It’s been an interesting reading year—not as many high highs and low lows as in years past, but surprisingly steady, given how terrible this year has been otherwise. So let’s go through and talk about some of my most disappointing* books of the year.
*word choice is deliberate. These are not necessarily worthy of making a ‘worst of year’ list, but these are all books that I had high expectations for, but which fell flat.
8. Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
I tend to not love books that focus on mother/daughter relationships, so at the end of the day I accept that I just wasn’t the right reader for this book. But for some reason, perhaps because I’d heard so many times that this book was both dark and thematically rich, I still thought I might enjoy it. And I kind of did, at first—I just found this protagonist so deliberately antagonistic toward the reader that I just found myself shutting down, the more and more I read.
7. Kink, edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell
I gave this 3 stars at the time, which in hindsight feels overly generous, because looking back, my feelings are overwhelmingly negative. With the exception of Brandon Taylor, Carmen Maria Machado, and Larissa Pham’s stories, this collection just never delivered on its promise to break new ground and explore a variety of kinks through a literary lens. Cue story after forgettable story about BDSM—it got stale fast. I was just hoping that it would explore a more diverse range of kinks and make me think differently about erotica, but most of these stories ended up feeling like dollar store versions of much better sexy literary novels I’ve read.
6. Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone
This book almost didn’t make this list because it was forgettable to such a degree that I can’t even bring myself to be angry or upset about it. Mirrorland who? But the fact of the matter was that I had been looking forward to this book for over a year and it sucked, so, here we are. Purported to be both a thriller about identical twins and a commentary on childhood trauma, Mirrorland succeeds at neither objective—it fails to thrill and it fails to go deeper than surface level in its examination of abuse.
5. The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
I’m actually annoyed at the marketing on this book, because usually I can tell with one glance at the cover whether a thriller is going to be more psychological, or more of a silly domestic drama. I had pegged this book as the former (look at the UK cover!!! come on!!), but that assumption proved incorrect. The Hunting Party is about a group of friends on vacation at a remote hunting lodge in a snowstorm: one of them naturally turns up dead. Brilliant premise, abysmal execution. If you care deeply about which of these characters have had sexual fantasies about each other, and are concerned with whose marriage will survive this holiday from hell, by all means, go ahead and read this; otherwise skip. This was just a silly melodrama dressed up as a mystery.
4. Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
The worst thing about this book is how much I liked it at first. I think Yoder is an accomplished, interesting writer on a stylistic level, and despite my antipathy toward ‘motherhood books,’ I actually found her commentary on the subject incisive enough that I was really on board to see where this was going to go. Unfortunately, the answer was pretty much ‘nowhere.’ This ended up recycling the same ideas over and over for several hundred pages, which annoyed me to no end as I thought this could have made for a brilliant short story.
3. How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
It wouldn’t be a ‘most disappointing’ list without at least one Women’s Prize shortlister. I was actually really looking forward to this one, but nothing about it worked for me. I hated the writing style, I admired the potent social commentary but thought that the attempts to weave it into the narrative were clumsy at best; and it was so relentlessly bleak—without even the briefest moment of respite—that I never fully believed these characters or their stories, as they just felt like a vehicle for exploring trauma.
2. Emma by Jane Austen
I’m not going to sit here and try to convince anyone that Emma is a bad or unsuccessful novel; but my god, did I hate reading it. With nothing of more consequence than ‘will the poor little rich girl learn her lesson’ at stake, I just found this so tedious and unpleasant to spend time with. For me, this is solidly Austen’s least interesting work, and the one that I most struggle to find anything redemptive about.
1. Madam by Phoebe Wynne
It’s not always the case that a single book earns both the ‘worst’ and ‘most disappointing’ titles, but this year, Madam sure does. In fact, this is probably the worst book I’ve read in several years. Set in a fictional Scottish boarding school in the 1990s (written as though it were the 1890s), Madam is… an attempt at a subversive feminist campus novel thriller, and while I can only laud its aims, it satirizes the institution’s conservative ideology to such an extreme degree that the novel’s villains may as well be twirling their mustaches the entire time. Abuse is reduced to a cartoonish pantomime in this book. And beyond that—everything about this novel is clumsy, racist, amateurish, poorly written, and just laughably absurd. I was actually shocked by how objectively terrible this was on… every conceivable level.
Happy end of 2021! I’ll try to get my best books of the year post up tomorrow. In the meantime, what was the worst or most disappointing book you read this year?
In addition to Agatha Christie, my other recent obsession has been Tana French. As a self-proclaimed lover of thrillers and Irish lit, it’s been a source of shame for a great while that I’ve never read any Tana French, so I finally decided to rectify that, tearing through the first three books in her Dublin Murder Squad series in under a month. I’m currently on a French hiatus in order to catch up with some of my other reading, but I intend to pick up where I left off in early 2022.
IN THE WOODS by Tana French Dublin Murder Squad #1 ★★★★☆ Penguin Books, 2007
Each book in this series follows a different detective on the (entirely fictional) Dublin Murder Squad, and the series begins with Rob Ryan, who has memory loss around a traumatic event from his childhood, where he went out with his two best friends in the woods, and was the only one to come home. Twenty years later, Rob’s friends have never been found, and he’s working as a detective (a career choice that he insists is entirely unrelated), currently on a case involving a dead teenage girl who was found in the same Dublin suburb where Rob grew up.
The thing I’ve heard praised about French the most often is her writing, and I wasn’t disappointed. It’s difficult to find thrillers that hit that sweet spot of propulsive/entertaining while actually displaying genuine literary skill, and I couldn’t be happier with how French manages to walk that fine line. Her mysteries are well-crafted and her books have that can’t-put-it-down factor, but the thing that really stands out about them is her brilliant character work and her deft hand at depicting the dark, fragile corners of human nature.
I only had two complaints while I was reading this, the first of which actually resolved itself—for a while, I found the depiction of Rob and Cassie’s friendship a bit tiresome; I felt like French would often go the extra mile to hammer the reader over the head with how special the bond between them was… but then by the end of the book I was stupidly invested in their relationship so I suppose Tana knew what she was doing there. The other thing is that French has this one habit that bothers me, where her narrators often turn to the reader and say something along the lines of “I know what you’re thinking”/”I know you must be wondering”/”I know how this sounds,” etc, and I find that whatever they’re next about to say rarely lines up with what I am actually thinking, leaving me with the vague sensation that they’re talking to someone over my shoulder rather than me. This is a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things but it did irritate me often enough to mention.
Anyway, I thought this book was fantastic, and while each book in this series can absolutely be read as a standalone, if you’re interested in getting into Tana French I do think this is a really good place to start. Without getting into spoilers, there’s a certain detail about the ending, about the way this book resolves itself, that I know a lot of people find objectionable to the point of being a dealbreaker. I actually knew this detail ahead of time, so I actually wasn’t fazed by it—but I like to think that if I hadn’t known, I’m not the sort of reader who would be too bothered by something like that. Anyway, just a warning that you may not find this book as satisfactory as you hoped—but I still really think it’s worth reading in spite of that.
