Archives of "The BookBrowse Review": Reviews, previews, back-stories, news

Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we bring you a fresh batch of historical fiction of many flavors, ranging from the weird and wonderful to the delectably detailed to the story drawn from tantalizingly little-known facts. And don't worry, we have some top-notch contemporary novels coming your way, too.

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu's The Creation of Half-Broken People, published as a paperback original, tells a strange tale of colonialism in Zimbabwe through historical women who appear to an unnamed protagonist as specters. Jo Harkin's The Pretender breathes new life into the Tudor genre with the story of Lambert Simnel, the son of a farmer who could have been king. Happy Land, a First Impressions feature and the latest from Dolen Perkins-Valdez, fictionalizes the history of the Kingdom of the Happy Land, a collective monarchical society started by formerly enslaved people in the Carolina mountains. Isola by Allegra Goodman, centering a 16th-century French noblewoman stranded on an island near New France (Canada) with her lover, is based in part on an account of a true story appearing in The Heptaméron by Queen Marguerite of Navarre. And the title novel of Torrey Peters' Stag Dance delves into queer and trans identity in the Wild West with lumberjacks and gender exploration in early 20th-century Montana.

Meanwhile, Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky follows a chance meeting between two couples from different social spheres in a wacky and delightful character-driven plot, and Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin offers a sharp takedown of modern work culture through the horrific story of a man-eating orchid.

In addition to other reviews and articles, you can check out the latest previews, The Most Popular Book Club Books of 2024 according to our subscribers, book club discussions, a new Wordplay, and more.

Thanks for subscribing to BookBrowse!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review Binnie Kirshenbaum's Counting Backwards, a novel that puts a perceptive, witty spin on the difficult topic of dealing with illness in a marriage.

Author Katie Kitamura brings us her trademark suspense in Audition, another story about roles and relationships, here seen through the lens of performance. We include an accompanying Beyond the Book reading list of fiction featuring actors. The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes also employs theatre-based structures in its depiction of aging and generational differences within a family.

Danger and destruction emerge as additional themes in our coverage with Tilt by Emma Pattee, in which a character already anxious about her pregnancy is launched into a survival scenario when an earthquake hits as she's shopping at the Portland IKEA; our related article looks at what experts say about "The Big One," a massive seismic event predicted to affect the West Coast. Kate Folk's Sky Daddy focuses on a woman who is attracted to airplanes, an experience she compares and contrasts with objectum sexuality (OS), and preoccupied by her supposedly fated fiery death. The Railway Conspiracy by John Shen Yen Nee and S.J. Rozan, the second book in the Dee and Lao mystery series, brings intrigue to 1920s London in an investigation that begins with the theft of a Chinese antique. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams is a personal account and self-avowed "cautionary tale" of one woman's fraught time working for Facebook.

Be sure to also check out our other reviews and articles, along with the latest previews of upcoming books, an exciting batch of new online book club discussions, First Impressions books, and more.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse subscriber!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we bring you two highly anticipated novels that allude to stealing in their titles. Allison Epstein's Fagin the Thief follows the infamous Fagin from Dickens' Oliver Twist, who teaches pickpocketing to young boys. Theft, the latest from Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah, trails three people whose paths cross in early 2000s Tanzania, one of whom is falsely accused of stealing from his employers.

We also cover several works of fiction about women and girls on personal journeys. Emily St. James' Woodworking focuses on a closeted trans woman in a South Dakota town who makes the fraught decision to come out to one of her high school students. Kristen Arnett's Stop Me If You've Heard This One is about a part-time clown attempting to go professional as she deals with her brother's death. In Emily J. Taylor's new YA offering The Otherwhere Post, a daughter sets out to uncover her father's past by posing as an apprentice for a magical postal system. Nesting by Roisín O'Donnell tells the story of a wife and mother who escapes an abusive marriage with no clear way forward. And Saou Ichikawa's Hunchback, translated into English by Polly Barton, portrays a disabled woman's exploration of pleasure.

Are you and the young readers in your life wondering how to take action on book bans? Banned Together, edited by Ashley Hope Pérez, provides concrete information for people of all ages and affecting writing from multiple YA authors. Our accompanying Beyond the Book article spotlights Maia Kobabe, author of the frequently banned graphic memoir Gender Queer. For coverage of another book addressing topical issues, check out our First Impressions readers' comments on Laila Lalami's tech-dystopian novel The Dream Hotel, and our examination of the concept of "pre-crime" in the story and real life.

Along with more reviews and articles, we feature April Books We're Excited About, author interviews, previews, and a new Wordplay.

Thank you for subscribing to BookBrowse!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we feature Karen Russell's The Antidote, a sprawling and fantastical Dust Bowl epic that explores cultural memory and forgetfulness.

Book clubs and readers may find Michelle de Kretser's Theory & Practice pairs fruitfully with Jessica Zhan Mei Yu's But the Girl, which we covered back in November. De Kretser's novel details a Sri Lankan-born Australian woman's struggles to resolve her feelings about Virginia Woolf's racism as she writes her graduate thesis on The Years (Yu's book builds a similar plotline around the work of Sylvia Plath).

More new writing communes with old in Ben Okri's Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted, which revives the clairvoyant of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land as a character involved in the making of a French forest festival for those suffering from lost love.

