March 2, 2024
In this week’s selection we recommend a stunning debut from a veritable polymath; two books about ’80s artists in Soho—a definitive biography and a novel that we will launch at The Center; a locked-room mystery by an award-winning translator who also joins our stage this week; and a dazzling novel set in pre-Civil War New Orleans.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Anita de Monte Laughs Last
By Xochitl Gonzalez
Published by Flatiron
Gonzalez (Olga Dies Dreaming) returns with a novel that parallels the lives of married artists Ana Mendieta and Carl Andre. Mendieta’s unresolved 1985 death from a fall out of their window was commonly believed to be caused by Andre. In Gonzalez’s homage to Ana, she has created ‘Anita’ and ‘Jack,’ who become the subject of Raquel’s college thesis over a decade later. Her research becomes doubly obsessive when Raquel finds herself in a not-dissimilar relationship. An exploration of male dominance in the art world and the longstanding attitudes toward race and color, this is a vibrant, compelling piece of art itself.
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Radiant
By Brad Gooch
Published by HarperCollins
There is an enduring fascination with the artist Keith Haring for those who were around for his brief life, spectacular rise to fame, and tragic death from AIDs in 1990, as well as new generations who embrace his iconic art on everything from t-shirts to pencil cases. Gooch is the perfect biographer for his subject, interviewing hundreds of those who knew Haring. As a poet himself who lived through the ’80s downtown NYC art scene ablaze with Warhol, Basquiat, and company, his descriptions of those times are impeccable. Haring’s signature crawling baby graffiti covered innumerable street walls and sidewalks. As he once said, “your line is your personality.”
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The Hearing Test
By Eliza Barry Callahan
Published by Catapult
Somewhat autobiographical, Callahan (a musician, filmmaker, artist, and art historian) has packed much into this brief portrait of a young woman who experiences an abrupt hearing loss. The preface draws you in—a plot description of a Soviet film regarding ‘a period of revision’ that mirrors “a year in which I was flung suddenly from my own life.” With her protagonist on the cusp of becoming, Callahan creates a moody sense of time and place, spiked with cultural references to art, film, and music. The contemplative style makes the reader feel as off-kilter as our protagonist. A wonderful debut that you will keep thinking about.
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The American Daughters
By Maurice Carlos Ruffin
Published by One World
As he did in his story collection, Ruffin sets his new novel in his beloved New Orleans where it once more comes alive. It is the 1850s, and Ady and her mother Sanite have been purchased from a plantation by the rich narcissistic du Marche who renames Ady ‘Antoinette’ (his wife believes slaves’ real names are “heathen blasphemy”). Ady has been taught well by her mother—a sassy, fierce woman who can stand up for herself. Ruffin’s riveting historical fiction, based loosely on real events, follows Ady as she becomes a part of an underground women’s group (the ‘Daughters’) working toward freedom. She is an unforgettable character.
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The Extinction of Irena Rey
By Jennifer Croft
Published by Bloomsbury
A perfect Center for Fiction book, with elements of a literary mystery, cheeky humor, and eight characters who are translators. Croft is an award winning translator herself, of writers as esteemed as Olga Tokarczuk. The story takes place in an endangered Polish forest (echoes of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead) where the group convenes to work on their idol’s new masterpiece, “…what we had always hoped for, for the sake of our careers and hers, was the Great Polish Novel.” Irena Rey’s husband is nowhere to be found and when Irena goes missing too, the group devolves into wildly entertaining chaos. A hugely engaging academic satire.