THE LIKENESS by Tana French Dublin Murder Squad #2 ★★★★★ Penguin Books, 2008
My favorite in this series so far, by a mile. Let’s get the absurd premise out of the way: before working on the Murder Squad, Cassie used to be an undercover agent, and in one of her old cases, she went by the alias Lexie Madison. Cut to the present: a dead body shows up, and the victim is not only identical to Cassie, but she had Lexie Madison’s ID on her when she died. In order to investigate the case, Cassie is sent back undercover, posing as Lexie and living with Lexie’s housemates, a group of university students.
Like I said, it’s absurd. But that’s okay. Fiction is fiction for a reason. What I actually found mildly irritating toward the beginning was just how much time was spent on French trying to justify this premise to the reader, by means of Cassie trying to justify her decision to take this ridiculous case to herself and to anyone else who would listen. Nothing about this is realistic and we could have all saved ourselves 100 pages if everyone just accepted that from the start.
That said, I really adored this book. With traces of The Secret History, The Likeness depicts with aplomb the insularity of academic and the fiercely obsessive quality of close friendship. Once Cassie gets into the house, this book—unlike Cassie—never takes a false step. The characters are all brilliantly rendered on their own, but as a group, their dynamic sings in a way that I find it particularly challenging for authors to capture in an organic, convincing way.
This book is just fun and indulgent and moving and sad, and it keeps you guessing from start to finish. I had the best time reading this.
FAITHFUL PLACE by Tana French Dublin Murder Squad #3 ★★★☆☆ Penguin Books, 2010
Faithful Place is the first book in this series to follow a detective who isn’t working on the novel’s central case. It follows Frank Mackey, an undercover agent who gets a call from his younger sister—the only person he still speaks to from his poor, inner city Dublin family that he cut out of his life decades ago. A suitcase has been discovered, which belongs to Rosie Daly, the girl Frank had been in love with as a teenager. The two were planning on running off to England together, but Rosie never showed up that night, and Frank found a note from her which made it sound like she was going off on her own. He had never spoken to her again, assuming she had made her own way to England—but the discovery of her suitcase overturns his assumption that she had managed to make it out at all.
What I liked about this book is what I like about all of French’s books: solid mystery, distinct character voice (I’d actually describe French’s writing style as less “lyrical” in this book than in the first two in this series—which suited Frank to a T), the ability to get to the heart of her characters and connect the reader to what drives them.
What I disliked about this book was everything else. This book was overwhelmingly domestic, to a degree that was just never going to work to my personal taste. The biggest thing at stake here is Frank’s personal relationships: with his daughter, with his ex-wife, and with his estranged family. Any time I see the words marriage, divorce, parenthood, etc., in a thriller summary, I click swiftly away, so this is the sort of thing I never would have picked up if it hadn’t been a part of this series, and I can’t exactly fault a book for not being everything I personally wished it would be.
That said, I do think this is a notably weaker offering than the first two books in this series. Frank’s belligerence gets tiresome very quickly, and all of the conflicts in this book get very repetitive. I also found the whole setup very stereotypical: poor Irish family has too many kids and an alcoholic, abusive father—shocking! (I know French herself is Irish, and I don’t mean to imply that the family dynamic was handled insensitively—just that I thought there were opportunities for a fresher dynamic that French could have taken but did not.) I definitely didn’t mind reading this, but I’m hoping for more exciting things from the three remaining titles in this series I still have to read.
I’ve been on a bit of an Agatha Christie kick lately—in spite of the fact that I always love her books, I realized recently that I had gone a couple of years without picking one up, and wanted to quickly remedy that. Friends Callumand Jess decided to join me for a buddy read, and we opted for Death on the Nile, in an effort to beat the spoilers from the film coming out soon. So we started there, and then just… haven’t put her books down since. Here are my reviews of the three that I’ve read in the past couple of months:
DEATH ON THE NILE (Hercule Poirot #17) ★★★★☆ originally published 1937 William Morrow
Though I ultimately enjoyed this book, it was oddly underwhelming in places. For one, I didn’t think there was anything particularly interesting or evocative about the setting, which I had assumed was going to be one of the book’s strongest assets, and for another, this marks the first Agatha Christie I’ve read where I actually guessed the ending pretty early in, so this one went out with more of a whimper than a bang.
That said, Christie sunk her claws into me with this one. This is the first of her novels that I’ve read in a couple of years, and I was reminded of what’s so special about her. Her character work is thoroughly unmatched within this genre, and even when the ending doesn’t bowl you over, there’s something inarguably suspenseful and propulsive about each of her books. Death on the Nile isn’t a new favorite, but I’m glad to have read it when I did.
ENDLESS NIGHT ★★★★★ originally published 1967 William Morrow
To say I was enamored with this book is an understatement. If you haven’t read much Christie, I wouldn’t recommend this as a place to start, as it feels somewhat distinct from everything else that I’ve read by her, and I don’t think it gives the most accurate indication of her usual style. That said, this quickly skyrocketed to my favorite of her works, overtaking And Then There Were None, which is high praise in itself.
This book is a slow burn; more character-driven than mystery-driven. In fact, you don’t even know what the mystery is for about half the novel. Endless Night follows young couple Michael and Ellie—a working man and a rich socialite who fall in love in spite of protestations by Ellie’s family—who are determined to buy a piece of land in a remote village and build a house there. Michael Rogers is possibly my all-time favorite Christie protagonist: he’s an insufferably pretentious young man with delusions of grandeur, but his voice is so convincing and engaging, and there’s something so authentically insecure at the heart of his character, that he pretty much embodies that type of character that you love to hate or hate to love.
Despite its slow beginning, I couldn’t put this book down from the very first page. What Endless Night lacks in plot it makes up for in its sinister, Gothic setting, its genius foreshadowing, its expert characterization, and its subtle integration of the supernatural. This isn’t going to be for everyone; specifically, this isn’t for the reader who needs their mysteries to be chock-full of twists and turns, but if you’re a Christie fan, this is a brilliant hidden gem that you need to check out asap. The problem with mysteries (at least for me) is that once you know the reveal there isn’t a whole lot of motivation to ever go back and reread the book, good as it may have been, but I know this is one that I’m going to want to revisit again and again. I loved it so, so much.
THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES (Hercule Poirot #1) ★★★☆☆ originally published 1921 William Morrow
I was so looking forward to reading Christie’s first novel: was she a literary genius from day one, or was her debut noticeably weaker than her later works? The answer, as it so often is, is somewhere in the middle. It was almost charming to note the ways in which Christie grew after The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but some of her trademark skill was present in this book as well. What she did so well here—what she always does well—is Poirot’s slow, deliberate discovery and analysis of seemingly insignificant clues, where he’s always a step ahead of the reader, but to a stimulating rather than maddening degree. Where this failed for me was in its downright clumsy exposition and noticeably weak character work, especially regarding the narrator, Hastings, and his friendship with Poirot. Still, this was an enjoyable read, and she had me totally fooled with that twist.
