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

Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we feature two standout debut memoirs. This Is Your Mother by Erika J. Simpson paints a picture of the author's late mother Sallie Carol, whose larger-than-life presence is rendered in a playful and multifaceted narrative. The True Happiness Company tells Veena Dinavahi's story of being swept into a self-help cult as a teenager, when she suffered from persistent depression and the group seemed to promise a brighter future.

Candace Fleming's Death in the Jungle, a YA nonfiction account of the Jonestown massacre, offers a different view of the insidious nature of cults, while other books we cover further explore the slippery notion of happiness. Lori Ostlund's Are You Happy? presents stories about primarily women and queer characters that interrogate the meaning behind this question. Cartoonist Alison Bechdel, famous for the "Bechdel test," examines the role of community in life satisfaction in her new metafictional graphic novel Spent. Florence Knapp's The Names follows three separate plotlines that diverge based on one woman's decision of what to name her child, showing varying degrees of contentment for her family members and herself. K. Ancrum's latest young adult outing The Corruption of Hollis Brown is the story of a ghost and the boy he possesses finding love in a rundown Michigan town. Our accompanying "beyond the book" article looks at Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the 1906 novel that challenged the ideal of the American Dream.

Plus, we review Mark Whitaker's The Afterlife of Malcolm X, which traces the iconic leader's life, death, and legacy.

You can also see previews of upcoming releases, our latest survey results on Book Clubs' All-Time Favorite Books, recommendations for book clubs, and more.

Thank you for supporting BookBrowse as a member!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we cover fiction featuring various ages and stages of life. Ocean Vuong's The Emperor of Gladness, set in a Connecticut town of colorful characters, focuses on the unlikely bond between a 19-year-old boy from a Vietnamese immigrant family and an 82-year-old Lithuanian refugee, while Old School Indian by Aaron John Curtis drops the reader into the mind of a middle-aged Mohawk man who returns to the reservation of his childhood to deal with a life-threatening illness.

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata gives us an alternate vision of Japan in which technological advancements have redefined relationships and reproduction. Joe Mungo Reed's Terrestrial History also centers innovation and human connection, showcasing the experiences of a fusion scientist in present-day Scotland and her descendants in the future alongside environmental collapse on Earth and the colonization of Mars. Colum McCann's Twist follows a struggling Irish writer voyaging on a ship designated to repair the ocean's crucial submarine cable system that enables the functioning of the internet as we know it. And Liann Zhang's darkly humorous Julie Chan Is Dead tells the story of a woman who steals her dead influencer sister's identity.

Plus, we have an excellent selection of nonfiction recommendations. Blazing Eye Sees All by Leah Sottile links the history of American New Age cults and conspiracy theories to our current moment, Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert dissects misogyny in contemporary pop culture, and Women of War by Suzanne Cope looks at how Italian women fought the Nazis and homegrown fascism during World War II. Check out our accompanying reading list of books about women in revolutionary movements.

Along with these, explore additional reviews and articles, May Books We're Excited About, new First Impressions titles, previews of upcoming releases, and more.

Thank you for being a BookBrowse subscriber!

— The BookBrowse Team

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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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