STACKED

books

I Had a Baby

|

It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? And by a minute, I mean…a few months. A lot has happened in my life since I last posted here. I’m reading a lot less and writing basically none, and that’s due mainly to the fact that I added a small human to my family in May. While I had an overall average pregnancy (no major complications, the usual aches and pains – uncomfortable but manageable), my birth and postpartum were pretty traumatic. I’m fine and so is the baby, but it was definitely not the birth experience I hoped for. However, now that we’re currently exiting the “fourth trimester” and kinda sorta getting the hang of taking care of a baby, I find myself with some time to do a little more than just feed the baby, burp the baby, change the baby, rock the baby, and try to squeeze in some food and sleep for myself.

As far as my reading life goes, I did read a few helpful pregnancy books before delivering, plus I occasionally page through a couple of baby-care books when I can. I’m also forcing myself to read a chapter or two of an actual print book – not related to babies, just for fun – every week. I thought I’d be able to continue my audiobook listening, but I’ve found it difficult to be able to focus enough on the stories while caring for the baby. Those tasks demand just enough of my mental energy to make following a book at the same time mostly impossible. Instead, I put on some low-energy television that I can still follow while only paying half attention to it (Survivor was our show of choice in the first month, but I mainly re-watch crime procedurals now).

I’m hoping to be able to get back into reading and writing more as the baby sleeps longer and my family gets more efficient and practiced with our baby-care duties. To kick off this goal, here’s a rundown of my recent reads.

Pregnancy and Baby-Related

Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom is Wrong – and What You Really Need to Know by Emily Oster

I dislike the clickbait subheads on Oster’s books, but I really appreciate her straightforward discussions about pregnancy and caring for an infant. She’s an economist who writes about where the “conventional pregnancy wisdom” comes from – namely, the studies behind the advice and guidance doctors, other mothers, and the internet give new parents.

I found this book super helpful for right-sizing the actual risk of my activities to my baby in utero, and the conclusions I drew are mainly that there’s a lot less risk than you’d think. Just as I expected, much of the guidance about what to avoid (anything that tastes good or is mildly exciting) is fear-mongering and not based on science. For the most part, the only things that will harm a fetus are binge drinking (small amounts of alcohol are fine and not shown to cause harm), excessive caffeine (two cups of coffee a day are fine), and smoking and other recreational drug use (any amount). Foods pregnant people are often told to avoid, like sushi, are fine to consume if they’re from a provider you trust and stored safely. In my area of the world, food-borne illness such as listeria has more widely been found in melon, ice cream, and prepared salads, none of which pregnant people are told to avoid.

Oster does a good job of laying out the facts about each study, including whether it’s a good study in the first place or if there’s actually been a study done on a particular piece of guidance at all (it’s really hard to do ethical studies on pregnancy!). She repeatedly emphasizes that she wants the reader to draw her own conclusions about what she should or should not do/consume, giving examples from her own life (she chose to continue to eat turkey sandwiches; a friend of hers chose to avoid them). For my part, it helped me as a first-time mother calm my fears about harming my child and made me feel a bit freer in those precious months before my life would change entirely.

Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool by Emily Oster

What I remember most from this follow-up to Expecting Better is that women who forego the epidural tend to push for shorter amounts of time and have faster recoveries. Because of this, I wrote in my birth plan that I wanted to wait and see how my pain was before getting the epidural. I ended up asking for it before I was even admitted to the hospital because the pain was so bad – I believe I would have passed out from it if I hadn’t gotten the pain relief. It was definitely the right choice for me and if I have another baby, I will take the epidural immediately again. (I also only pushed for about 15 minutes so it doesn’t seem like it had any effect on that!) This is another good book from Oster, though I admit not a lot of it stuck with me.

Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy, Second Edition by Myra J. Wick, M.D., Ph.D.

I chose this as my pregnancy preparedness guide because I wanted an alternative to What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which had reviews that indicated even the most current edition had out of date information and the writing style spoke down to its audience. This is a straightforward, no-nonsense book from the experts that breaks down a pregnancy week by week, discussing what symptoms are normal, what symptoms are more serious and may require medical attention, and other useful ways to prepare for a new baby.

 

Mayo Clinic Guide to Your Baby’s First Years, Second Edition by Walter J. Cook, M.D., and Kelsey M. Klaas, M.D.

More of the same from the Mayo Clinic. This guide discusses common themes in the first half (feeding, sleeping) and then goes month-by-month in the second, covering milestones and normal growth.