I know I’ve been a sporadic blogger this year, at best, but this is always my favorite post to write, so let’s get into it! As of today I have read 16/38 of my Anticipated 2021 Releases — not an amazing ratio, but given the year I’ve had, I’m not unhappy with it. I’ve actually been distancing myself from new releases in recent months so I thought this post might end up shorter than usual, but we somehow wound up with a whopping 40+, so, there’s no time to waste…
These are in chronological order and all publishers/pub dates are US unless otherwise indicated. Blurbs are taken from Goodreads or publisher websites.
The Latinist by Mark Prins January 4 Norton
Tessa Templeton has thrived at Oxford University under the tutelage and praise of esteemed classics professor Christopher Eccles. And now, his support is the one thing she can rely on: her job search has yielded nothing, and her devotion to her work has just cost her her boyfriend, Ben. Yet shortly before her thesis defense, Tessa learns that Chris has sabotaged her career—and realizes their relationship is not at all what she believed.
Driven by what he mistakes as love for Tessa, Chris has ensured that no other institution will offer her a position, keeping her at Oxford with him. His tactics grow more invasive as he determines to prove he has her best interests at heart. Meanwhile, Tessa scrambles to undo the damage—and in the process makes a startling discovery about an obscure second-century Latin poet that could launch her into academic stardom, finally freeing her from Chris’s influence.
A contemporary reimagining of the Daphne and Apollo myth, The Latinist is a page-turning exploration of power, ambition, and the intertwining of love and obsession.
You know I’m always up for a Greek myth retelling and I love the academic setting here; this sounds like it could be very up my alley. Though — not to start off this post on a hesitant note — I’m a little nervous about this premise in the hands of a male author, but I’m definitely willing to give this a try.
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara January 11 Doubleday
In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him—and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances.
These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can’t exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness.
Like any self-respecting A Little Life stan, this is obviously one of my most anticipated releases of the year.
The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang February 1 Norton
The residents of Haven, Wisconsin, have dined on the Fine Chao Restaurant’s delicious Americanized Chinese food for thirty-five years, happy to ignore any unsavory whispers about the family owners. But when brash, charismatic, and tyrannical patriarch Leo Chao is found dead—presumed murdered—his sons discover that they’ve drawn the exacting gaze of the entire town.
The ensuing trial brings to light potential motives for all three brothers: Dagou, the restaurant’s reckless head chef; Ming, financially successful but personally tortured; and the youngest, gentle but lost college student James. Brimming with heartbreak, comedy, and suspense, The Family Chao offers a kaleidoscopic, highly entertaining portrait of a Chinese American family grappling with the dark undercurrents of a seemingly pleasant small town.
This sounds sort of reminiscent of Number One Chinese Restaurant which unfortunately was a bit of a flop for me, but I did love that premise so I’m eager to try something similar. This looks like it’s being marketed as a thriller as well, or at least some kind of upmarket literary/thriller blend, which has my name written all over it.
Devotion by Hannah Kent February 3 Pan Macmillan (UK)
1836, Prussia. Hanne is nearly fifteen and the domestic world of womanhood is quickly closing in on her. A child of nature, she yearns instead for the rush of the river, the wind dancing around her. Hanne finds little comfort in the local girls and friendship doesn’t come easily, until she meets Thea and she finds in her a kindred spirit and finally, acceptance.
Hanne’s family are Old Lutherans, and in her small village hushed worship is done secretly – this is a community under threat. But when they are granted safe passage to Australia, the community rejoices: at last a place they can pray without fear, a permanent home. Freedom.
It’s a promise of freedom that will have devastating consequences for Hanne and Thea, but, on that long and brutal journey, their bond proves too strong for even nature to break . . .
I’ve actually still never read anything by Kent aside from Burial Rites, but as that remains one of my all-time favorite books, I’m really eager to start reading more by her, and I love the sound of this.
Yerba Buena by Nina LaCour February 8 Flatiron Books
When Sara Foster runs away from home at sixteen, she leaves behind not only the losses that have shattered her world but the girl she once was, capable of trust and intimacy. Years later, in Los Angeles, she is a sought-after bartender, renowned as much for her brilliant cocktails as for the mystery that clings to her. Across the city, Emilie Dubois is in a holding pattern. In her seventh year and fifth major as an undergraduate, she yearns for the beauty and community her Creole grandparents cultivated but is unable to commit. On a whim, she takes a job arranging flowers at the glamorous restaurant Yerba Buena and embarks on an affair with the married owner.
When Sara catches sight of Emilie one morning at Yerba Buena, their connection is immediate. But the damage both women carry, and the choices they have made, pulls them apart again and again. When Sara’s old life catches up to her, upending everything she thought she wanted just as Emilie has finally gained her own sense of purpose, they must decide if their love is more powerful than their pasts.
I really enjoyed LaCour’s We Are Okay and I’m looking forward to her first adult novel.
Blood Feast by Malika Moustadraf translated by Alice Guthrie February 8 Feminist Press
Malika Moustadraf (1969-2006) is a cult feminist icon in contemporary Moroccan literature, celebrated for her uncompromising, troubling depiction of life on the margins, as well as her stark interrogation of gender and sexuality in North Africa.
Blood Feast is the complete collection of Moustadraf’s short fiction: haunting, visceral stories by a master of the genre. A woman is groped during her suffocating commute; a teenage girl suffers through a dystopian rite of passage; two mothers scheme about how to ensure their daughters pass a virginity test. And the collection’s titular story paints a grim picture of dialysis patients in Casablanca–Moustadraf ultimately died of kidney disease at age thirty-seven, denied access to basic healthcare that could have saved her life.
Through brilliantly executed twists and rich slang, she takes an unflinching look at the female body, abuse and harassment, and double standards around desire. Blood Feast is a sharp provocation to patriarchal power, and a celebration of the life and genius of one of Morocco’s preeminent writers.
I’d actually never heard of this author but I love the sound of this short story collection and I’m eager to give her a try, especially as I don’t think I’ve read any Moroccan literature.
Don’t Look At Me Like That by Diana Athill February 8 NYRB
In England half a century ago, well-brought-up young women are meant to aspire to the respectable life. Some things are not to be spoken of; some are most certainly not to be done. There are rules, conventions. Meg Bailey obeys them. She progresses from Home Counties school to un-Bohemian art college with few outward signs of passion or frustration. Her personality is submerged in polite routines; even with her best friend, Roxane, what can’t be said looms far larger than what can.
But circumstances change. Meg gets a job and moves to London. Roxane gets married to a man picked out by her mother. And then Meg does something shocking – shocking not only by the standards of her time, but by our own.
