September 7, 2024
This week, we visit a town in rural Maine where nothing much happens; a passionate affair in Norway where too much happens; a future in which white people have disappeared from America; a world where whole countries vanish into black holes; and a ‘new’ India where Mumbai has come alive with social unrest amidst political upheaval.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Tell Me Everything
By ELIZABETH STROUT
Published by Random House
Talk, talk, talk. The characters in Strout’s latest novel never stop. It is such a pleasure to be in the company of Lucy Barton, Olive Kittredge, Bob Burgess, and others from her previous novels set in small-town Maine. They aren’t exactly gossiping; they are genuinely interested in each other’s lives. Lucy and Olive talk about “unrecorded lives,” Lucy and Bob’s special friendship is particularly tender and a little heartbreaking. These ordinary folks live quiet lives but, when recorded this way, become larger and more interesting. It is an intimate portrait of a people and a place. You feel like you are right alongside them.
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If Only
By VIGDIS HJORTH
Published by VERSO
Translated by Charlotte Barslund
Hjorth’s new novel is a wild ride of extramarital passion between two literary people. As in her volatile Is Mother Dead, the fur flies here as a protracted affair becomes an Albee-like relationship rife with violent fights, endless pleading, alcohol-fueled arguments, and lustful make-up sex. Ida, an editor, and Arnold, a professor and translator of Brecht, meet at a conference and have a night of fumbling love. Later, when she is with her daughter, she wonders, “Can’t you see that I’m transformed?” Letter writing ensues and soon they are leaving their lives and spouses. Look out now.
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Sky Full of Elephants
By CEBO CAMPBELL
Published by SIMON & SCHUSTER
Campbell has imagined a future without white people. A cataclysmic event occured, and America’s white population walked into the nearest body of water and drowned. In this new world order Charlie gets a call from his estranged biracial daughter who has been hiding in Wisconsin, determined to find vestiges of their family down South. A road trip to Alabama commences that will change them both. Is it utopian fiction or dystopian fiction? As Campbell says, “…the trauma doesn’t go away just because the gaze is gone.” It is, in the end, also a family story of a father and daughter, and a daring work of speculative fiction about race in America.
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Quarterlife
By DEVIKA REGE
Published by LIVERIGHT
India, 2014: right-wing Hindu nationalists have come to power in Rege’s fiery first novel—a shocking outcome akin to Trump’s election in 2016. After receiving a master’s degree in the U.S., the author returned to Mumbai to find an electric atmosphere of social protest and struggled to make sense of what it means to be a democratic citizen in the ‘new’ India. As the novel’s characters (a Wall Street consultant returning home, a young idealist from New England, a talent scout drawn into the new political reality, a Muslim woman, and a gay couple, among others) take shape, the novel builds to a climax on the streets of Mumbai.
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Next Stop
By BENJAMIN RESNICK
Published by AVID READER PRESS
Resnick, a New York rabbi, presents an alternative future wherein black holes are gobbling up land. The first disappearance is the entire country of Israel. Ella, a single mother and photojournalist, and Ethan, a freelance tech writer, experience rising antisemitism in America. But while many Jews are fleeing, they have elected to stay put. Resnick posits a frightening future where Jewish people are forced into an area called ‘the Pale.’ It is a brave and troubling novel. Using elements from apocalyptic fiction like Station Eleven, Resnick was influenced by the great Jewish writers and has made use of the legacy of displacement in an extremely chilling read.