 

 

 

Baby 411: Your Baby, Birth to Age 1 by Dr. Ari Brown and Denise Fields

This is a great dip-in, dip-out guide to everything baby. We’ve used it when we had a specific question or concern – just turn to that page and find the answer. It’s interesting to see what advice conflicts with the Mayo Clinic book or the pediatrician. The authors of Baby 411 suggest using distilled water, then boiling it, before mixing it with powdered formula (the former because of fluoride that newborns don’t need; the latter to sterilize the powder, which does not come sterilized). Our pediatrician says neither is necessary for an otherwise healthy newborn. So while there are many good books on the subject of babies, some discretion and decision-making will always be required.

 

Just for Fun

There Will Come a Darkness by Katy Rose Pool

This is the print book I’m currently making my way through. I bought it at the last Texas Book Festival pre-Covid; it was among the set of books I purchased that I read fairly quickly after buying them, which is unusual for me (like many a bookworm, I acquire many more books than I actually read). This was one of the few I hadn’t gotten around to yet. It’s an epic YA fantasy with an ensemble cast about a world whose Prophets disappeared many years ago – and a prophecy that speaks of the birth of a new Prophet that could either save or destroy everything. Five teenagers, some with magical powers, are each caught up in the adventure.

I’m halfway through it, which feels like a minor miracle considering my reading is constantly interrupted or simply relegated to the back burner in favor of other activities (mostly feeding myself and sleeping). I’m enjoying the book, but not loving it, and I think that’s largely due to the fact that it’s really difficult for me to push from my mind thoughts about what I Should Be Doing (laundry, listening for the baby waking up, washing bottles, tidying the house, etc., etc.) and focus on just reading. The book is a bit of a slow burn as Pool slowly reveals how each character is connected to each other and to the larger story. Chapters cycle through each character’s point of view, making this a good readalike for teens who enjoyed that aspect of Game of Thrones but want something a bit more on their level.

The Mother in Law by Sally Hepworth

I had never heard of this author before, but I really enjoyed this story about the tense relationship between a woman and her mother-in-law, and what happens when the mother-in-law is found dead (presumably murdered). This is less domestic noir and more tragic family story with a bit of suspense thrown in. Hepworth is really good at crafting three-dimensional, difficult, but sympathetic characters, and the mother-in-law in this story stuck with me long after I finished the book and learned how she died. If you enjoy psychological thrillers but want something a bit less soapy, I recommend giving Hepworth’s books a try (I also read and can recommend The Good Sister).

 

The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

This author duo specializes in melodramatic psychological thrillers with a huge twist (or two) at the end. They are a lot of fun, though not of the highest quality. I started this one on audio while pregnant and finished it while caring for a newborn. I got a bit impatient with it, though, knowing that there would be a trademark Hendricks/Pekkanen twist at the end, and I looked up spoilers online before finishing it. The twist isn’t nearly as clever or satisfying at the one in their first hit, The Wife Between Us, and it made the book mostly forgettable for me, but it was an enjoyable few hours that helped pass the time in those first few long nights with a newborn at home.

 

 

What I’m Reading Now: Greek Mythology-Inspired Fiction

|

Hello everyone! I’m still here. I’ve been reading a fair amount, but my desire to do any writing whatsoever has really taken a dive these past couple of months. I’ve officially moved to working from home on a mostly permanent basis (as opposed to doing so out of necessity), and it’s been more of an adjustment that I thought it would be, despite the fact that I’ve been working from home for over a year now. Coupled with the surge in Covid cases and the subsequent restrictions on a lot of activities (it’s 2020 all over again!), I’ve been feeling kind of bummed and not up for a lot of things I normally do. I know I’m not alone in this. I’m trying to focus on the things that bring me joy – it’s still safe to see family and friends in small groups, for instance, since we’re all vaccinated. And today I feel a bit more like writing.

I’ve noticed that my reading lately has been clustering around a few common topics, so over the next few weeks I’ll focus on each of them in turn. Up first this week is Greek Mythology-Inspired Fiction.

 

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

One of two audiobooks on this list, Haynes reads her own story about the Trojan war told from the women’s perspectives. There are a bunch of characters here (I’m only halfway through but there are chapters from at least a dozen different women’s POVs so far), and while Haynes is an able reader, imbuing her characters with emotion and gravitas, she doesn’t differentiate the voicing at all. If I set the audiobook down partway through a chapter, it is sometimes difficult to remember which character’s story she is currently telling.

This is a fairly straightforward retelling of the Iliad/Trojan War that I hesitate to call it a retelling at all, though it’s well-written and certainly gives the women much more humanity and depth than the original did. But the events happen in the same way, just as you likely learned about them in high school, so don’t pick up this book looking for a twist on the original tale. Think of it more like a book that fills in all the missing parts of the original – and does it exceptionally well.