I always try to read a couple of new NYRB releases every year, and this one really caught my eye. I’ve never read anything by Athill but this sounds like it could be great.
Nightshift by Kiare Ladner February 8 Custom House
When twenty-three-year-old Meggie meets her distant and enigmatic new coworker Sabine, she recognizes in her the person she would like to be. Meggie is immediately drawn to worldly, beautiful, and uninhibited Sabine; and when Sabine announces she’s switching to the nightshift, Meggie impulsively decides to follow her. Giving up her daytime existence, her reliable boyfriend, and the trappings of a normal life, Meggie finds a liberating sense of freedom as she indulges her growing preoccupation with Sabine and plunges into another existence, immersing herself in the transient and uncertain world of the nightshift worker.
While the city sleeps, she passes the hours at work clipping crime stories from the next day’s newspapers. The liminal hours between night and day are spent haunting deserted bars and nightclubs with her eclectic coworkers and going on increasingly wild adventures with Sabine. Yet the closer she gets to Sabine, the more Sabine seems to push her away, leaving Meggie desperately trying to hold on to their intense friendship while doubting if she truly knows her friend at all.
A fresh twist on the coming of age story and a dark love letter to city life, Nightshift explores the thin line between self-invention and self-destruction, as Meggie’s sleep deprivation, drinking, and fixation with Sabine gain a momentum all their own. Vividly set in late-nineties London and framed by Meggie’s present-day reflections, Nightshift is a captivating and moving debut that asks profound questions about who we are and if we can truly escape ourselves.
Would it even be a list by me if there weren’t a few disaster women titles in here? I love books that explore obsession as a theme, so, yes yes yes.
Parallel Hells by Leon Craig February 17 Sceptre (UK)
In this deliciously strange debut collection, Leon Craig draws on folklore and gothic horror in refreshingly inventive ways to explore queer identity, love, power and the complicated nature of being human.
Some say that hell is other people and some say hell is loneliness . . .
In the thirteen darkly audacious stories of Parallel Hells we meet a golem, made of clay, learning that its powers far exceed its Creator’s expectations; a ruined mansion which grants the secret wishes of a group of revelers and a notorious murderer who discovers her Viking husband is not what he seems.
Asta is an ancient being who feasts on the shame of contemporary Londoners, who now, beyond anything, wishes only to fit in with a group of friends they will long outlive. An Oxford historian, in bitter competition with the rest of her faculty members, discovers an ancient tome whose sinister contents might solve her problems. Livia orchestrates a Satanic mass to distract herself from a recently remembered trauma and two lovers must resolve their differences in order to defy a lethal curse.
Kirsty Logan describes this as the “queer horror book of your dreams,” so this definitely sounds like a must-read.
The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews February 17 Raven Books
Norfolk, 1643. With civil war tearing England apart, reluctant soldier Thomas Treadwater is summoned home by his sister, who accuses a new servant of improper conduct with their widowed father. By the time Thomas returns home, his father is insensible, felled by a stroke, and their new servant is in prison, facing charges of witchcraft.
Thomas prides himself on being a rational, modern man, but as he unravels the mystery of what has happened, he uncovers not a tale of superstition but something dark and ancient, linked to a shipwreck years before.
First off, this is hands down my least favorite cover in this post, and I’m not sure why they had to do a book with such a good summary that dirty. But that aside, really looking forward to this one — historical mysteries are always right up my alley.
The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley February 22 William Morrow
Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better from Paris. Only when she shows up – to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? – he’s not there.
The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess starts to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbors are an eclectic bunch, and not particularly friendly. Jess may have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s starting to look like it’s Ben’s future that’s in question.
I have to be honest: this is probably the book on here that I’m approaching with the least amount of good faith, because I hated Foley’s The Hunting Party, but what can I say, I’m intrigued by the premise and like a relatively mindless thriller every now and then, so I find it very likely that I end up picking this up. Hoping it exceeds expectations, though.
The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton March 8 Simon & Schuster
When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic “prep school prophet” (and St. Dunstan’s alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school’s chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herself—and from the members of the choir.
Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Webster’s novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia’s hold on the “family” she has created, and Virginia’s efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go.
I adored Burton’s Social Creature and have been eagerly awaiting her followup. This sounds like it has the potential to be near-perfect. I already have an ARC of this so it’s definitely going to be one of my first reads off this list.
Panpocalypse by Carley Moore March 8 Feminist Press
In COVID pandemic-era New York City, Orpheus manages to buy a bicycle just before they sell out across the city. She takes to the streets looking for Eurydice, the first woman she fell in love with, who also broke her heart. The city is largely closed and on lockdown, devoid of touch, connection, and community. But Orpheus hears of a mysterious underground bar Le Monocle, fashioned after the lesbian club of the same name in 1930s Paris.
Will Orpheus be able to find it? Will she ever be allowed to love again? Panpocalypse—first published as an online serial in spring of 2020—follows a lonely, disabled, poly hero in this novel about disease, decay, love, and revolution.
Have you guys started reading books about COVID yet? I have not, so this has the potential to be my first. Not sure how I feel about that yet but something about this premise makes me really excited to give it a try.
The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James March 15 Berkley
In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect–a rich, eccentric twenty-three-year-old woman, seen fleeing one of the crimes. But she was acquitted, and she retreated to the isolation of her mansion.
Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist, but by night, she runs a true crime website, the Book of Cold Cases–a passion fueled by the attempted abduction she escaped as a child. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea’s surprise, Beth says yes.
They meet regularly at Beth’s mansion, though Shea is never comfortable there. Items move when she’s not looking, and she could swear she’s seen a girl outside the window. The allure of learning the truth about the case from the smart, charming Beth is too much to resist, but even as they grow closer, Shea senses something isn’t right. Is she making friends with a manipulative murderer, or are there other dangers lurking in the darkness of the Greer house?
St. James’s The Broken Girls was brilliant and I’ve been meaning to read more by her, and this sounds great.
Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou March 22 Penguin Press
29-year-old PhD student Ingrid Yang is desperate to finish her dissertation on the late canonical poet, Xiao-Wen Chou, and never read about “Chinese-y” things again. But after four years of painstaking research, she has nothing but anxiety and stomach pain to show for her efforts. When she accidentally stumbles upon a strange and curious note in the Chou archives, she convinces herself it’s her ticket out of academic hell.
But Ingrid’s in much deeper than she thinks. Her clumsy exploits to unravel the note’s message lead to an explosive discovery, one that upends her entire life and the lives of those around her. With her trusty friend Eunice Kim by her side and her rival Vivian Vo hot on her tail, together they set off a rollercoaster of mishaps and misadventures, from campus protests and OTC drug hallucinations, to book burnings and a movement that stinks of “Yellow Peril” propaganda.
