May 25, 2024
Two novels about sisters (in France and on a Northern European Island) feature in this selection that launches Memorial Day weekend and the beginning of summer. Another explores polar-opposite women living uneasily under the same roof. There is a common thread of shadowy sensuality, unsettling in a good way—making us pay attention to these singular characters. Our nonfiction choices include a trans memoir as powerful as it is poetic, and a biography of one of the most influential editors of our time. Enjoy your holiday!
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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The Blue Maiden
By Anna Noyes
Published by Grove Press
With echoes of The Crucible, Noyes’s (author of the acclaimed story collection Goodnight, Beautiful Women) captivating first novel takes place in the early 1800s on an island off the coast of Sweden. 150 years prior there were witch trials on the neighboring island of Blue Maiden, after which thirty accused women were murdered. The story revolves around the descendants of one of the witches who escaped death: a priest and his two young daughters who become obsessed by the legacy and the secrets of their dead mother. A (literally) spellbinding Gothic tale of generational trauma with a feminist resonance that will delight readers of Shirley Jackson and Nordic historical fiction.
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The Safekeep
By Yael Van Der Wouden
Published by Avid Reader Press
An unnerving atmosphere pervades this tale set primarily in an old family house in 1960s Holland. Isabel has been living alone here since her parents died though the house is meant to belong to her brother. She’s a classic misanthropic character, filled with trepidation and paranoia (is the silverware going missing?) and lives an isolated life. Then Isabel’s brother insists that his annoying girlfriend stay with her while he is away on business. And everything changes. Like one of Sarah Waters’s quietly chilling novels, this one is mesmerizing. It combines history (post-WWII trauma) with queer desire and sexual awakening, amid darkly complicated family dynamics.
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The Editor
By Sara B. Franklin
Published by Atria Books
Judith Jones’s name appears in countless book acknowledgments as editor to eminent writers including Elizabeth Bowen, Langston Hughes, John Updike, and Anne Tyler. This wonderful new biography follows her career from an early publishing job at Doubleday to postwar Paris, then back to New York. At Knopf she acquired Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl and transformed Julia Child’s French cookbook into a massive bestseller. She also published Sylvia Plath’s poems (though she turned down The Bell Jar). Her brilliant career amid the rise of feminism helped make over the image of the woman in the kitchen into one of glamorous independence. The story of Jones’s indispensable contribution to the literary world is catnip for book lovers.
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Pretty
By KB Brookins
Published by Knopf
This is a remarkable book about what it is like to be Black and trans. Assigned female at birth, Brookins was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and identified as a Black lesbian, “wearing pronouns and skinny jeans that didn’t fit.” They wrote this book to not only record the facts of their journey, but also to help others like them who are going through similar experiences. They grew up in a mostly matriarchal family of Baptist church-going women. Sexually abused as a child, they learned ‘to disappear’ early on. Bookins’s writing is replete with lively, colorful language, revealing their poetic chops (poetry and photographs are also included.) A terrific addition to the canon of trans literature.
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A Good Life
By Virginie Grimaldi
Published by Europa Editions
Translated by Hildegarde Serle
Estranged sisters co-star in this delightful novel from French bestseller Virginie Grimaldi—her first to be published in the U.S. Emma and Agathe are five years apart. Emma became her sister’s protector; Agathe was a timid child, and a bit of a mess. Their childhood was marked by the death of their father and an abusive mother. A lifesaver was their beloved grandmother who lived in the Basque Country, and after a rupture in their relationship in middle age they return to her house to try to repair the damage. Giving each sister a point of view, Grimaldi explores the often-stormy facets of sibling dynamics in a deeply satisfying read.