 

Daughter of Sparta by Claire M. Andrews

This YA book is a loose retelling of the story of Daphne and Apollo, told from Daphne’s point of view. Unlike A Thousand Ships, though, Andrews changes quite a bit of the commonly-known myth, leaving only a few bits and pieces that readers might recognize if they’re familiar with the tale. In Andrews’ version, Daphne is called upon by Artemis to recover things that have been stolen from Olympus – things that lend the Olympians their power. Without these things, the Olympians not only lose their special powers but also become mortal. Artemis sends her brother Apollo to “help” Daphne in her quest – first to determine what exactly has been taken, then to take them back. A romance ensues, but it’s not quite as you’d expect if you’re familiar with either the original myth (which is not a romance at all) or a lot of YA fantasy romance.

The romance isn’t actually front and center in the book; instead, this book is mainly a grand adventure, with Daphne, Apollo, and a few other companions they pick up along the way traveling across Greece and meeting gods, demigods, and humans with secrets. It’s reminiscent of the Percy Jackson books, perhaps not as funny, but fun and a page-turner. I found the writing a bit clunky, and it was frustrating how all the characters jumped around Daphne’s true identity, ostensibly leaving it as a surprise for future installments (which anyone who is familiar with the myth will already know), but overall, this is a solid read for fans of Greek mythology. Andrews’ twist on the original myth is a creative one.

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

This one is less directly related to Greek mythology than the other two. It’s a classic thriller with a hell of a series of twists at the end – just the kind of thriller that I love. Group therapist Mariana is visiting her niece Zoe at Cambridge to comfort her after a friend of Zoe’s was found murdered. When yet another girl dies, Mariana becomes determined the culprit is suave professor Edward Fosca, who teaches Greek tragedy and seems to always be followed by a coterie of young female students he calls “The Maidens.” Not so coincidentally, Mariana thinks, the murder victims were both members of this group of Maidens. As Mariana digs deeper, she becomes more and more obsessed with the myth of Persephone (the maiden in Greek mythology), as it seems to pop up everywhere in relation to the murdered girls.

Michaelides is good at ratcheting up the tension. Mariana does make some almost too stupid to be believed decisions in order to further the plot (such as choosing to meet up with Fosca alone in his room while she actively suspects him of being a serial killer), but it’s a fun ride nonetheless. When the biggest twist arrives (and there are several smaller ones preceding it), I thought back on some small events and was pleased to realize that Michaelides did indeed lay the groundwork for it earlier in the book. Yet this groundwork, at least for me, was not so obvious that it gave everything away. While I always try to guess the twist, I like it best when I’m completely surprised. The last bit of the book does go a bit off the rails, and it left me feeling pretty despondent about all characters involved, but it’s the kind of wild ride that’s fun to the very end.

Louise Brealey narrates the bulk of the audiobook, and she does a fantastic job; I was completely lost in the story and didn’t want to stop listening.

 

 

The End of October by Lawrence Wright

|

end of october book coverI picked up Lawrence Wright’s pandemic thriller at the Public Library Association annual conference at the end of February, just before the seriousness of the real-life coronavirus pandemic in the United States crested. Two weeks later, my library closed to the public, and the rest of the country soon followed.

I hardly thought a novel about a pandemic would be my book of choice during those early days of the crisis in my part of the world. Yet I found myself returning to it, reading a chapter or two a day, comparing Wright’s fictional pandemic to our own ongoing one with fascination.

The End of October is a medical thriller about a flu (called Kongoli) pandemic, and as a novel, I can’t say it’s that good. Wright is best known for his nonfiction works, including The Looming Tower (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize) and Going Clear (my personal favorite), as well as being a staff writer for The New Yorker. He’s an expert researcher and practically peerless when it comes to distilling that research into long-form narratives that are accurate, nuanced, interesting, and accessible to most readers.

As a novelist, however, I found his writing lacking. The story mostly follows Henry Parsons, a microbiologist and epidemiologist who works for the World Health Organization and is the first to discover the outbreak of a new, deadly flu in Indonesia. While he comes to terms with just how serious this disease is (the fatality rate is extraordinarily high – most people who contract it die), he fails to stop its spread – his driver unknowingly contracts it and goes on Hajj to Mecca, along with millions of others.