In the aftermath, nothing looks quite the same to Ingrid—including her gentle and doting fiancé, Stephen Greene. When he embarks on a book tour with the “super kawaii” Japanese author he’s translated, doubts and insecurities creep in. At the same time, she finds herself drawn to the cool and aloof Alex Kim (even though she swears he’s not her type). As the events Ingrid instigated keep spiraling, she’ll have to confront her sticky relationship to white men and white institutions—and most of all, herself.
I’m really drawn to this book in spite of hardly being able to follow the summary — so, we’ll see! Really love this cover as well.
Portrait of an Unknown Lady by María Gainza translated by Thomas Bunstead March 22 Catapult
In the Buenos Aires art world, a master forger has achieved legendary status. Rumored to be a woman, she seems especially gifted at forging canvases by the painter Mariette Lydis, a portraitist of Argentine high society. But who is this absurdly gifted creator of counterfeits? What motivates her? And what is her link to the community of artists who congregate, night after night, in a strange establishment called the Hotel Melancólico?
On the trail of this mysterious forger is our narrator, an art critic and auction house employee through whose hands counterfeit works have passed. As she begins to take on the role of art-world detective, adopting her own methods of deception and manipulation, she warns us “not to proceed in expectation of names, numbers or dates . . . My techniques are those of the impressionist.”
Driven by obsession and full of subtle surprise, Portrait of an Unknown Lady is a highly seductive and enveloping meditation on what we mean by “authenticity” in art, and a captivating exploration of the gap between what is lived and what is told.
Speaking of great covers. Gainza’s Optic Nerve wasn’t my favorite — and was actually part of my own personal awakening about how much I dislike autofiction — but I had really enjoyed certain aspects of it, I’m obsessed with art history, and I’d love to read something a bit more plot-heavy by Gainza, so I definitely intend to give this one a try.
Voting Day by Clare O’Dea April 1 Fairlight Books
In February 1959, Switzerland held a referendum on women’s suffrage. The men voted ‘no’.
In this powerful novella, Clare O’Dea explores that day through the eyes of four very different Swiss women. Vreni is a busy farmer’s wife, longing for a break from family life. Her grown-up daughter Margrit is carving out an independent life in Bern, but finds herself trapped in an alarming situation. Esther, a cleaner, is desperate to recover her son who has been taken into care. Beatrice, a hospital administrator, has been throwing herself into the ‘yes’ campaign. The four women’s paths intersect on a day that will leave its mark on all their lives.
I love these short offerings by Fairlight and this one grabbed my attention — love the sound of the summary and it’s Irish, so.
True Biz by Sara Nović April 5 Random House
True biz? The students at the River Valley School for the Deaf just want to hook up, pass their history final, and have doctors, politicians, and their parents stop telling them what to do with their bodies. This revelatory novel plunges readers into the halls of a residential school for the deaf, where they’ll meet Charlie, a rebellious transfer student who’s never met another deaf person before; Austin, the school’s golden boy, whose world is rocked when his baby sister is born hearing; and February, the headmistress, who is fighting to keep her school open and her marriage intact, but might not be able to do both. As a series of crises both personal and political threaten to unravel each of them, Charlie, Austin, and February find their lives inextricable from one another–and changed forever.
This is a story of sign language and lip-reading, cochlear implants and civil rights, isolation and injustice, first love and loss, and, above all, great persistence, daring, and joy. Absorbing and assured, idiosyncratic and relatable, this is an unforgettable journey into the Deaf community and a universal celebration of human connection.
I haven’t read anything from Nović yet but this seems like it could be brilliant.
Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li April 5 Dutton
History is told by the conquerors. Across the Western world, museums display the spoils of war, of conquest, of colonialism: priceless pieces of art looted from other countries, kept even now.
Will Chen plans to steal them back.
A senior at Harvard, Will fits comfortably in his carefully curated roles: a perfect student, an art history major and sometimes artist, the eldest son that has always been his parents’ American Dream. But when a shadowy Chinese corporation reaches out with an impossible—and illegal—job offer, Will finds himself something else as well: the leader of a heist to steal back five priceless Chinese sculptures, looted from Beijing centuries ago.
His crew is every heist archetype one can imagine—or at least, the closest he can get. A conman: Irene Chen, Will’s sister and a public policy major at Duke, who can talk her way out of anything. A thief: Daniel Liang, a premed student with steady hands just as capable of lockpicking as suturing. A getaway driver: Lily Wu, an engineering student who races cars in her free time. A hacker: Alex Huang, an MIT dropout turned Silicon Valley software engineer. Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.
Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.
I like a good heist story but dislike that so many of them are in the fantasy genre (just as a matter of personal preference), so this sounds like it could be perfect for me.
If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga April 5 Graywolf Press
In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobrakheit meet at a café in Cairo. He was a photographer of the revolution, but now finds himself unemployed and addicted to cocaine, living in a rooftop shack. She is a nostalgic daughter of immigrants “returning” to a country she’s never been to before, teaching English and living in a light-filled flat with balconies on all sides. They fall in love and he moves in. But soon their desire—for one another, for the selves they want to become through the other—takes a violent turn that neither of them expected.
A dark romance exposing the gaps in American identity politics, especially when exported overseas, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is at once ravishing and wry, scathing and tender. Told in alternating perspectives, Noor Naga’s experimental debut examines the ethics of fetishizing the homeland and punishing the beloved . . . and vice versa. In our globalized twenty-first-century world, what are the new faces (and races) of empire? When the revolution fails, how long can someone survive the disappointment? Who suffers and, more crucially, who gets to tell about it?
First off, amazing cover. Second, this sounds fantastic and I need to read more Egyptian fiction.
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart April 5 Grove Press
Born under different stars, Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in the hyper-masculine and violently sectarian world of Glasgow’s housing estates. They should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all, and yet they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they find themselves falling in love, they dream of escaping the grey city, and Mungo works especially hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his elder brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold.
But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable. When Mungo’s mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.
I’m actually the last person on the planet who has yet to read Shuggie Bain, which is especially silly given how likely it seems that I will thoroughly enjoy that novel, so I suppose the inclusion of Young Mungo on here is a bit premature, as I do intend to read Shuggie Bain first. I really like the sound of both novels though so I’m hoping I do enjoy them.
None of This is Serious by Catherine Prasifka April 7 Canongate (UK)
Dublin student life is ending for Sophie and her friends. They’ve got everything figured out, and Sophie feels left behind as they all start to go their separate ways. She’s overshadowed by her best friend Grace. She’s been in love with Finn for as long as she’s known him. And she’s about to meet Rory, who’s suddenly available to her online.
At a party, what was already unstable completely falls apart and Sophie finds herself obsessively scrolling social media, waiting for something (anything) to happen.
None of This Is Serious is about the uncertainty and absurdity of being alive today. It’s about balancing the real world with the online, and the vulnerabilities in yourself, your relationships, your body. At its heart, this is a novel about the friendships strong enough to withstand anything.
