day in Russell Square Gardens. In yet another essay she says, “it is in my mind to tell you that all thoughts can be bent like a spoon.” She is a ‘noticer,’ an astute observer always aware and curious about the world around her.
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Two-Step Devil
By Jamie Quatro
Published by Grove Press
It is 2014 in the backwoods of Alabama where Prophet, an outsider artist lives off the grid. He is visited by a devil-like figure he refers to as Two-Step with whom he has intense conversations. When Prophet rescues a young woman who appears to be the victim of sex-trafficking, he believes her to be an angel sent down from God to spread his messages to the government. Though she agrees to be Prophet’s emissary, she has her own agenda. Quatro examines notions of faith in this novel penned during the pandemic, saying she wanted to write about “the importance of love and human connection.” The ending will stun you.
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Babe in the Woods
By Julie Heffernan
Published by Algonquin
This gifted painter presents her first graphic novel, a memoir about an ill-fated hiking trip she took with her baby son that goes awry when they become lost. Along the way she examines her own childhood, and reckons with motherhood, the trip acting as a metaphor for being a little lost in her own life: “…the gnarly trees and her gnarly confusions, and the branches that come and scratch at you the way memories do.…” The gorgeous illustrations take this graphic memoir to a higher level, combining art and life, the transporting and transformative power of nature, and finding your inner resourcefulness in order to survive.
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The Sequel
By Jean Hanff Korelitz
Published by Celadon
Korelitz’s new novel is actually a sequel to her previous thriller, a page-turning satire of the publishing world (see Misery—Stephen King is a fan of the author’s too). A literary widow has been on a whirlwind tour after her husband’s death to promote his last work, announcing off-handedly that she might try her hand at novel-writing. Finding herself at a literary colony she eventually turns in a successful book based on his death. But someone out there knows secrets that can unravel all her fame and glory. This is tense, gleeful fun by one of the best writers of literary suspense around. (Fun detail: the chapter names are titles of sequels to well-known books.)
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Suggested in the Stars
By Yoko Tawada
Published by New Directions
Translated by Margaret Mitsutani
In Tawada’s ingenious follow-up to Scattered All Over the Earth, we revisit a cast of appealing characters led by Hiruko, whose homeland of Japan has vanished into the sea in the near future. The hodgepodge includes an indigenous Greenlander sushi chef, a Danish linguist, and the East Indian trans woman who falls for him. Their escapades around the world combine the singular voices of each traveler, in an examination of language and identity. Tawada is multi-lingual, speaking her native Japanese, German (as she has lived there for many years), and even Russian. The third installment of this delightful trilogy will arrive next year.