As Henry travels around the world, researching the disease, its potential source (a lab in Russia? a lab in the United States? an ancient woolly mammoth unearthed by melting permafrost?), and a vaccine, we’re also treated to random chapters from other characters’ points of view, many of which could be intriguing but are ultimately head-scratching in their lack of necessity. Most of the characters, even Henry, feel very surface. Chapters read like sketches or parts of an outline rather than anything that builds true tension or makes readers feel anything for the characters. Tragedies feel laughable and characters’ backstories melodramatic instead of sad or alarming. A particularly bad chapter begins with a sentence announcing a character’s death without preamble, and it feels so dry and emotionless, I had to go back and re-read the previous chapters to ensure I didn’t miss anything. It’s so disappointing in part because the real-life people Wright writes about come to life on the page.

What kept me reading were the true bits, the bits at which Wright excels: how viruses begin, how they spread, how vaccines are created, the history behind viruses and vaccines, and how societies react (for good or for ill) to pandemics. It was fascinating to compare Wright’s fictional flu virus to our real coronavirus, especially once the economies in his book started to shut down as ours were at the time. I was fascinated by the similarities between the race for a vaccine in Wright’s book to the race in the real world (scientists in The End of October also experimented with antibody transfusions), as well as the history behind vaccines. Every time I video chatted with friends while reading this book, I had a new tidbit to share, such as a technique called variolation that involved putting smallpox scabs inside a scratch on a healthy person’s skin to cause a reaction and ultimately inoculate them.

Living through something so similar to Wright’s characters drives home the huge amount of research he did for his book and makes his premise scarily plausible. Despite how awful the coronavirus pandemic currently is, the flu pandemic in The End of October is infinitely more terrifying, and some readers may feel (fleetingly) grateful for the relatively low fatality rate of COVID-19 compared to Kongoli. There are so many tantalizing nuggets of real information in this story that it’s still worth a read, despite its shortcomings as a novel.

After living through the pandemic for over two months now, though, I’m glad I read and finished this book early on. It’s certainly not something I’d choose to read now, after the changes in our lives and the daily death counts have become the new normal. I wonder if Wright’s book is doing better or worse than expected because of the pandemic – pandemic and other disaster movies were top 10 picks on Netflix for several weeks, but at the same time, editors are actively avoiding pandemic and dystopian fiction as a result of the crisis. Perhaps in a few years, though, I’d be interested to read Wright’s nonfiction account of the coronavirus pandemic, if he chooses to write one; he’s already started the background research with this novel.

Adult Books Go To The Birds

|

I’ve talked about how I spend a lot of time looking through publisher catalogs each season, and while for the most part I focus on YA books, I can’t help but notice certain themes emerge in book cover trends in other categories. It doesn’t hurt that I do try to read a few adult novels for All The Books, too (and that a good chunk of my reading habits involved adult nonfiction). One of the recent trends I’ve seen in adult fiction is the use of animals on book covers.

Certainly, there have always been animals on adult book covers. But there’s definitely been an uptick, and I kind of love it. There’s a wide variety of animals represented, including those that appear to be alive and those which appear to be taxidermied. Perhaps I’ll do a roundup of all those animals in a post, but I wanted to focus more specifically on the bird in this roundup.

Birds are a hugely popular motif in fiction. We’ve seen it again and again in YA, both thematically and in their appearance on book covers. We’re fascinated with these creatures, whether they’re teeny tiny hummingbirds or the lumbering giant emus and ostriches. When it comes to birds on adult book covers, they’ve always been there. But there’s definitely an upswing in them for 2020, and they showcase such a wide variety of species, both recognizable and not.

This is far from a comprehensive look at bird covers for 2020 adult fiction books, especially as not everything publishing in the fall has had cover reveals. But it is a really neat glimpse at a theme. I love these covers and thinking about what it is they might represent of the story itself. I know last year’s surge of rabbit-themed book covers (Bunny by Mona Awad and Rabbits for Food by Binnie Kirshenbaum, among others) helped draw me in to books that I adored which I might have otherwise overlooked. I have little doubt the bird theme will do the same for me this year. It was, in fact, a bird themed cover that was my favorite book cover last year.

Descriptions for these books come from Goodreads, since I have yet to read any of them. If you have, I’d love to hear which one I should start with.

 

Apeirogon by Colum McCann

Colum McCann’s most ambitious work to date, Apeirogon–named for a shape with a countably infinite number of sides–is a tour de force concerning friendship, love, loss, and belonging.

Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their daily lives, from the roads they are allowed to drive on, to the schools their daughters, Abir and Smadar, each attend, to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate.

Their worlds shift irreparably after ten-year-old Abir is killed by a rubber bullet and thirteen-year-old Smadar becomes the victim of suicide bombers. When Bassam and Rami learn of each other’s stories, they recognize the loss that connects them and they attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace.