The Sally Rooney of it all… This is also blurbed by Naoise Dolan, who’s the author of my favorite Sally Rooney novel not written by Sally Rooney, so, this seems extremely promising for me.
Violets by Kyung-sook Shin translated by Anton Hur April 14 Feminist Press
We join San in 1970s rural South Korea, a young girl ostracised from her community. She meets a girl called Namae, and they become friends until one afternoon changes everything. Following a moment of physical intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently rejects San, setting her on a troubling path of quashed desire and isolation.
We next meet San, aged twenty-two, as she starts a job in a flower shop. There, we are introduced to a colourful cast of characters, including the shop’s mute owner, the other florist Su-ae, and the customers that include a sexually aggressive businessman and a photographer, who San develops an obsession for. Throughout, San’s moment with Namae lingers in the back of her mind.
I’ve only read one Kyung-sook Shin novel (I’ll Be Right There) and didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected to, but I do enjoy Anton Hur’s translations and I love the sound of this one.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel April 15 Knopf
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal–an experience that shocks him to his core.
Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s bestselling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.
Honestly, this summary doesn’t sound like my sort of thing, but then again, neither did the summary for The Glass Hotel, which ended up being my favorite novel of the year in 2020. So I’m open to literally anything Emily St. John Mandel writes.
Auē by Becky Manawatu April 18 Scribe (Australia)
Taukiri was born into sorrow. Auē can be heard in the sound of the sea he loves and hates, and in the music he draws out of the guitar that was his father’s. It spills out of the gang violence that killed his father and sent his mother into hiding, and the shame he feels about abandoning his eight-year-old brother to a violent home.
But Taukiri’s brother, Arama, is braver than he looks, and he has a friend, and his friend has a dog, and the three of them together might just be strong enough to turn back the tide of sadness.
This is a book by a New Zealand author being published in Australia in 2022, so I’m not sure if I’ll want to order it or wait and hope for an American release, but I’ve heard incredible things about this.
there are more things by Yara Rodrigues Fowler April 28 Fleet
Born to a well-known political family in Olinda, Brazil, Catarina grows up in the shadow of her dead aunt, Laura. Melissa, a South London native, is brought up by her mum and a crew of rebellious grandmothers.
In January 2016, Melissa and Catarina meet for the first time, and, as political turmoil unfolds across Brazil and the UK, their friendship takes flight. Their story takes us across continents and generations – from the election of Lula to the London riots to the darkest years of Brazil’s military dictatorship.
there are more things builds on the unique voice of Yara’s debut to create a sweeping novel about history, revolution and love. In it we see sisterhood and queerness, and, perhaps, glimpse a better way to live.
I’m so looking forward to Yara Rodrigues Fowler’s followup to Stubborn Archivist, which I thought was fantastic. Also, we love a Shakespeare title.
Homesickness by Colin Barrett May 3 Grove Press
In these eight stories, Barrett takes us back to the barren backwaters of County Mayo, via Toronto, and illuminates the lives of outcasts, misfits and malcontents with an eye for the abrupt and absurd. A quiet night in the neighbourhood pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword wielding fugitive. A funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts won’t simply lay in wake. A shooting sees an everyday call-out lead a policewoman to confront the banality of her own existence.
Potentially my most anticipated book of the year?! Barrett’s Young Skins is one of my favorite short story collections of all time and I still frequently think about and revisit his novella Calm With Horses, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting his next book for years.
Little Rabbit by Alyssa Songsiridej May 3 Bloomsbury
When the unnamed narrator of Little Rabbit first meets the choreographer at an artists’ residency in Maine, it’s not a match. She finds him loud, conceited, domineering. He thinks her serious, guarded, always running away to write. But when he reappears in her life in Boston and invites her to his dance company’s performance, she’s compelled to attend. Their interaction at the show sets off a summer of expanding her own body’s boundaries: She follows the choreographer to his home in the Berkshires, to his apartment in New York, and into submission during sex. Her body learns to obediently follow his, and his desires quickly become inextricable from her pleasure. This must be happiness, right?
Back in Boston, her roommate Annie’s skepticism amplifies her own doubts about these heady weekend retreats. What does it mean for a queer young woman to partner with an older man, for a fledgling artist to partner with an established one? Is she following her own agency, or is she merely following him? Does falling in love mean eviscerating yourself?
Another disaster woman offering by a debut author that sounds like it could be amazing.
All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd May 3 Europa Editions
Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyoku stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it.
As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko’s past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it.
Another year, another Mieko Kawakami book on my most anticipated list despite the fact that I still haven’t read anything by her. 2022 will be her year though, I am determined.
Elektra by Jennifer Saint May 10 Flatiron Books
The House of Atreus is cursed. A bloodline tainted by a generational cycle of violence and vengeance. This is the story of three women, their fates inextricably tied to this curse, and the fickle nature of men and gods.
Clytemnestra The sister of Helen, wife of Agamemnon – her hopes of averting the curse are dashed when her sister is taken to Troy by the feckless Paris. Her husband raises a great army against them, and determines to win, whatever the cost.
Cassandra Princess of Troy, and cursed by Apollo to see the future but never to be believed when she speaks of it. She is powerless in her knowledge that the city will fall.
Elektra The youngest daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, Elektra is horrified by the bloodletting of her kin. But, can she escape the curse, or is her own destiny also bound by violence?
I enjoyed Saint’s Ariadne — not a new favorite, but I liked it enough that I’m curious about the author’s next project, and The House of Atreus is extremely my shit when it comes to Greek mythology.
Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi translated by Marilyn Booth May 10 Catapult
The eagerly awaiting new novel by the winner of the Man Booker International Prize, Bitter Orange Tree is an extraordinary exploration of social status, wealth, desire, and female agency. In prose that is at once restless and profound, it presents a mosaic portrait of one young woman’s attempt to understand the roots she has grown from, and to envisage an adulthood in which her own power and happiness might find the freedom necessary to bear fruit and flourish.
Bitter Orange Tree tells the story of Zuhur, an Omani student at a British university who is caught between the past and the present. As she attempts to form friendships and assimilate in Britain, she reflects on the relationships that have been central to her life. Most prominent is her bond with Bint Amir, a woman she has always thought of as her grandmother, who passed away just after Zuhur left the Arabian Peninsula. Bint Amir was not, we learn, related to Zuhur by blood, but by an emotional connection far stronger.
As the historical narrative of Bint Amir’s challenged circumstances unfurls in captivating fragments, so too does Zuhur’s isolated and unfulfilled present, one narrative segueing into another as time slips, and dreams mingle with memories.
I actually haven’t read Celestial Bodies yet, but this summary appeals to me a bit more, so perhaps I’ll read this first and then go back and read Alharthi’s International Booker winner if I enjoy this.
