August 3, 2024
This week you’ll find two books that are timely in their ability to capture the zeitgeist of now. Others use time to tell a story backward and forward to define a moment in history; two feature AI; and a new Salvadoran writer presents a collection of stories from the past to the future.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Villa E
By JANE ALISON
Published by LIVERIGHT
Alison creates a sophisticated fictional portrayal of two titans of modernist design and architecture. By the ’30s Corbusier was already renowned for his simple white buildings, and Gray was successful, but, as a woman, lesser-known. Both look back at their famous rift when Corbusier stayed at E-1027, Gray’s exquisite white house built (in 1929) into the rocks on the Côte d’Azur. The author imagines their regrets, their loves and losses, and Corbusier’s last moments before drowning in his beloved sea in 1965. Alison has created an eloquent novel that brings this art world battle of the sexes into the brilliant blue Mediterranean light.
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Elevator in Sài Gòn
By THUẬN
Published by NEW DIRECTIONS
Translated by Nguyễn An Lý
Thuận’s latest novel, following the acclaimed Chinatown, is a poetic mystery and a political satire set in post-colonial Vietnam. Our thirty-something unnamed protagonist, mother to a mixed-race son, teaches Vietnamese in Paris. She travels back to Saigon for her estranged mother’s funeral, her death caused by a suspicious fall down the elevator shaft in her brother’s luxurious home. Once there she discovers a journal and a photograph of a man named Polotsky who possibly figures in her mother’s early release from prison during the Vietnam War. Thus, the novel (banned in Vietnam) becomes a detective story in the attempt to resolve the ghosts of the past.
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Hum
By HELEN PHILLIPS
Published by MARYSUE RUCCI BOOKS
“The first time she had seen a hum, standing at a bus stop…she had mistaken it for sculpture.” Hums are robots, the alternative to human beings, which have become ubiquitous in a city ravaged by climate change. They can perform medical procedures like the one May is having in order to make herself imperceptible to surveillance. But can she trust a hum to help her family find safety? Phillips (The Need) once again writes with compassion about motherhood. Her imagined future is a scary one, with equal fears of ‘big brother’-style surveillance, tech, and ecological disasters. In her capable hands this speculative story will have deep resonance for readers today.
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There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven
By RUBEN REYES JR.
Published by MARINER BOOKS
These stories introduce a vibrant new voice in Latinx lit. Reyes, who has a novel in the works, is the son of Salvadoran immigrants and his stories reference their culture. In “He Eats His Own,” Neto passes his obsessive passion for mangoes along to his young cousin who comes to live with him after the death of his mother. In “Try Again,” a young man spends his inheritance from his recently deceased father, a poet, on a robot created from a piece of his father’s brain. “They figured out how to reanimate brain cells and coupled them with AI software.” These stories are exuberant—heartfelt as well as heartbreaking. Limited signed copies available.
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Five-Star Stranger
By KAT TANG
Published by SCRIBNER
What a smart, opportune debut. Tang’s clever plot features a man in NYC who has built a business out of the proverbial ‘man Friday’ concept—a personal assistant for anyone who needs anything. Our protagonist is a rent-a-stranger who, among numerous disparate assignments like fiancé and funeral mourner, has posed as an often-absent father to a young girl for seven years—picking her up from school, etc. He’s a charming chameleon able to inhabit personas like a good supporting actor. Is his job morally questionable? When someone gets suspicious, the well-intentioned entrepreneurial idea is in danger of falling apart. Stay tuned. You’ll find this absurdist comedy irresistible.