McCann crafts Apeirogon out of a universe of fictional and nonfictional material. He crosses centuries and continents, stitching together time, art, history, nature, and politics in a tale both heartbreaking and hopeful. Musical, cinematic, muscular, delicate, and soaring, Apeirogon is a novel for our time.

 

 

Accidentals by Susan M. Gaines (March 10)

When Gabriel’s immigrant mother returns to her native Uruguay, he takes a break from his uninspiring job to accompany her. Immersed in his squabbling family, birdwatching in the wetlands on their abandoned ranch, and falling in love with a local biologist, he makes discoveries that force him to contend with the environmental cataclysm of his turn-of-millennium present—even as he confronts the Cold War era ideologies and political violence that have shaped his family’s past.

 

 

The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey (March 10)

In August 1939, thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright arrives at Lockwood Manor to oversee a natural history museum collection, whose contents have been taken out of London for safekeeping. She is unprepared for the scale of protecting her charges from party guests, wild animals, the elements, the tyrannical Major Lockwood and Luftwaffe bombs. Most of all, she is unprepared for the beautiful and haunted Lucy Lockwood.

For Lucy, who has spent much of her life cloistered at Lockwood suffering from bad nerves, the arrival of the museum brings with it new freedoms. But it also resurfaces memories of her late mother, and nightmares in which Lucy roams Lockwood hunting for something she has lost.

When the animals appear to move of their own accord, and exhibits go missing, they begin to wonder what exactly it is that they might need protection from. And as the disasters mount up, it is not only Hetty’s future employment that is in danger, but her own sanity too. There’s something, or someone, in the house. Someone stalking her through its darkened corridors . . .

 

 

Beheld by TaraShea Nesbit (March 17)

From the bestselling author of The Wives of Los Alamos comes the riveting story of a stranger’s arrival in the fledgling colony of Plymouth, Massachusetts―and a crime that shakes the divided community to its core.

Ten years after the Mayflower pilgrims arrived on rocky, unfamiliar soil, Plymouth is not the land its residents had imagined. Seemingly established on a dream of religious freedom, in reality the town is led by fervent puritans who prohibit the residents from living, trading, and worshipping as they choose. By the time an unfamiliar ship, bearing new colonists, appears on the horizon one summer morning, Anglican outsiders have had enough.

With gripping, immersive details and exquisite prose, TaraShea Nesbit reframes the story of the pilgrims in the previously unheard voices of two women of very different status and means. She evokes a vivid, ominous Plymouth, populated by famous and unknown characters alike, each with conflicting desires and questionable behavior.

Suspenseful and beautifully wrought, Beheld is about a murder and a trial, and the motivations―personal and political―that cause people to act in unsavory ways. It is also an intimate portrait of love, motherhood, and friendship that asks: Whose stories get told over time, who gets believed―and subsequently, who gets punished?

 

Broken People by Sam Lansky (June 9)

“He fixes everything that’s wrong with you in three days.”

This is what hooks Sam when he first overhears it at a fancy dinner party in the Hollywood hills: the story of a globe-trotting shaman who claims to perform “open-soul surgery” on emotionally damaged people. For neurotic, depressed Sam, new to Los Angeles after his life in New York imploded, the possibility of total transformation is utterly tantalizing. He’s desperate for something to believe in, and the shaman—who promises ancient rituals, plant medicine and encounters with the divine—seems convincing, enough for Sam to sign up for a weekend under his care.

But are the great spirits the shaman says he’s summoning real at all? Or are the ghosts in Sam’s memory more powerful than any magic?

At turns tender and acid, funny and wise, Broken People is a journey into the nature of truth and fiction—a story of discovering hope amid cynicism, intimacy within chaos and peace in our own skin.

 

 

Dear Ann by Bobbie Ann Mason (September 8)

Ann Workman is smart but naïve, a misfit who’s traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Anne fervently seeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn for—a boyfriend. But not any boy. She wants the “Real Thing,” to be in love with someone who loves her equally.

Then Jimmy appears as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything. Ann and Jimmy bond through music and literature and their own quirkiness, diving headfirst into what seems to be a perfect relationship. But with the Vietnam War looming and the country in turmoil, their future is uncertain.

Many years later, Ann recalls this time of innocence—and her own obsession with Jimmy—as she faces another life crisis. Seeking escape from her problems, she tries to imagine where she might be if she had chosen differently all those years ago. What if she had gone to Stanford University, as her mentor had urged, instead of a small school on the East Coast? Would she have been caught up in the Summer of Love and its subsequent dark turns? Or would her own good sense have saved her from disaster?

