May 2, 2020
This week we celebrate the coming of Mother’s Day with some authors from home and abroad, some enticing paperbacks you might have missed when they were first published last year, and a handful of entertaining memoirs from favorite writers.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, Center for Fiction Bookstore
-
.
Sea Wife
By Amity Gaige
Published by Alfred A. Knopf
A young American family setting sail to Panama sounds at first like a glamorous adventure, but . . . Discover what is revealed under the hothouse environment of isolation (Sound familiar?), delusions of grandeur, man vs. nature, and the challenges of the open seas.
-
.
How Much of These Hills is Gold
By C Pam Zhang
Published by Riverhead
A beautiful, haunting debut that allows us to see the world through the eyes of two Chinese American orphans in the American West of the 1860s and is an uncompromising look at what life was like, both tender and tough. The mythology of the landscape is laid out in prose that is gorgeously poetic, unapologetic and eye-opening.
.
-
.
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
By Cho Nam-Joo
Published by Liveright
Set in contemporary Seoul, this controversial feminist novel caused a sensation in Korea and became an international bestseller. In it, Nam-Joo introduces a young woman, continually belittled by the men in her life, who is sent to a shrink by her husband.
-
.
Rodham
By Curtis Sittenfeld
Published by Random House
What if??? Haven’t you wondered what the country might look like if Hillary’s trajectory had been different? Sittenfeld imagines an alternate life for her in this cleverly done, immensely pleasurable life of Hillary Rodham from early school days through almost six decades of ambition, work, service, and love.
.
-
.
Navigate Your Stars
By Jesmyn Ward
Published by SCRIBNER
Encouraging words from a beloved writer whose experiences growing up black and female in the South ring with a universal resonance. As so many students face the abrupt end to their 2020 academic year, Ward’s words remind us of the importance of looking forward and prompt hope for the future.
-
.
Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency
By Olivia Laing
Published by WW Norton
Is Laing a genius? Her observations about literature and art are so incisive and so emotionally satisfying. In each short essay, you get the distilled truth you need to appreciate the gifts of Virginia Woolf, Derek Jarman, David Bowie, Robert Rauschenberg, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Georgia O’Keeffe, Sally Rooney, and more, revealing the importance of art to all our lives.
.
-
.
Save Me the Plums
By Ruth Reichl
Published by Random House
Ruth Reichl’s infectious, passionate memoir of becoming a food writer brings her vibrant, optimistic, irreverent voice from the page to your living room. Bonus: Recipes!
-
.
Spring
By Ali Smith
Published by Knopf Doubleday
Smith’s third installment in her Seasonal Cycle is a subtle play on Shakespeare’s Pericles and so much more, including beautiful stories of friendship and love, Katherine Mansfield, Chaplin, Rilke, Brexit and others. Look for the final volume, Summer, this summer.
.
-
.
Trust Exercise
By Susan Choi
Published by Henry Holt and Co.
Winner (rightly!) of the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, a twisty, incredibly clever novel that turns our assumptions about truth upside down, reminding us that what happens in high school maybe doesn’t always remain in the past.
-
.
Rules for Visiting
By Jessica Francis Kane
Published by Penguin Two
A finalist for our First Novel Prize and an ideal early summer read featuring a gardener who seeks out old friends and reminds us of the importance of literature, friendship, and improvised families—perfect for our isolating times.
.
-
.
Greek to Me
By Mary Norris
Published by WW Norton
New Yorker alum Norris edifies and entertains in this personal account of her love affair with language and its origins in her beloved Greece. Grammar nerds and armchair travelers will delight.
-
.
The Old Drift
By Namwali Serpell
Published by Random House
Longlisted for our First Novel Prize, this sweeping, larger-than-life epic of three Zambian families got some of the most enthusiastic reviews of last year. Unforgettable historical fiction you can get happily lost in.
.
-
.
The Women in Black
By Madeleine St John
Published by Scribner
Hilary Mantel’s go-to book recommendation to chase away the gloom stars an ensemble of women working in a famed department store—a warm and witty comedy of manners, and a love song to a world gone by.
