July 9, 2022
In four wildly different fictions, characters seek to find themselves, and their place. Two are faced with sudden fortune and must navigate the fallout; another must find a way to make peace with a father whose expectations are untenable; others are haunted by dead family members; and still others manage life in a resuscitated mosque. Summer reading is in full swing.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
By Gabrielle Zevin
Published by Knopf
A favorite of readers and booksellers alike, Gabrielle Zevin’s most popular novel (The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry—coming to screens in the fall) is about a bookseller. She returns with a rollicking ride of a novel about the late 90s explosion of video game culture. It stars childhood friends Sam and Sadie who reconnect in college and come up with a game that skyrockets to popularity, bringing them fame and fortune. Like the ‘unicorns’ of various startups, they must navigate not only creative and business challenges but interpersonal relationships—making this a love story within the fascinating world of gaming, replete with all the havoc a successful entrepreneurship can wreak.
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Other Names for Love
By Taymour Soomro
Published by FSG
Fahad reluctantly takes a train to spend time with his father in the Pakistani countryside where the family has a farm. Thus begins Soomro’s tale about a young man who feels at odds with his family. This fateful summer will find Fahad drawn to a local teenage boy and that relationship will reverberate throughout Fahad’s future. It’s a beautifully told story that addresses homophobia, questioning if one can leave home and the past behind for a reinvention of self. This is the first novel for multi-talented Soomro whose career has included fashion and the study and practice of law.
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Gods of Want
By K-Ming Chang
Published by One World
According to this Shanghai-born fiction writer, the power of novels is: “…to create these moments where you can reproduce a sort of mundane feeling of reality using the constraints that fiction allows you.” Her new collection of stories is haunted by many ghosts: dead cousins, a hoarding grandmother, a young girl who was accidentally shot. They are subdivided into “Mothers, “Myths,” and “Moths,” each section introducing compelling characters. In “Auntland,” the narrator spews a litany of aunties, one who “cracked an egg on my forehead when I made fun of her accent.” Chang (Bestiary) writes so specifically about these women that you know them instantly through her vibrant imagination.
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Brother Alive
By Zain Khalid
Published by Grove Press
Among so many worthy debuts this summer, Brother Alive stands out. Three unrelated boys, each of a different race, are adopted by a Saudi Imam on Staten Island—the “most disregarded” borough in New York City (that’s a storyline you have not encountered!). Youseff, whose background is Middle Eastern, and who has an imaginary friend (the ‘brother’), serves as the narrator. The other two are Iseul, a Korean boy, and Dayo from Nigeria. Decades later, they all travel to Saudi Arabia in what seems to be an almost science fictional city and where the concerns of religion, politics and late capitalism ingenuously play out among the characters and their enigmatic personal histories. Applause is warranted.
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