Beautifully written and expertly told, Dear Ann is the wrenching story of one woman’s life and the choices she has made. Bobbie Ann Mason captures at once the excitement of youth and the nostalgia of age, and how consideration of the road not taken—the interplay of memory and imagination—can illuminate, and perhaps overtake, our present.

 

Deceit and Other Possibilities by Vanessa Hua (March 10)

In this powerful debut collection, Vanessa Hua gives voice to immigrant families navigating a new America. Tied to their ancestral and adopted homelands in ways unimaginable in generations past, these memorable characters straddle both worlds but belong to none.

From a Hong Kong movie idol fleeing a sex scandal, to an obedient daughter turned Stanford imposter, to a Chinatown elder summoned to his village, to a Korean-American pastor with a secret agenda, the characters in these ten stories vividly illustrate the conflict between self and society, tradition and change. In “What We Have is What We Need,” winner of The Atlantic student fiction prize, a boy from Mexico reunites with his parents in San Francisco. When he suspects his mother has found love elsewhere, he fights to keep his family together.

With insight and wit, she writes about what wounds us and what we must survive. Her searing stories explore the clash of cultures and the complex, always shifting allegiances that we carry in ourselves, our family, and our community. DECEIT AND OTHER POSSIBILITIES marks the emergence of a remarkable new writer.

 

 

 

The Intoxicating Mr. Lavelle by Neil Blackmore (June 11)

‘Your brother takes me for a barbarian, Mr Bowen. But I assure you, I’m quite well trained.’ 

When Benjamin and Edgar Bowen embark on a Grand Tour of Europe, they are ready to meet People of Quality. They have trunks full of powdered silver wigs and matching suits, a hunger to experience the architectural wonders of Ancient Rome and an ability to quote Voltaire (at length). They will make connections and establish themselves in high society, just as their mother has planned.

But it soon becomes apparent that their outfits are not quite the right shade of grey, their smiles are too ready, their appreciation of the arts ridiculous. Class, they learn, is not something that can be studied.

Benjamin’s true education begins when he meets Horace Lavelle. Beautiful, charismatic, seductive, Lavelle delights in skewering the pretensions and prejudices of their milieu. He consumes Benjamin’s every thought.

Love can transform a person. Can it save them?

 

 

 

Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud (April 14)

An electrifying novel of love in its messiest forms–a complicated marriage, an unconventional family, and the shocking secrets that unite them–from an award-winning Trinidadian author.

After Betty Ramdin’s abusive husband dies, she invites a colleague, Mr. Chetan, to move in with her and her son, Solo, as their lodger. Over time, these three form an unconventional family, loving each other deeply and depending upon one another. Then, one fateful night, Solo overhears Betty confiding in Mr. Chetan and learns a secret that plunges him into torment. His despair ultimately sends him running to live a lonely life in New York City, devastating Betty in the process. Yet both Solo and Betty are buoyed by the continuing love and friendship of Mr. Chetan–until his own burdensome secret is uncovered with heartbreaking repercussions.

In vibrant, addictive Trinidadian prose, Love After Love questions who and how we love, the obligations of family, and the consequences of choices made in desperation.

 

Made of Stars by Mark H. Fitzpatrick

Made of Stars is an epic poem in prose, a modern ode to the traditions of Homer and Dante, Spenser and Milton. At its core is an ancient tale of love and loss, dark nights and redemption, and, as with those that came before, it is also an attempt to evolve—to dance on furthest edge of all we might experience.

 

Meadowlark by Melanie Abrams (April 7)

A haunting novel about the lasting effects of childhood trauma and the resulting choices we make for our children.

After growing up in an austere spiritual compound, two teenagers, Simrin and Arjun, escape and go their separate ways. Years later, Simrin receives an email from Arjun. As they reconnect, Simrin learns that he has become the charismatic leader of Meadowlark, a commune in the Nevada desert that allows children to discover their “gifts.”

In spite of their fractured relationship, Simrin, a photojournalist, agrees to visit Meadowlark to document its story. She arrives at the commune with her five-year-old daughter in tow and soon realizes there is something disturbing about Arjun’s beliefs concerning children and their unusual abilities. When she discovers that the commune is in the midst of a criminal investigation, her unease grows deeper still.

As tensions with police heighten, Arjun’s wife begins to make plans of her own, fearing the exposure the investigation might bring for her and her children. Both mothers find themselves caught in a desperate situation, and as the conflict escalates, everyone involved must make painful—and potentially tragic—choices that could change their worlds forever.

Gripping and beautifully crafted, Meadowlark explores the power and danger of being extraordinary and what it means to see and be seen.

