Week of Tuesday, May 29, 2018
In her anthology Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (Penguin Books, $17), editor Sarah Weinman collects short works of crime fiction by women about women. She credits the authors collected here with inspiring the contemporary generation of women crime writers, pushing forward a genre she calls domestic suspense.
There's no shortage of bestsellers that fall squarely into this category--how many times have we heard a psychological thriller touted as "the next Gone Girl!" or "The Girl on the Train meets Big Little Lies." Certainly, all of these books are excellent in their own right, but for those looking to explore the genre, we offer a few suggestions:
In her debut novel, Under the Harrow (Penguin Books, $16), Flynn Berry takes a straightforward murder mystery and imbues it with a complicated sense of grief, loss and the aftermath of trauma. In The Widow (Berkley, $16), Fiona Barton (whose second novel, The Child, (Berkley, $16), was also widely praised), approaches the story of a suspected child murderer through the lens of his widow's experience.
Sharon Bolton's Little Black Lies (Minotaur, $16.99) plays with narrative voice, telling the story of a series of missing children from three viewpoints: a woman who lost her two sons in a freak accident, the woman responsible for their deaths and a veteran suffering from PTSD. Attica Locke sets a murder on an old Louisiana plantation in The Cutting Season (Harper Perennial, $15.99), embedding a whodunit-style mystery within the larger contexts of racism and immigration in the Deep South.The list could go on and on, of course; the genre of domestic suspense is deeply rooted in classical works of crime fiction and thriving in contemporary novels. Let us know what books you'd add to your list. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm
Motherhood
by Sheila Heti
A writer near the end of her fertile years, hounded by anxiety and depression, feels an occasional intense desire for a child. It terrifies her. All her friends are having them. Her partner is against the idea, but would do it if she could be sure. Meanwhile they use risky birth control. In Motherhood, Canadian writer Sheila Heti (The Chairs Are Where the People Go) wrestles with the problem of how to choose an unknowable future based on shifting emotions and the advice of people who have already made their decisions. "Neither path better and neither path worse, neither more frightening or less riddled with fear."
For several years, her protagonist flips coins to answer yes or no questions. In a prefacing note, Heti asserts that though some of this book is fiction, all results of the coin tosses are true. Mysticism alternates with attempts at logic, and neither can provide solid answers. She considers her childhood with a devoted father and work-focused absent mother, and she asks the opinions of her adored and distrusted partner, her friends, random strangers and psychics. Fantasies and neurotic self-consciousness muddle her understanding of solitude, quiet and work as her most secure havens. The book's form is a hammock, or a maze, with the most structure in the beginning and in the emotionally satisfying resolution. In the middle, the protagonist struggles with her indecision over reproduction, her feelings for her partner and what she wants her life to be. "Another dark shadow on a dark lawn: the fact that for a woman of curiosity, no decision will ever feel like the right one." --Sara Catterall
Holt,
$27, hardcover, 304p., 9781627790772
Miss Subways
by David Duchovny
Riffing on the Irish myth of Emer and Cúchulainn, Miss Subways by David Duchovny (Bucky F*cking Dent) tells an age-old tale of love lost and found. Emer, a native New Yorker, lives with her narcissistic boyfriend, Con. But one night when he's out with another woman, Emer is visited by Sid, who foretells Con's death unless Emer strikes a bargain to save his life. She agrees to let Sid wipe out their memories of their life together in order to save him. Afterward she has a nagging sense of loss and "as her dreams became more real, her reality became less so." When she runs into Con again, the meeting is a catalyst for a series of transformational events for Emer and those around her.
Emer moves through New York City trying to piece together her increasingly fragmented reality. She thinks she might have two lives--"the conscious one and the dream one playing in separate movie theaters in her mind." Emer discovers that mythological beings live in the city alongside humans, and her contact with them forces deeper thought about the meaning of life and love. Deities of every culture and belief system present themselves to Emer as if their collective wisdom is what she needs to solve the puzzle: Is she experiencing real life or a hallucination? Is there a difference? She doesn't know, and neither does the reader, lending an elusive, mystical feel to this highly original, multi-layered story. --Cindy Pauldine, bookseller, the river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
$26, hardcover, 320p., 9780374210403
A Theory of Love
by Margaret Bradham Thornton
Some places are made for romance. In Margaret Bradham Thornton's A Theory of Love, one of those places is the fictional enclave of Bermeja on Mexico's rugged Pacific coast, south of Puerto Vallarta. Rich artists and wealthy global moguls gather there in casitas carefully designed to capture the area's views and color. On assignment to do a story on Bermeja's Italian developer, British journalist Helen Gibbs meets the Franco-American lawyer, entrepreneur and occasional surfer Christopher Delavaux.
