August 6, 2022
The dog days of summer are here, and we turn to books that are hot and sultry, too. Like the weather, the four novels here take you into spaces that are sometimes claustrophobic, lethargic, and definitely uncomfortable. Small-town Indiana, steamy Hong Kong, Communist China plus a collection of essays by a writer from the sweltering clime of North Carolina—they will all make you break into a sweat.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The Rabbit Hutch
By Tess Gunty
Published by Knopf
This remarkable first novel immediately draws you into the story of teenager Blandine Watkins, who grew up in foster care, and the Indiana apartment building where she lives (the ‘rabbit hutch’). Blandine’s life is a series of attempts to stave off loneliness. You’ll also meet other unforgettable denizens of this complex with their own versions of melancholy and trouble. A mystical experience and Blandine’s desire to leave her body informs her present world and will affect the others as well. Gunty captures a particular Midwestern angst. (“It seems to her she’s spent her whole life sitting in a laundromat, freaking people out.”) Her sensibility mixes dark and light, and her characters and their dialogue are as real as your own neighbors.
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Only the Cat Knows
By Ruyan Meng
Published by Red Hen Press
Winner of the Red Hen Press Novella Award, Meng’s affecting fiction begins, ”My father used to say that life was all about how you survive your last straw.” A defeated factory worker longs for an elusive pay raise to feed his family. One day at the grain store (complete with a sleeping black cat who will return in the story) he finds that the 10-yuan note his wife gave him for flour has vanished. The ensuing panic leads to an irreparable act. Based on a true story from China in the ’70s, this is a fascinating tale of debt and desperation during the Communist era.
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On Java Road
By Lawrence Osborne
Published by Hogarth Press
The inheritor of Graham Greene’s moody expat fiction, Osborne places his latest during a fetid summer in Hong Kong. An English journalist past his prime becomes intrigued by the disappearance of a student protestor, the girlfriend of his wealthy Chinese friend. As usual, the author depicts both the seedy and the privileged lifestyles of his characters as he concocts another crime story in which his ‘hero’ is drawn into a dangerous shadowy world. Check out the teasers for the forthcoming adaptation of his terrific novel, The Forgiven with Jessica Chastain and Ralph Fiennes on Instagram: @lawrenceosbornewriter. One look at Osborne’s piercing gaze in author photos makes you want to explore his mysteries set in foreign locations.
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The Women Could Fly
By Megan Giddings
Published by Amistad Press
Many novels have featured misogyny and racism as elements in fiction set in the near future. Giddings’s (Lakewood) story is a strong addition to that growing genre where Octavia Butler reigns. Here, women are mandated to marry by the age of 30. On the cusp of that age, Jo must make some choices herself and come to terms with her mother’s disappearance 14 years before. With witches standing in for oppressed women, Giddings take us down the scary path of the struggles facing Black women yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
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Black Folk Could Fly
By Randall Kenan
Published by W. W. Norton
Hard to resist this one with a similar title to the Giddings. This is a must-have, very personal essay collection from the brilliant writer who recently passed away. Kenan’s earlier posthumous book, the novel If I Had Wings, confirmed his place in the pantheon with James Baldwin. These hard-to-find publications include “Where Am I Black” and “Swinedreams, or Barbecue for the Brain.” In the moving remembrance in Tayari Jones’s introduction, she cites the folktale about Africans flying back to Iboland when the slave ships came to America. Now, everyone can catch up on the extraordinary voice of a gay, Southern, Black man whose talent and integrity stand the test of time.