 

 

Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino (June 2)

Acclaimed author of 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas Marie-Helene Bertino’s Parakeet is a darkly funny and warm-hearted novel about a young woman whose dead grandmother (in the form of a parakeet) warns her not to marry and sends her out to find an estranged loved one.

The week of her wedding, The Bride is visited by a bird she recognizes as her dead grandmother because of the cornflower blue line beneath her eyes, her dubious expression, and the way she asks: What is the Internet? 

Her grandmother is a parakeet. She says not to get married. She says: Go and find your brother.

In the days that follow, The Bride’s march to the altar becomes a wild and increasingly fragmented, unstable journey that bends toward the surreal and forces her to confront matters long buried.

A novel that does justice to the hectic confusion of becoming a woman today, Parakeet asks and begins to answer the essential questions. How do our memories make, cage, and free us? How do we honor our experiences and still become our strongest, truest selves? Who are we responsible for, what do we owe them, and how do we allow them to change?

Urgent, strange, warm-hearted, and sly, Parakeet is ribboned with joy, fear, and an inextricable thread of real love. It is a startling, unforgettable, life-embracing exploration of self and connection.

 

 

Real Life by Brandon Taylor

A novel of startling intimacy, violence, and mercy among friends in a Midwestern university town, from an electric new voice. 

Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.

Real Life is a novel of profound and lacerating power, a story that asks if it’s ever really possible to overcome our private wounds, and at what cost.

 

 

Red Dress in Black and White by Elliot Ackerman (May 26)

From the widely acclaimed author of Waiting for Eden: a stirring, timely new novel that unfolds over the course of a single day in Istanbul: the story of an American woman attempting to leave behind her life in Turkey–to leave without her husband.

Catherine has been married for many years to Murat, an influential Turkish real estate developer, and they have a young son together, William. But when she decides to leave her marriage and return home to the United States with William and her photographer lover, Murat determines to take a stand. He enlists the help of an American diplomat to prevent his wife and child from leaving the country–but, by inviting this scrutiny into their private lives, Murat becomes only further enmeshed in a web of deception and corruption. As the hidden architecture of these relationships is gradually exposed, we learn the true nature of a cast of struggling artists, wealthy businessmen, expats, spies, a child pulled in different directions by his parents, and, ultimately, a society in crisis. Riveting and unforgettably perceptive, Red Dress in Black and White is a novel of personal and political intrigue that casts light into the shadowy corners of a nation on the brink.

 

 

 

Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (April 7)

Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she’s not about to jump but they don’t believe her. Her husband, Oscar is called to pick her up.

Oscar hopes that leaving New York for a few months will give Mina the space to heal. They travel to London, to an apartment wall-papered with indigo-eyed birds, to Oscar’s oldest friends, to a canal and blooming flower market. Mina, a classicist, searches for solutions to her failing mental health using mythological women. But she finds a beam of light in a living woman. Friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina’s complicated love is tested.

 

 

The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams

A mysterious flock of red birds has descended over Birch Hill. Recently reinvented, it is now home to an elite and progressive school designed to shape the minds of young women. But Eliza Bell – the most inscrutable and defiant of the students – has been overwhelmed by an inexplicable illness.

One by one, the other girls begin to experience the same peculiar symptoms: rashes, fits, headaches, verbal tics, night wanderings. Soon Caroline – the only woman teaching – begins to suffer too. She tries desperately to hide her symptoms but, with the birds behaving strangely and the girls’ condition worsening, the powers-that-be turn to a sinister physician with grave and dubious methods.

Caroline alone can speak on behalf of the students, but only if she summons the confidence to question everything she’s ever learnt. Does she have the strength to confront the all-male, all-knowing authorities of her world and protect the young women in her care?

Distinctive, haunting, irresistible, The Illness Lesson is an intensely vivid debut about women’s minds and bodies, and the time-honoured tradition of doubting both.

 

 

Theft by Luke Brown

Bohemia is history. Paul has awoken to the fact that he will always be better known for reviewing haircuts than for his literary journalism. He is about to be kicked out of his cheap flat in east London and his sister has gone missing after an argument about what to do with the house where they grew up. Now that their mother is dead this is the last link they have to the declining town on the north-west coast where they grew up.

Enter Emily Nardini, a cult author, who – after granting Paul a rare interview – receives him into her surprisingly grand home. Paul is immediately intrigued: by Emily and her fictions, by her vexingly famous and successful partner Andrew (too old for her by half), and later by Andrew’s daughter Sophie, a journalist whose sexed-up vision of the revolution has gone viral. Increasingly obsessed, relationships under strain, Paul travels up and down, north and south, torn between the town he thought he had escaped and the city that threatens to chew him up.

