August 29, 2020
This week marked the publication of the hotly anticipated new novel from Elena Ferrante, which we had the pleasure of launching Tuesday, September 1st with an amazing virtual event. (The first 100 to purchase books get a copy signed by the phenomenal translator and Center for Fiction friend, Ann Goldstein!) This and the other new books featured this week will take you to new emotional heights and carry you to the end of the summer.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The Lying Life of Adults
By Elena Ferrante
Published by Europa
Translated by Ann Goldstein
“Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly.” Thus begins the new adventure, a coming-of-age story of a young woman straddling the double identity of the city of Naples—both high and low. No spoilers here but fans will not be disappointed.
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Fresh Water for Flowers
By Valérie Perrin
Published by Europa
Another sparkling Europa novel—this one by a prize-winning French author, photographer and screenwriter. This first-person narrative introduces a young woman who works in a cemetery, a job she inherited from her absent husband. Despite the mournful setting this is a sweet and hopeful novel about a woman whose fiercely determined optimism and compassion is contagious.
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A Girl Is a Body of Water
By Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Published by Tin House
Get lost in the epic journey of a contemporary Ugandan girl, raised by a gaggle of female relatives, but not her birth mother. The search for her mother and the desire to reconcile the warring parts of her psyche take the reader to a land full of folklore and witchcraft.
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Transcendent Kingdom
By Yaa Gyasi
Published by Knopf
Homegoing author Yaa Gyasi’s new novel is set in California where the brilliant daughter of a Ghanaian immigrant pursues a career in neuroscience while her mother in Alabama mourns the loss of her drug-addicted son. When she comes to stay with her daughter their lives and histories unfold as they attempt to mend the damage and find their way back to each other.
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The Patron Saint of Pregnant Girls
By Ursula Hegi
Published by Flatiron
If you’ve never read Ursula Hegi’s first novel, Stones from the River, please do so. Hegi’s new novel, her sixth, follows three women in the late 1880s on an island off of the North Sea coast of Germany in a home for unwed mothers. In the wake of a tragic natural disaster—a hundred-year wave—that claims three young children, these strong mothers must put their lives back together. It is Hegi at her best, full of landscape and imagination and indelible characters.
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Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of Covid-19
By Jennifer Haupt
Published by Central Avenue
An urgent anthology of essays that can only help us express our feelings about living through this pandemic—with an impressive lineup of writers including Kwame Alexander, Pam Houston, Dani Shapiro, Nikki Giovanni, Jeanne Kwok, and Andre Dubus III. The collection also benefits BINC (the Book Industry Charitable Foundation) an honorable cause we celebrated with a virtual event earlier in the month.
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