Too smart and clever to be overwhelmed by only physical attraction, Helen and Christopher banter about language (his favorite word is the Italian sprezzatura, which he translates as "studied nonchalance") and the excesses of the well-heeled players around them. When he leaves a respected law firm in New York City to launch his own investment advisory house in London, they reconnect and easily glide into love and marriage. With a little mews house to call home, Helen revels in the excitement of dinners with Christopher's prospective clients, weekends in the country and interesting reporting assignments. But one cannot live on fancy ceviche and massive English manors alone. As Christopher focuses on building his business, Helen chafes and wonders when they will have leisure time again.
With chapters skipping across both the cosmopolitan and remote turfs of the wealthy, A Theory of Love is a portrait of romance among the 1%. Yet it is pulled back to earth by the self-reflective, unpretentious Helen, who centers Thornton's narrative. She learns that falling in love is easy. Overcoming a spouse's obsession with work and personal indifference is much harder. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.
Ecco,
$27.99, hardcover, 288p., 9780062742704
Mystery & Thriller
The Perfect Mother
by Aimee Molloy
The first novel from nonfiction author Aimee Molloy (However Long the Night) unravels the secrets of an outwardly normal mommy group when disaster strikes.
They call themselves the May Mothers, a Brooklyn, N.Y., meetup group who delivered babies in the same month and still get together for adult conversation: Winnie, the gorgeous single mom; Francie, the Southern goody-two-shoes; cool British mum Nell; pretty and poised Colette; and "Token," the stay-at-home dad whose real name no one remembers. When the stress of adjusting to life as parents weighs them down, the May Mothers decide to leave the babies home and have a proper evening out. Worried about her lack of a support system, they insist Winnie join them, even helping her hire a sitter.
Their fun takes a terrible turn when someone kidnaps Winnie's son, Midas, from his crib. Blame flies in all directions as the media runs exposés, law enforcement bungles the investigation and the strain of the tragedy pushes the Mothers to confront their own secrets and woes. As they each work in their own separate ways to reconstruct the night of the kidnapping, the women also struggle with their post-baby careers, marriages and identities. Whether Midas returns or not, all of their lives will change forever.
Molloy explores the isolation and tension of first-time parenting, using the frenzy surrounding the kidnapping to examine expectations of motherhood. Some of the Mothers' investigative breakthroughs stretch credibility, but the nuanced portrayal of the pressure that falls on child-rearing women rings true. --Jaclyn Fulwood, youth services manager, main branch, Dayton Metro Library
Harper,
$27.99, hardcover, 336p., 9780062696793
Biography & Memoir
Free Woman: Life, Liberation, and Doris Lessing
by Lara Feigel
After producing several engrossing nonfiction titles (The Love-charm of Bombs, The Bitter Taste of Victory), writer and lecturer Lara Feigel turns inward in Free Woman to craft a story of self through her exploration of Doris Lessing. In the aftermath of a miscarriage, Feigel revisits Lessing's 1962 novel, The Golden Notebook, and is both fascinated by and feels a connection to the novel's investigation of motherhood, sexuality and female liberation. Feigel dips in and out of her own life and Lessing's novels, personal letters and biography to explore these themes, which seem to define not only the woman who has captivated her, but also Feigel's own life and times.
Feigel treats the close readings of Lessing's novel and life with tenderness and compassion. While the biography she puts forward is factually interesting, the emotional nuance and ambivalence she imbues it with elevates her portrait of Lessing to one of intimate importance, for the reader as well as the writer. Stylistically, Free Woman is elegantly written, gracefully balancing Feigel's depth and breadth of research with her incisive, personal perceptions and awareness. Feigel's treatment of Lessing's less admirable qualities, such as her decision to abandon her children and her dedication to the Communist Party in Stalin's wake, is particularly strong, as she neither shies away from critique nor ignores the complex and justifiable nature of Lessing's actions. Confronting such issues offers the opportunity to raise the book's best and most impossible questions about what freedom can mean to a person, a woman, a lover and a mother. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor
Bloomsbury,
$28, hardcover, 336p., 9781635570953
History
The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
by Simon Winchester
Precision is a fact of modern-day life. While we are "peppered and larded and salted and perfumed with precision," we're also hard pressed to define what it actually means, not to mention how significantly (and quickly) it has changed the course of human history. With bestselling author Simon Winchester (Atlantic) as guide, the marvels of precision engineering bloom.
Winchester begins chronologically with the development of the steam engine, discovered and made efficient by Englishmen John Wilkinson and James Watt, and heralding the Industrial Revolution. Soon after, the "paradigm-altering idea of interchangeable parts" emerged; weapons and warfare would never be the same. The budding automotive industry also took note. While Britain's Rolls Royce was proudly meticulous in making cars, it was Henry Ford's assembly lines that made the Model-T ubiquitous by embracing mass production--shifting the pursuit of even greater exactness to the United States. Soon, the jet engine would change air travel and GPS would guarantee accuracy of a location within mere centimeters.
