July 5, 2025
What a profusion of good literature with which to spend the July 4th weekend. From a CFF favorite comes a new novel; we also have two stellar story collections (from Turkey and the Upper West Side of Manhattan); a Taiwanese immigrant story with a happy ending; and a queer Irish debut amid a long, hot summer. Their themes recall the famous E. M. Forster line, “only connect.”
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Vera, or Faith
By GARY SHTEYNGART
Published by RANDOM HOUSE
Spend this holiday weekend zipping through Shteyngart’s immensely satisfying latest. He has created an eccentric Manhattan family, writing from the point-of-view of a 10-year-old child. Vera—part Korean, part Jewish—is a shy, nerdy girl who spends most of her time with her AI chessboard. She loves her family (Russian father Igor who runs a failing magazine, a stepbrother, and a Boston Brahmin stepmother she calls Anne Mom), but is yearning to find her biological mother (Mom Mom). With his signature Russian wry (rye?) humor, he has produced a novel that not only captures and satirizes today’s cultural zeitgeist, but creates an entertainingly tender family.
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Long Distance
By AYŞEGÜL SAVAŞ
Published by BLOOMSBURY
As in the Turkish writer’s novel, The Anthropologists, Savaş’s characters uncouple, miss connections, and reunite after absences. In the first two stories, a friend has arrived by plane for a visit. The title story finds Lea managing expectations with a possible lover when Leo flies to Rome to visit. The reader sees their incompatibility before Lea does. Or perhaps there is a future for them? In “Layover,” Lara, single in Paris, reconnects after fifteen years with her Istanbul childhood friend, Selin, who has a long layover in Paris. These and other seemingly modest pieces display Savaş’s great grace and simplicity, as the reader is reeled into her characters’ lives.
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Fools for Love
By HELEN SCHULMAN
Published by KNOPF
Novelist Schulman’s first story collection was published in 1988. Her scintillating wit and colorful upbringing in Manhattan filter through these ten stories by which, in her own words, she gets “her crazy out.” Eccentric marriages, bed-hopping, overlapping characters turning up here and there—the stories often focus on “how hard it is to be a girl.” The title piece is especially fun as the narrator has a realization watching her husband perform in Sam Shepard’s iconic play. There are even echoes of classic American family stories from the likes of John Cheever. Reading these tales makes one want to slip into one of Schulman’s classes at the New School.
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Sunburn
By CHLOE MICHELLE HOWARTH
Published by MELVILLE HOUSE
Howarth’s first novel is a winner and perfect for July reading. It is both a coming-of-age and a coming-out story set during summer in a small, insulated Irish town. Lucy is languid in the endless, hot days but longs for “feeling adult.” “Recently I have really wanted to figure out who I am.” That desire zeroes in on her friendship with Susannah and there the story takes off. Readers will wince at some of the decisions Lucy makes as she attempts to connect in a conservative environment. It is a sweet story of first love with a relatable character who will grab your heart.
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The Satisfaction Café
By KATHY WANG
Published by SCRIBNER
Joan grew up in Taiwan but is now living in 1970s California, studying at Stanford, and trying to stave off loneliness. This is not her beautiful life! A marriage to an academic colleague is a short-lived mistake; a second to an older wealthy architect brings motherhood and creatures comforts. But only later when she opens her Satisfaction Café does she find the cure for the loneliness that has shadowed her life so far. In its own humble way, this is a big novel of an immigrant woman’s whole life, one who is practical and brave, and has never stopped searching for the mere ‘satisfaction’ of human connection.
