June 7, 2025
This week we celebrate Pride month with an impressive debut that captures NYC nightlife; a masterful love story set in Malaysia; and a first fiction about desire and found families. We also feature a Ukrainian-born prize-winning writer’s historical novel; and a displaced Romanian writer who, after a circuitous path, lived much of her life in Australia. Cue the parade.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Great Black Hope
By ROB FRANKLIN
Published by SUMMIT BOOKS
Smith is a post-grad, gay Black man from a privileged Atlanta family whose world comes to a standstill when his glamorous roommate, Ella, turns up dead. He is then arrested for possession of cocaine. His decadent lifestyle in New York City’s underbelly is one of drugs, drinks, and endless parties. But real life has shocked him out of complacency, and he must prove to the authorities that he can stay sober, and discover who murdered Ella. It’s an updated version of McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, where the journey through the haze of self-medication leads back into the light.
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There Are Reasons for This
By NINA BERNDT
Published by TIN HOUSE
Berndt’s arresting debut will draw you in from the beginning. When Lucy comes to Colorado to see her dying brother, she is sadly too late and so moves—surreptitiously—into the building where his lover Helen lives. This book has everything: climate change, dystopia, queer desire. Disaster looms at every turn as Lucy and Helen begin to depend on each other to process the loss of Mikey. The author said in an interview, “It isn’t a replacement, but for both of them, using the other to access this lost part of themselves, this part that might have died with Mikey, is essential, a way to move forward.”
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Glorious People
By SASHA SALZMANN
Published by PUSHKIN PRESS
Translated by Imogen Taylor
Salzmann had been a playwright for half of their life before turning to prose. Born in Russia, they now live and work in Germany. “Where I come from is easy for me to answer: I come from theater and books. They raised me.” Salzmann’s second novel comes from the many interviews they conducted with women from the East of Ukraine. The book is set from the ’70s to the ’90s, depicting the fall of the Soviet Union through two families. Lena, Tatjana, their daughters, their useless husbands, the corruption, and hardships that narrow their life choices all inform the decision to emigrate to Germany. It is an affecting novel, with a nod to Chekhov.
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The South
By TASH AW
Published by FSG
Aw (Five Star Billionaire) says he set out to write an epic but instead decided to explore one family in a tetralogy. In the introductory novel, the Lims leave their northern city for the ramshackle family farm in southern Malaysia following the grandfather’s death. Teenage Jay is less interested in adapting to this new life than he is in pursuing his feelings for Chuan, the farmer’s son. The novel hews close to Aw’s own experiences: “I’m trying to recreate how I understood life at that point, and the answer is that I didn’t.” It is a beautifully written coming-of-age story that shimmers with the authenticity of a family under the strain of secrets.
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The Island
By ANTIGONE KEFALA
Published by TRANSIT BOOKS
Kefala was born in Romania of Greek heritage and eventually came to Sydney in the ’60s. Previously a poet, she turned to fiction there. On the Island (the island referred to in the title is never identified), Melina is a spectator of life. She has come to this place, “full of longing for unknown things,” among the “transplanted people who talked constantly of the past.” The book is not big on plot, but the prose is well worth the reading as Melina lives and works among the exiles she observes, delving deeply into questions of ‘home.’ Kefala died in 2022 after finally getting recognition for her writing very late in her career. This is a fine (re)discovery.
