May 23, 2026
This week we observe both fictional and real characters who have been influenced by their travels to unfamiliar places near and far. A noted humorist is continually awed by his journeys; a Chinese American novelist explores how previous generations of his family viewed the world; a writer uses a (very) late pregnancy to explore female autonomy in our current world; and a Bulgarian author is transplanted to New York. You will also find a selection of excellent essays from an award-winning writer.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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On Witness and Respair
By Jesmyn Ward
Published by Scribner
In these essays, Ward takes on subjects as disparate as the importance of fiction; raising a Black son in the US; the power of Ta-Nehisi Coates; and the music of Michael Jackson and Otis Redding. In her introduction, she relates what her eight-year-old self felt when she looked at a map of Mississippi authors, how she eventually made it onto that same map, and how she found solace in reading that took her out of the reality of being Black and poor. The pieces start in 2008 (about Hurricane Katrina) and continue through 2025, including her beautiful 2019 speech at Toni Morrison’s memorial, in which she calls out Morrison’s “gentle regard.” This should have a place by your bedside.
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Enormous Wings
By Laurie Frankel
Published by Henry Holt
Frankel’s entertaining new novel could have been an acidic polemic about a woman whose children have moved her to a Texas retirement community (where rugs were deemed too risky) at the age of seventy-seven. Even worse, “…among Vista View’s many indignities,” her “ex-husband was a resident already.” Unhappily ensconced there at first, to her great surprise she falls in love. When it becomes implausibly clear that she is pregnant, the novel takes off. As well as being completely engaging, Frankel probes the thorny issues of abortion (illegal in Texas), women’s agency over their bodies, and ageism. Pepper Mills (what a name!) is a delightful narrator and Frankel proves you can combine fun with important and timely societal matters.
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People Who Live Alone Talk Too Much
By Sofi Stambo; Illustrated by Yana Mihaylova
Published by Restless Books
Bulgarian-born Stambo’s collection was awarded the 2024 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writers. You will see why. Her voice is quietly innovative and the stories are quirky, filled with absurd situations and characters like the three girls “dying of boredom” in a NYC accounting office, which at least has a view of the Hudson River (in the title story); and a couple eating in a Greek diner and eavesdropping on the other customers, speaking in Bulgarian so no one understands them. In “Go Get ‘Em,” a couple sees the movie Hair, decides they are hippies, and dons ripped denim and colorful scarves. Her influences—including David Sedaris (see below)—are on display in the dry humor throughout.
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Babylon, South Dakota
By Tom Lin
Published by Little, Brown and Company
Lin subverts classic Western and sci-fi tropes with a novel about a transplanted Chinese family, influenced by stories heard from his grandparents. In the mid-1970s, Hsiu Keng and Lee Mei arrive in an alien landscape with all their worldly possessions after inheriting a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. They quickly make it their own and start a family. But when the US military builds a nuclear missile silo on their property, the story takes a speculative turn and, as the author says, “the lines between reality and magic begin to blur a little.” Lin explores the impact of immigration across generations with surprising turns that somehow wrap up nicely by the novel’s end.
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The Land and Its People
By David Sedaris
Published by Little, Brown and Company
The hilarious essays from this consummate humorist are leavened with the pathos that comes from looking back upon life and its absurdities. The titles alone can produce a laugh (“The Violence of the Rams”) and one of my favorites, “The Hem of His Garment,” is an instant classic, describing Sedaris’s unexpected summons to visit the Vatican with three days’ notice to meet the Pope with over 100 other comics. Priceless. Friends and family (especially his husband, Hugh, of course) make important appearances and we see through his extensive travels around the globe that his experiences with ‘the land and its people’ have had an enriching, enlightening, and sometimes even sobering influence on his life.
