September 21, 2024
A new twist on the detective story from the Caribbean; a Pulitzer Prize winner’s spin on oceanographic marvels; an Irish writer’s take on love and chess; a Nobelist’s variation on a Thomas Mann classic; and a French writer updates another classic, Dangerous Liaisons, round out this week’s recommendations.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Playground
By RICHARD POWERS
Published by W.W. NORTON
Powers (The Overstory) shows us the creation of the universe from a spinning egg and adventures under the sea filled with 30,000 kinds of fish. We follow four people—a marine biologist, an artist, a schoolteacher, and an AI pioneer—whose lives intersect on a French Polynesian island chosen as a base for ‘seasteading.’ The novel has all the hallmarks of this Pulitzer winner’s abundant talents: timely subject, characters you feel you know personally, a structure that keeps you engaged in every subplot, a bit of mysticism, a profound reverence for nature, and the additional pleasure of teaching you something about the world. Playground does for oceans what The Overstory did for trees.
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Intermezzo
By SALLY ROONEY
Published by FSG
Once again Rooney has delivered an incisive, psychologically astute story about a group of young Irish people. We are in and around Dublin with two brothers, aged ten years apart, who are different on many levels. Peter, the elder, is a successful lawyer; Ian is a chess prodigy, and a bit lost since their father’s recent death. Peter had a longtime girlfriend and though they are ‘just friends’ now, they are definitively soulmates. He also is seeing a very young, impetuous girl with no real job or money. In the course of this juicy 400+ page novel, five characters’ souls are bared. It was hard to leave them on the last page.
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Dear Dickhead
By VIRGINIE DESPENTES
Published by FSG
Translated by Frank Wynne
Despentes (Vernon Subutex) is writing about “…what happens once we switch from not having much power to having a little bit….” Rebecca is an aging actress who was a friend of Oscar’s older sister, and Oscar is a mildly successful novelist and former addict. He posts an insulting Instagram about her looks. She retaliates with an equally nasty email (“you’re like a pigeon shitting on my shoulder…”) leading to an intense correspondence filled with confessions and driven by their personal addictions. Oscar has been #MeToo’d by his former publicist who becomes the third voice in the narrative. This novel is raw and honest, not pretty, but not unfunny either—and very, very compelling.
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The Empusium
By OLGA TOKARCZUK
Published by RIVERHEAD BOOKS
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Nobel Prize winner and recipient of the Man Booker International Prize, Tokarczuk’s (The Books of Jacob) new novel is subtitled “A Health Resort Horror Story.” It contains many of her trademark motifs including a love for all things natural. We meet the (all male) patients at a Silesian sanatorium with amazingly delicious food. The story takes a turn toward horror when the author introduces strange marionettes in a glade in the nearby forest. The players on Tokarczuk’s stage have endless philosophical debates about democracy, Christianity, Plato, Freud, (and the inferior qualities of women!). The author’s take on Magic Mountain is a page-turner, and I won’t spoil the rest. But you might be surprised.
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Passiontide
By MONIQUE ROFFEY
Published by KNOPF
Trinidadian writer Roffey sets her story on a small Caribbean island she calls St. Colibri following their annual Carnival. The death of a 23-year-old Japanese woman, a steelpan player, sets the book in motion. Following the discovery of her body, four women band together to start a movement to get to the bottom of the murder. An interesting group: a journalist willing to risk her career; the prime minister’s wife; an activist; and the founder of a sex workers’ collective. We also hear from the dead woman as she looks down from the trees. This is a blazing, feminist crime novel that is confrontational in just the right way, and perfectly timed for National Hispanic Heritage Month.