Holding Her Breath by Eimear Ryan May 17 Mariner Books
When Beth Crowe starts university, she is shadowed by the ghost of her potential as a competitive swimmer. Free to create a fresh identity for herself, she finds herself among people who adore the poetry of her grandfather, Benjamin Crowe, who died tragically before she was born. She embarks on a secret relationship – and on a quest to discover the truth about Benjamin and his widow, her beloved grandmother Lydia. The quest brings her into an archive that no scholar has ever seen, and to a person who knows things about her family that nobody else knows.
I’m so intrigued by the combination of Marian Keyes and Roddy Doyle blurbs on the cover and can’t quite figure out whether this is being marketed as literary fiction or commercial/’women’s’ fiction, but something about the summary is grabbing me, so, only one way to find out.
Either/Or by Elif Batuman May 24 Penguin Press
Selin is the luckiest person in her family: the only one who was born in America and got to go to Harvard. Now it’s sophomore year, 1996, and Selin knows she has to make it count. The first order of business: to figure out the meaning of everything that happened over the summer. Why did Selin’s elusive crush, Ivan, find her that job in the Hungarian countryside? What was up with all those other people in the Hungarian countryside? Why is Ivan’s weird ex-girlfriend now trying to get in touch with Selin? On the plus side, it feels like the plot of an exciting novel. On the other hand, why do so many novels have crazy abandoned women in them? How does one live a life as interesting as a novel–a life worthy of becoming a novel–without becoming a crazy abandoned woman oneself?
Guided by her literature syllabus and by her more worldly and confident peers, Selin reaches certain conclusions about the universal importance of parties, alcohol, and sex, and resolves to execute them in practice–no matter what the cost. Next on the list: international travel.
Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.
My other most anticipated release of the year, tied with Homesickness. At first I didn’t know how to feel about the fact that The Idiot, one of my favorite novels of the past decade, is getting a sequel when I’m very opposed to sequels on principle, especially for works that were conceived as stand-alones. However, the opportunity to spend more time with Selin’s voice is so enticing that I was quickly won over.
Exalted by Anna Dorn June 7 Unnamed Press
Emily Forrest runs the hottest astrology account on Instagram, @Exalted, but astrology is on the outs, and her finances are dwindling. Emily doesn’t even really believe in astrology, despite her gift for deciphering the moons and signs, until she comes across a birth-chart that could potentially change her mind. Beau Rubidoux’s chart has all the planets in their right places—it is exalted.
She decides that Beau could potentially be the love of her life and begins following him around Los Angeles in hopes of getting close to him and catching his eye.
Meanwhile, in Riverside, CA, Dawn Webster has been dumped once again. At 48, she is forced to return to the diner where she started waiting tables at 18. With no girlfriend, no career, and her only son gone to Hollywood, the once-vivacious Dawn is aimless and alone. Persona non-grata at the local lesbian bar, she guzzles cheap champagne and peruses @Exalted to feel seen. When Dawn spots her son’s estranged father one day during a work break, she decides to track him down and reshape the flailing course of her life.
Told from Emily and Dawn’s alternating points of view, Exalted is a deliciously dark novel that explores desire, the projection of love, and what we’re really searching for when we keep scrolling. Anna Dorn’s signature wit and biting social commentary takes readers across Southern California until Emily and Dawn’s shocking connection is finally revealed.
I love astrology and I love books set in LA so this sounds very me.
House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
CR: Penguin
The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager June 8 Dutton
It looks like a familiar story: A woman reeling from a great loss with too much time on her hands and too much booze in her glass watches her neighbors, sees things she shouldn’t see, and starts to suspect the worst. But looks can be deceiving. . . .
Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of liquor, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple living in the house across the lake.
Everything about the Royces seems perfect. Their marriage. Their house. The bucolic lake it sits beside. But when Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to her. In the process, she discovers the darker truths lurking just beneath the surface of the Royces’ picture-perfect marriage. Truths no suspicious voyeur could begin to imagine–even with a few drinks under her belt.
Like Casey, you’ll think you know where this story is headed.
Think again.
Because once you open the door to obsession, you never know what you might find on the other side.
My guilty pleasure author (that I don’t actually feel guilty about enjoying as much as I do, because life is too short). Funnily enough I’m kind of irritated that he’s revisiting Vermont as a setting, because his other Vermont-set book (Home Before Dark) was one of my least favorites, in part due to how unconvincing I found the setting, but, odds are I’ll enjoy this one anyway.
The Men by Sandra Newman June 14 Grove Press
Deep in the California woods on an evening in late August, Jane Pearson is camping with her husband Leo and their five-year-old son Benjamin. As dusk sets in, she drifts softly to sleep in a hammock strung outside the tent where Leo and Benjamin are preparing for bed. At that moment, every single person with a Y chromosome vanishes around the world, disappearing from operating theaters mid-surgery, from behind the wheels of cars, from arguments and acts of love. Children, adults, even fetuses are gone in an instant. Leo and Benjamin are gone. No one knows why, how, or where.
After the Disappearance, Jane forces herself to enter a world she barely recognizes, one where women must create new ways of living while coping with devastating grief. As people come together to rebuild depopulated industries and distribute scarce resources, Jane focuses on reuniting with an old college girlfriend, Evangelyne Moreau, leader of the Commensalist Party of America, a rising political force in this new world. Meanwhile, strange video footage called “The Men” is being broadcast online showing images of the vanished men marching through barren, otherworldly landscapes. Is this just a hoax, or could it hold the key to the Disappearance?
I cannot resist an ‘imagine the world with no men,’ premise, and Newman is brilliant.
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh June 22 Penguin Press
Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life’s few consolations for Marek is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him as a baby, as she did so many of the village’s children. Ina’s gifts extend beyond childcare: she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world. Her gift often brings her the transmission of sacred knowledge on levels far beyond those available to other villagers, however religious they might be. For some people, Ina’s home in the woods outside of the village is a place to fear and to avoid, a godless place.
Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved lord and governor, Villiam, whose hilltop manor contains a secret embarrassment of riches. The people’s desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by Villiam and the priest, especially in this year of record drought and famine. But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord’s family, new and occult forces upset the old order. By year’s end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, the natural world and the spirit world, civility and savagery, will prove to be very thin indeed.
Ottessa Moshfegh has written two books that I love more than anything (My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Eileen), and two I heartily dislike (Homesick for Another World and Death In Her Hands). So, the stakes are high for Lapvona, but this summary sounds incredible, so I’m cautiously optimistic.
Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe June 28 Doubleday
Patrick Radden Keefe has garnered prizes ranging from the National Magazine Award to the Orwell Prize to the National Book Critics Circle Award for his meticulously-reported, hypnotically-engaging work on the many ways people behave badly. ROGUES brings together a dozen of his most celebrated articles from The New Yorker. As Keefe says in his preface “They reflect on some of my abiding preoccupations: crime and corruption, secrets and lies, the permeable membrane separating licit and illicit worlds, the bonds of family, the power of denial.”