A different backdrop of nature presides in Chloe Dalton's Raising Hare, a favorite of our First Impressions reviewers that portrays the author's encounter with a wild hare in the English countryside during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe by Mahogany L. Browne focuses on the experiences of New York teenagers in lockdown through a series of linked YA stories. And Cynthia Weiner's A Gorgeous Excitement takes us back to 1980s Manhattan with a fictionalized view of the "Preppy Killer" that follows a young woman's coming of age in the city.

We also bring you additional articles and reviews, author interviews, previews of upcoming books, a new Wordplay, and much more.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse subscriber!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review two works of nonfiction written by novelists that address ongoing wars of occupation. Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This critiques the response of Western liberals, among others, to Israel's bombardment of Gaza, while Victoria Amelina's posthumous Looking at Women Looking at War is an on-the-ground account of life in Ukraine, with a focus on women resisting Russian invasion. Accompanying Beyond the Book articles cover the popular phenomenon of "In This House, We Believe" lawn signs and events preceding the Russia-Ukraine war.

Many of our First Impressions reviewers adored the new Anne Tyler novel Three Days in June, which follows a character plagued with frustrations on the day before her daughter's wedding. In William Boyle's somewhat more intense domestic drama Saint of the Narrows Street, a wife kills her abusive husband with a cast iron pan and the event haunts her and those around her in the ensuing years. Alligator Tears, a memoir-in-essays by Edgar Gomez about coming of age as a second-generation immigrant, celebrates non-traditional family in the forms of a loving single mother and queer community. Amira Ghenim's A Calamity of Noble Houses, now translated into English from Arabic, tells the story of two families with differing values, linked by marriage and brought into conflict by a shocking affair.

Other new translations in this issue are Robert Seethaler's The Café with No Name, a tale that captures the everyday lives of ordinary people in post-World War II Vienna, and Mayumi Inaba's Mornings Without Mii, a touching account of the life and death of the author's beloved cat companion (cat lovers should know that Three Days in June features its own feline friend).

We also bring you additional reviews and articles, previews of many upcoming releases, March Books We're Excited About, a new Wordplay, and more.

Thank you for subscribing to BookBrowse!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we cover Gliff, acclaimed author Ali Smith's latest. Set in an impressionistically drawn dystopia traversed by two children, it explores language, authoritarianism, and meaning. Tao Leigh Goffe's Dark Laboratory, another book about human resistance to harmful systems, counters common narratives by connecting the climate crisis to colonial pasts.

We also feature the most recent English translation of work by 2024 Nobel winner Han Kang. Through the vivid story of an isolated writer tasked with trekking to her friend's home in a blizzard to care for a pet bird, We Do Not Part probes the depths of the Jeju massacre, a long-repressed episode of Korean history.

Kang's is one of many titles in this e-zine that center women or girls on troubling, chaotic, or mysterious journeys. In Soft Core by Brittany Newell, a San Francisco stripper's life is upended when her best friend and housemate vanishes. Margie Sarsfield's Beta Vulgaris sees a Brooklyn hipster and her boyfriend travel to work a Minnesota sugar beet harvest, where people begin to go missing. A stage actress skips out on Thanksgiving plans to reckon with a former mentor's fall from grace in Mischa Berlinski's Mona Acts Out. Aria Aber's Good Girl follows a restless daughter of Afghan refugees through Berlin's club scene. Marie van Lieshout's YA graphic novel Song of a Blackbird focuses on a girl in Amsterdam who discovers her family history is a lie and seeks to uncover the truth in a tale sprawling back to World War II. And in Kate Fagan's The Three Lives of Cate Kay, a writer who's literally made a name for herself addresses her fraught histories with the women she's loved.

Plus, enjoy additional reviews and articles, a blog on the phenomenon known as LitRPG, the latest book news, a new Wordplay, and more.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse member!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we detour into the past. Instead of our usual new hardcovers, you'll find pre-2000 gems handpicked by our reviewers.

It's striking how relevant some of these books are to our current moment, and how applicable they could be to our future. Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac (1949) is a seminal work of environmental writing that foresaw climate disaster. The Breakthrough (1966), a science fiction story by Daphne du Maurier (of Rebecca fame), raises points about the devaluation of human lives pertinent to today's disability justice movement.

In James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (1956), an early work of queer fiction, an overseas American's destructive resistance to love is arguably not so different from the oblivious and extractive culture that Leopold and du Maurier's works address. Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, or Carol (1952), by contrast, is known as one of the first lesbian love stories with a "happy" ending.

Toni Morrison's debut The Bluest Eye (1970) examines racialized beauty standards through Pecola Breedlove, a Black girl who desperately wants blue eyes. It remains one of the most banned books at a time when titles about Black experiences continue to be disproportionately challenged. As we approach Black History Month, this serves as a reminder of the importance of preserving the past to inform the present.

We also review Fyodor Dostoevsky's White Nights (1848), a tale of unrequited love that's made waves on the video platform TikTok, and Agatha Christie's mega-bestseller And Then There Were None (1939). Plus, we bring you coverage of other classics and new paperbacks, February Books We're Excited About, a giveaway of Adelle Waldman's Help Wanted, and much more.

This issue causes us to reflect on many things we shouldn't take for granted, including your support — thank you so much for being a BookBrowse member!

— The BookBrowse Team

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