August 10, 2024
During this period of heat and humidity, immerse yourself—if not into the cool waters of an ocean, lake, or pool, then into the lives of others. Characters delve into their pasts in this week’s novels. Four authors return, plus an exciting debut from India. Become enthralled by a glamorous but dysfunctional Japanese family; learn how comedy can temper the losses of a war refugee; revel in a stellar collection of short fiction by a rising star in the Brooklyn community; and delight in a reimagining of an ancient Greek myth for our times. There’s a match here for everyone.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Mina’s Matchbox
By YOKO OGAWA
Published by PANTHEON
Translated by Stephen B. Snyder
Ogawa’s new novel (The Memory Police) is a departure from her previous dystopian fiction, but this too is a memory story. Tomoko recounts the time thirty years before (in 1972) when she visited her aunt’s family in their Spanish Colonial mansion in coastal Japan. Their affluence is in contrast with Tomoko’s quiet life with her mother—they even keep a pygmy hippopotamus (see the cover). Tomoko’s cousin Mina is a bookish, asthmatic young girl who keeps matchboxes (“her precious possessions, her talismans”). What Tomoko discovers from her illuminates the extended family’s mysteries and becomes a defining experience of her life. A keen sense of enchantment fills this absorbing coming-of-age tale.
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The Fertile Earth
By RUTHVIKA RAO
Published by FLATIRON BOOKS
“On a cold winter morning in 1970…a row of severed human heads were discovered hanging on pikes in a paddy field in Irumi.” With that Rao begins her tale set in India. A dangerous love story fraught with class divides and political upheaval, the novel follows two families: one, aristocratic landowners with two daughters; the other, a servant woman with two sons. When a forbidden romance begins between the families in the 1950s, the consequences reach far into their futures. This portrait of post-independence India is epic in scope, Shakespearean in its conflicts, and dazzling in its prose. And it is longlisted for our First Novel Prize!
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The Palace of Eros
By CARO DE ROBERTIS
Published by ATRIA BOOKS / PRIMERO SUENO PRESS
De Robertis (Cantoras) revises Greek mythology with an updated twist that resonates today. Here the beautiful Psyche shuns her father’s pressure to secure a husband to appease the gods. She has no interest in the demands of men and rejects all suitors. While tied to a rock in punishment, the deity Eros begins to visit her, and their passion ignites. As Eros says in the book’s opening page, “All of time collapses in the immediacy of desire.” This author is a master of recreating scintillating historical backdrops for their feminist stories of queer love.
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Unspeakable Home
By ISMET PRCIC
Published by AVID READER PRESS
Prcic (Shards), a Bosnian-born Californian, once again demonstrates his gift as an inventive stylist. Our narrator, Izzy, is a refugee from the Bosnian War. He has never been able to reconcile his violent past with a potential future, losing both his marriage and the battle against drink. The story is told in an epistolary structure with soul-searching letters to a comedian named Billy Burr, whom he has never met. It is a “Hail Mary attempt…to be heard.” Izzy’s efforts to heal mirror the author’s own—Prcic was inspired by humor’s ability to “transmute the process of trauma…and alchemize it into something that can be enjoyed.” Readers will be inspired as well.
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Mystery Lights
By LENA VALENCIA
Published by TIN HOUSE
In various American deserts, people lead quiet lives of desperation. Brooklyn writer Valencia brings a subtly sinister ambiance to each of these ten pieces in her first collection. In the title story, a TV campaign in Marfa for a rebooted series goes awry when an influencer among paranormal enthusiasts creates a disturbance. In “You Can Never Be Too Sure,” which could be the title of each of these atmospheric tales, a student stuck at her college dorm over Thanksgiving gets pulled into the (apocryphal?) story of the ‘Trapper’ who haunts the campus stealing women. All merge the everyday with the eerie.
