April 27, 2024
The books this week address the examination of self, how we discover our place in the world, find love, and overcome obstacles. One of the books will be launched at The Center; another is included in an upcoming Reading Group; one writer works in publishing and has written an excellent literary debut; and another first-time novelist updates Shakespeare. To round out the list, a favorite writer explores the aftereffects of a small-town murder.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Real Americans
By RACHEL KHONG
Published by KNOPF
Lily is a Chinese American photo research assistant working as an unpaid intern when we meet her in 1999. Her mother, May, is a geneticist who fled China during the Cultural Revolution. Completing the triad of protagonists is Lily’s son, Nick. The secrets that both bind them together and keep them apart are revealed slowly and with care, as we discover why Nick does not resemble his mother, and how appearances and identity are not always the same thing. Khong probes the way secrets reverberate throughout generations, the ethics of scientific advancements, the challenges of real forgiveness, and the consequences of decisions made with the best of intentions.
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Henry Henry
By ALLEN BRATTON
Published by UNNAMED PRESS
This clever debut is inspired by Shakespeare’s Henriad (his plays about the Kings of England). Young Hal Lancaster strolls along the Thames considering the legacy of his family. A titled heir, he “was going to have to be the seventeenth Duke of Lancaster.” After reading English at Oxford and a stab at acting, this presents a daunting future. Bratton fashions a contemporary Hal—queer and a bit lost, self-medicating with drugs and booze, wrangling with Catholic guilt, trying to navigate the burdens and privileges of his ancestry despite family dysfunction (there’s even a character named Falstaff). It recalls the dark but comic fiction of fellow Englishman, Edward St. Aubyn.
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I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays
By NELL IRVIN PAINTER
Published by DOUBLEDAY
Painter, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, has been writing trenchant essays on racial politics, history, gender, and identity for several decades. This publication of over forty essays is cause for cheer. Topics include the work of Toni Morrison, Sojourner Truth, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Historian, critic, and truth-teller extraordinaire, her artwork adorns the collection, including the cover self-portrait (she attended RISD after a career in academia). In her introduction she states, “My Blackness isn’t broken. It faces a different way. Mine is a blackness of solidarity, a community, a connectedness to other people who aren’t known personally, of seeing myself as part of other people, other Black people.”
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Granite Harbor
By PETER NICHOLS
Published by CELADON
Nichols, once again finds character in the landscape, but the genre this time is crime and the setting is small town Maine. There is a lot of pressure on detective Alex Brangwen who is refashioning his life as a single parent and the town’s only detective. His first murder case is unnerving: finding a serial killer. The trouble begins with the discovery of a body of a young man in an old archeological site who was a friend of Brangwen’s teenage daughter. A little of Broadchurch and some Stephen King, it is perfect if you crave a page-turning mystery, however I suggest you read it during the daytime…
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888 Love and the Divine Burden of Numbers
By ABRAHAM CHANG
Published by FLATIRON
Nostalgic for New York in the ’90s? This book is a delightful delve into that period, featuring a superstitious young man whose magical thinking (encouraged by his Chinese uncle) and obsession with numbers leads him to believe there will be eight great loves in his life. The problem is that Erena, who he falls for, is the seventh in a string of misfires. The fun of Chang’s sweet novel is finding out if the star-crossed couple is meant to be. A publishing veteran, Chang strikes a chord that many readers will relate to and the ‘soundtrack highlights’ that mark each chapter provide a background playlist that adds to the evocative atmosphere.