With heart, bite and humour, Luke Brown leads the reader beyond easy partisanship and into much trickier terrain. Straddling the fissures within a man and his country, riven by envy, wealth, ownership, entitlement, and loss, Theft is an exhilarating howl of a novel.

 

What I’m Reading Now

|

Let’s Go Swimming on Doomsday by Natalie C. Anderson

A few years ago, Somalian teenager Abdi was kidnapped and forced by the CIA to go undercover in the jihadi group Al Shabaab. His brother was taken by Al Shabaab a few years earlier and has now bought into the group’s mission, becoming a leader himself. Abdi must ingratiate himself with the leaders of Al Shabaab, starting with his brother, and feed information back to the CIA agent, who holds the rest of his family hostage.

This story is interspersed with Abdi’s story in the present day, where he’s in the care of the UN in fictional Sangui City, Kenya, going to school as they try to find his family and some sort of permanent home for him. How Abdi got from the Al Shabaab camp in Somalia to Kenya unravels slowly, as does what exactly Abdi had to do to save himself and his family (and if he saved them at all) while there.

A child soldier’s life is a challenging topic to write about, but Anderson has a deft touch and writes Abdi well. His family is everything, and he’s scared of losing them, but also terrified of being brainwashed by Al Shabaab as his brother, someone he looked up to and admired, was. Groups like the real-life Al Shabaab use pieces of truth to tell lies, making them all the more alluring to young minds who are fed a diet of the same propaganda day after day. Even more terrifying, he’s unsure how far he’ll have to go within Al Shabaab – murder, suicide bombing, and more – in order to get the information the CIA agent demands in order to save his family. It’s easy to feel empathy for Abdi, even as he’s wracked with guilt in the present-day sections over his as-yet-unknown actions. I look forward to a lengthy author’s note at the end.

 

You Owe Me a Murder by Eileen Cook

I love a good high concept thriller, and Cook’s latest has a great one. Borrowing from Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, she reimagines it as Strangers on a Plane with two teenage girls. Kim is traveling to London on a school trip with a number of other students, including her newly-ex-boyfriend Connor, when she meets Nicki, a confident English girl on her gap year between high school and college. Nicki encourages Kim to act a little more brashly in the little time they have on the plane, and they both get drunk on some stolen liquor. In the midst of Kim’s drunkenness, she confides in Nicki about her antipathy toward Connor, and Nicki shares her disdain for her alcoholic mother. Wouldn’t it be great, Nicki says, if they each took care of the other’s problem? Kim, of course, thinks this idea of swapping murders is a joke, but when Connor is run over by a train soon into the trip, Nicki tells Kim that it was no accident, and she intends to hold Kim to her side of the bargain.

This is a fun thriller with twists and turns that don’t end at Nicki’s reappearance. Kim herself is hiding some secrets, and even seasoned thriller readers may be caught by surprise. Nicki uses coercion, blackmail, and threats to convince Kim to murder her mom, and I’ve found myself wondering why Nicki doesn’t just do it herself; she seems to have gotten away with Connor’s murder pretty neatly. But I try not to think too hard on that aspect and just enjoy the ride.

 

 

California by Edan Lepucki

This is the next in the line of Station Eleven readalikes I’ve been making my way through for the past few years. When I first saw this book in 2014, the year of its publication, I assumed it was your standard literary fiction about a miserable family and how their misery somehow defines what California is like, or something along those lines. Imagine my delight when I learned it was actually about the end of the world! Everyone is still miserable, but there’s a much more exciting backdrop.

In all seriousness, though, “miserable” is a bit of an exaggeration. The story opens several years after the sketchily-defined apocalypse (which I assume will grow more defined as the book progresses), and the two leads – married couple Frida and Cal – have managed to create a sustainable life in the wilderness outside the bounds of what used to be Los Angeles. They’re not happy, per se, but they seem relatively content, though greater challenges (running out of the soap they’ve carefully rationed, the dwindling opportunities for hunting) loom on the horizon. And then Frida finds herself pregnant, a surprise – the couple hadn’t been using protection for years, and Frida just assumed she was unable to bear children. But suddenly, the far-off problems become much more immediate, and the two decide to travel to the nearest settlement, believing it’s the only way their child will survive.

This definitely has a Station Eleven vibe, and I’m enjoying it a lot so far. Lepucki is good at introducing characters and plot elements and tweaking their interactions just slightly so that readers sense that something might be a little off – but they’re not quite sure what or why. It makes for an intriguing story that I’ve found myself sucked into pretty quickly.