Populated with colorful characters (including a duplicitous Eli Whitney and sharp-shooting Queen Victoria), notable failures (Hubble Space Telescope's first flawed mirror) and contradictions (our persistent desire for the handmade and imperfect), Winchester's tour of modern engineering is never dull. Looking ahead, where "electrons and protons and neutrons have replaced iron and oil and bearings and lubricants and trunnions," Winchester considers a future where the fundamental core of our very existence is altered by our never-ending quest for perfection. -- Frank Brasile, librarian
Harper,
$29.99, hardcover, 416p., 9780062652553
Essays & Criticism
The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life
by Richard Russo
Richard Russo's first collection of essays--in a career of more than three decades that includes a Pulitzer Prize for his 2001 novel, Empire Falls--is an insightful blend of excellent writing advice, revealing memoir and cogent literary criticism.
One of his recurring themes here is the writer's search for identity and a true voice. In the title essay, he wrestles with the choice between an academic career and life as a novelist; he initially resisted grounding his fiction in the small towns of upstate New York, like Gloversville, where he grew up. In the book's concluding essay, "The Boss in Bulgaria," he considers his resolution to concentrate his literary career on "a patch of dirt about the size of Faulkner's"--something at the time that "felt like nothing so much as defeat." This he links to his struggle to provide meaningful counsel as the featured guest at a writing conference for young Bulgarian writers, seeking their own voices in a country only recently freed from Communist control.
Russo (Empire Falls) departs from the dominant personal tone of most of the pieces to appraise the work of what appear to be two writers for whom he has a particular fondness--Charles Dickens and Mark Twain. In describing Dickens's first novel, written when he was 24, Russo is impressed by "how sure-handed and confident a writer the young Dickens already was." He's not quite as effusive in his praise for the nonfiction of Twain, but he's an unabashed admirer of the "witty, playful exuberance" of the writer's storytelling.
Richard Russo's wise, hard-earned counsel to aspiring writers on other subjects that include humor, point of view and the demands of a writing career only enhances the value of The Destiny Thief. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Knopf,
$25.95, hardcover, 224p., 9781524733513
Psychology & Self-Help
First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety
by Sarah Wilson
Coming to an understanding of anxiety can be like trying to figure out what wind does--a lot depends on place and time, and whether the effects are devastating or capable of being harnessed. Millions of Americans have one of the various permutations of an anxiety disorder, and there are a range of books about living with its particular form of loneliness that comes from feeling so unstable while life goes on around you.
First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety by Sarah Wilson somehow works a magic of relieving that loneliness. It elaborates on the wide-ranging conversation with honesty, revelation and questioning. It doesn't offer answers so much as possibilities for relief, which reflects Wilson's outlook on a "harm reduction" approach to anxiety over trying to stamp it out entirely. She travels far and wide across the condition's rocky terrain and, like the best travel guides, she brings the reader to see out-of-the-way things that can make all the difference. What does a loved one need to do when anxiety strains a relationship? How does anxiety play into, and off of, other disorders like depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bulimia and bipolar disorder? How does one begin to find help from a professional? Wilson does readers a service in sharing this memoir, and readers can do a service by sharing it with friends. --Matthew Tiffany, LCPC
Dey Street Books,
$25.99, hardcover, 320p., 9780062836786
Humor
Go Ask Ali: Half-Baked Advice (and Free Lemonade)
by Ali Wentworth
In the introduction of Go Ask Ali: Half-Baked Advice (and Free Lemonade), actress and comedian Ali Wentworth makes it clear: "This is basically a humor book.... There is nothing religious, political, or ideological in the following pages." And she keeps this promise, with personal essays that are entertaining and at times outrageous, about life with her two daughters and husband, journalist and political commentator George Stephanopoulos. Fans of her previous two collections, Ali in Wonderland and Happily Ali After, will be happy to get more of the same here. This time, as her older daughter anticipates "womanhood" and Wentworth is experiencing perimenopause, there's a wistful tone as she recognizes an empty nest will soon be upon her.
But, of course, she's still funny, and paints vivid pictures full of self-deprecation. She discusses moving to New York City and having to interview with board members before she could buy an apartment: "Having never auditioned to live in a building, I was very self-conscious. I hesitated to reach for the Brie. I just knew it was a trap." While headed to Nantucket on a tiny plane that encounters bad weather, she fears crashing into the ocean and being devoured by sharks: "My ass is so meaty and plump right now, I would no doubt be the all-you-can-eat buffet." Wentworth's life is in a stratum different from most people's, but she's goofy enough to make her adventures engaging, reminding moms and wives--and humans--everywhere that she's just like us. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd
Harper,
$25.99, hardcover, 224p., 9780062466013
Poetry
Junk
by Tommy Pico
If future aliens find Tommy Pico's book-length poem Junk among the ruins of human civilization, they might understand what it was like being alive in the year 2018, on the cusp of major cultural and ecological change.