Keefe brilliantly explores the intricacies of forging $150,000 vintage wines, examines whether a whistleblower who dared to expose money laundering at a Swiss bank is a hero or a fabulist, spends time in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain, chronicles the quest to bring down a cheerful international black market arms merchant, and profiles a passionate death penalty attorney who represents the “worst of the worst,” among other bravura works of literary journalism.
I actually haven’t gotten around to reading Empire of Pain yet, but Say Nothing is one of my favorite books of all time, so I’ll read anything Radden Keefe writes.
Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen July 5 William Morrow
Money can’t buy happiness… but it can buy a decent fake.
Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home–she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this facade, Ava’s world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn’t been used in years, and her toddler’s tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.
Enter Winnie Fang, Ava’s enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business–someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.
I adored Chen’s novel Bury What We Cannot Take and have been looking forward to her followup, so I’m very excited about this one — the summary sounds brilliant.
Night of the Living Rez by Morgan Talty July 5 Tin House
Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.
In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and community bonds as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future. A boy unearths a jar that holds an old curse, which sets into motion his family’s unraveling; a man, while trying to swindle some pot from a dealer, discovers a friend passed out in the woods, his hair frozen into the snow; a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s projects the past onto her grandson, and thinks he is her dead brother come back to life; and two friends, inspired by Antiques Roadshow, attempt to rob the tribal museum for valuable root clubs.
A short story collection by an Indigenous debut author that I think could be brilliant.
Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori July 5 Grove Press
In these twelve stories, Murata mixes an unusual cocktail of humor and horror to portray both the loners and outcasts as well as turning the norms and traditions of society on their head to better question them. Whether the stories take place in modern-day Japan, the future, or an alternate reality is left to the reader’s interpretation, as the characters often seem strange in their normality in a frighteningly abnormal world. In “A First-Rate Material”, Nana and Naoki are happily engaged, but Naoki can’t stand the conventional use of deceased people’s bodies for clothing, accessories, and furniture, and a disagreement around this threatens to derail their perfect wedding day. “Lovers on the Breeze” is told from the perspective of a curtain in a child’s bedroom that jealously watches the young girl Naoko as she has her first kiss with a boy from her class and does its best to stop her. “Eating the City” explores the strange norms around food and foraging, while “Hatchling” closes the collection with an extraordinary depiction of the fractured personality of someone who tries too hard to fit in.
More short stories, this time by the author of Convenience Store Woman, which I adored. I have still yet to read Earthlings, but I’d like to soon, ahead of this.
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield July 5 William Morrow
Leah is changed. Months earlier, she left for a routine expedition, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife Miri knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night.
As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.
First off, not sure why Flatiron is doing this book so dirty when the UK cover is so stunning, but either way, this summary sounds incredible.
Enjoy Me among My Ruins by Juniper Fitzgerald July 12 Feminist Press
Combining feminist theories, X-Files fandom, and personal memoir, Enjoy Me among My Ruins draws together a kaleidoscopic archive of Juniper Fitzgerald’s experiences as a queer sex-working mother. Plumbing the major events that shaped her life, and interspersing her childhood letters written to cult icon Gillian Anderson, this experimental manifesto contends with dominant narratives placed upon marginalized bodies and ultimately rejects a capitalist system that demands our purity and submission over our survival.
I’ve never actually seen the X-Files, but I’m really drawn to memoirs that explore fandom, as well as sex work, so this sounds like it could be fantastic.
Mothers Don’t by Katiza Agirre translated by Katie Whittemore July 12 Open Letter Press
A mother kills her twins. Another woman, the narrator of this story, is about to give birth. She is a writer, and she realizes that she knows the woman who committed the infanticide. An obsession is born. She takes an extended leave, not for child-rearing, but to write. To research and write about the hidden truth behind the crime.
Mothers don’t write. Mothers give life. How could a woman be capable of neglecting her children? How could she kill them? Is motherhood a prison? Complete with elements of a traditional thriller, this a groundbreaking novel in which the chronicle and the essay converge. Katixa Agirre reflects on the relationship between motherhood and creativity, in dialogue with writers such as Sylvia Plath and Doris Lessing. Mothers Don’t plumbs the depths of childhood and the lack of protection children face before the law. The result is a disturbing, original novel in which the author does not offer answers, but plants contradictions and discoveries.
Leave it to me to dislike all ‘motherhood books,’ except the one with the most fucked up sounding premise ever, but what can I say, I’m really drawn to how twisted this sounds.
Paul by Daisy Lafarge August 16 Riverhead
When personal scandal forces her to leave Paris, Frances, a young British graduate student, travels to southern France one summer to volunteer on a farm. Almost as soon as she arrives, she is pulled into a relationship with the farm’s enigmatic owner, Paul, a well-traveled older artist. Alone in a foreign country, drawn into his orbit, and eventually tangled up in his sheets, Frances starts to lose herself in Paul’s easy, experienced charm. Yet over the course of three intense weeks, as she discovers more about Paul and the people surrounding him, she realizes that she’s caught in an emotional battle of wills that threatens to stifle her voice and crush her autonomy. Coming to terms with what’s happening to her and wresting control from an older man with dark secrets of his own are at the heart of this compelling, unsettling novel.
By turns the story of how a modern woman finds the inner strength to regain her sense of self and a fascinating exploration of the power dynamics between men and women, Paul is a deeply human novel that holds a mirror up to many of the issues that people confront today.
Potentially another disaster woman novel, with an intriguing setting. Really curious about this one.
Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang August 23 Harper Voyager
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation — also known as Babel.
Babel is the world’s center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel’s research in foreign languages serves the Empire’s quest to colonize everything it encounters.
Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?
Babel — a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal response to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell — grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of translation as a tool of empire.
Absolutely everything about this sounds perfect for me, and I loved Kuang’s writing in The Poppy War trilogy (at least in the first two… I have still yet to finish that). I’m very excited to see her going in such a different direction after that series as well.
Blood of Troy by Claire M. Andrews PUB DATE TK Little, Brown and Co.
In this sequel to Daughter of Sparta, Daphne and Apollo are thrust into the middle of the Trojan War.
Daughter of Sparta was an extremely fun YA romp through Ancient Greece, and I’m so excited about the sequel being set in Troy, my favorite of all Greek myth settings.
Heretic by Jeanna Kadlec PUB DATE TK Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
“… a memoir in essays on life after leaving the evangelical church, queerness, and what faith looks like in the face of millennial loneliness and desire for community and meaning — all in light of the hold evangelicalism has on American politics, power structures, and pop culture…”
Hannah found this one and she always finds the best memoirs. I don’t think this is out until the fall, but I’m really looking forward to it.
So there you have it, my not-so-brief list of books I’m looking forward to in the new year. I am under no illusions that I will possibly read all of these books, but I’m excited about the sheer volume to choose from.
Which 2022 releases are you most looking forward to? Comment and let me know!
pace, amore, libri 