Pico (Nature Poem) doesn't so much distill the times as incarnate them in verse, breathlessly. Seventy-two pages of free-flowing couplets comprise the third in the poet's Teebs trilogy. Ostensibly about a romantic breakup, Junk, as the name would suggest, teems with ephemera: junk food, junk clothes, junk feelings. The poet--often referred to as the alter-ego Teebs--swims through this post-industrial, consumer-oriented inheritance with a stream-of-consciousness style that recalls the generation-defining mythos of Allen Ginsberg's Howl. The poem opens in "the multiplex Temple of/ Canoodling and Junk food," with the poet's anxiety and sexuality likened to "a snipe hunt Love in the time of/ climate change."
The poet is Native American--Pico hails from the Kumeyaay Nation of Southern California--and queer. The genius of Junk lies in the poet's outward vision, in his ability, heeding "the gusting forward of time," to create new space for himself and others like him, to create a new sense of identity. Toward the end of the book, the poet self-deprecatingly proclaims, "this is a poem of vibrant inconsequence." The irony, of course, is that it's not. Heady, heartfelt and unforgettable, Junk stands out as the work of an original and vital voice. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset
Tin House,
$15.95, paperback, 80p., 9781941040973
Children's & Young Adult
A Stone for Sascha
by Aaron Becker
Aaron Becker's newest wordless picture book opens on the title page with an illustration of a framed photograph: a girl and a dog sit together in an autumnal yard. In front of the frame is a little stack of dried flowers. The page turn shows the girl's mother, standing between a shovel and a hole in the ground, pulling the girl in for a hug as the girl's father gently places a wrapped bundle into the grave. Yep--it's a dead dog book. Or is it?
The family then leaves for a beach vacation, where the still-sad girl throws a rock into the ocean. The rock becomes a golden meteor racing through space; it connects with the Earth and, over a series of panels, readers see the gold of that meteor settle into the earth below the dinosaurs. Men dig up the golden rock and create a henge; time passes and the stone falls. Next, the stone makes its way across the ocean and is raised by a society with written language; the city devolves into war. This rise and fall of civilizations continues, the golden stone getting smaller as it travels across the globe and through the ages. Eventually, the stone ends up under the water, where a certain little girl finds it on her beach trip and decides it will be the perfect marker for a grave back home.
A Stone for Sascha's digital illustrations are as vibrant and winsome as one has come to expect of a work by Aaron Becker (the Journey triptych). The heartbreaking beginning is balanced by the grandness of the tale that follows, and Becker's expression of the cyclical nature of the human experience gives any reader plenty to think about. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor
Candlewick Press,
$17.99, hardcover, 48p., ages 5-9, 9780763665968
Neymar: A Soccer Dream Come True
by Mina Javaherbin, illus. by Paul Hoppe
From his early days playing soccer in the halls of his grandfather's house, Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior dreams of becoming a star on his native Brazil's national team, Seleção. With the support of his loving family and his coach, he steadily moves up the ranks, playing in the junior division of Santos, the local soccer club, then traveling to Spain to join Real Madrid. Once in Spain, though, Neymar realizes that the "money, fame, and stardom" that comes with playing in Europe isn't enough to combat the homesickness he feels. Some question his decision to return to Brazil, but his father knows Neymar will be "happier playing with his friends and growing up among family." Soon after turning 17, he is invited to join Santos's major league team (on which Brazilian superstar Pelé used to play), and eventually even his dream of playing for Seleção comes true. Neymar loves playing and adores his family: "I'm a happy player in a happy home, a volcano erupting with joy."
In Neymar: A Soccer Dream Come True, Mina Javaherbin (Goal!; Soccer Star; Elephant in the Dark), herself a soccer fan, takes real biographical information about the Brazilian soccer star, and brings it to life with imagined dialogue. Awash in golds, greens, blues and reds, Paul Hoppe's (The Woods; Metal Man; the Last-but-Not-Least Lola series) illustrations show motion, his thin, broken outlines portraying a joyful, dedicated athlete. In one of his most radiant drawings, Hoppe's illustrative foreshadowing shows the brightly colored boy Neymar dribbling the ball, with his future self--a grayscale ghost--taking the ball and running. Young athletes will be inspired by this story of a boy whose determination and hard work get him exactly where he wants to be. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor
Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
$16.99, hardcover, 32p., 9780374310660
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