December Releases by Anita Felicelli, Lise Goett, Brooke Randel & Weike Wang
December isn’t a big month for new releases, but here are excerpts from a few I happened to review early for U.S. publications BookBrowse, Foreword Reviews, and Shelf Awareness: Speculative short stories, loss-tinged poetry, a family memoir based on Holocaust history, and a satirical short novel about racial microaggressions and class divides in contemporary America.
How We Know Our Time Travelers by Anita Felicelli
These linked speculative stories, set in near-future California, are marked by environmental anxiety. Many of their characters have South Asian backgrounds. A nascent queer romance between co-op grocery colleagues defies an impending tsunami. A painter welcomes a studio visitor who could be her estranged husband traveling from the past. Mysterious “fog catchers” recur in multiple stories. Memory bridges the human and the artificial, as in “The Glitch,” wherein a coder, bereaved by wildfires, lives alongside holograms of her wife and children. But technology, though a potential means of connecting with the dead, is not an unmitigated good. Creative reinterpretations of traditional stories and figures include urban legends, a locked room mystery, a poltergeist, and a golem. In these grief- and regret-tinged stories, heartbroken people can’t alter their pasts, so they’ll mold the future instead. (See my full Foreword review.)
The Radiant by Lise Goett
In the 25 poems of Goett’s luminous third poetry collection, nature’s beauty and ancient wisdom sustain the fragile and bereaved. The speaker in “Difficult Body” references a cancer experience and imagines escaping the flesh to diffuse into the cosmos. Goett explores liminal moments and ponders what survives a loss. The use of “terminal” in “Free Fall” denotes mortality while also bringing up fond memories of her late father picking her up from an airport. Mythical allusions, religious imagery, and Buddhist philosophy weave through to shine ancient perspective on current struggles. The book luxuriates in abstruse vocabulary and sensual descriptions of snow, trees, and color. (Tupelo Press, 24 December. Review forthcoming at Shelf Awareness)
Also Here: Love, Literacy, and the Legacy of the Holocaust by Brooke Randel
Randel’s debut is a poised, tender family memoir capturing her Holocaust survivor grandmother’s recollections of the Holocaust. Golda (“Bubbie”) spoke multiple languages but was functionally illiterate. In her mid-80s, she asked her granddaughter to tell her story. Randel flew to south Florida to conduct interviews. The oral history that emerges is fragmentary and frenetic. The structure of the book makes up for it, though. Interview snippets are interspersed with narrative chapters based on follow-up research. Golda, born in 1930, grew up in Romania. When the Nazis came, her older brothers were conscripted into forced labor; her mother and younger siblings were killed in a concentration camp. At every turn, Golda’s survival (through Auschwitz, Christianstadt, and Bergen-Belsen) was nothing short of miraculous. This concise, touching memoir bears witness to a whole remarkable life as well as the bond between grandmother and granddaughter. (See my full Shelf Awareness review.)
Rental House by Weike Wang
Their interactions with family and strangers alike on two vacations – Cape Cod and the Catskills, five years apart – put interracial couple Keru and Nate’s choices into perspective as they near age 40. Although some might find their situation (childfree, with a “fur baby”) stereotypical, it does reflect that of a growing number of aging millennials. Wang portrays them sympathetically, but there is also a note of gentle satire here. The way that identity politics comes into the novel is not exactly subtle, but it does feel true to life. And it is very clever how the novel examines the matters of race, class, ambition, and parenthood through the lens of vacations. Like a two-act play, the framework is simple and concise, yet revealing about contemporary American society. (See my full BookBrowse review.)
My Year in Novellas (#NovNov24)
Here at the start of the month, we’re inviting you to tell us about the novellas you’ve read since last November.
I have a special shelf of short books that I add to throughout the year. When at secondhand bookshops, charity shops, a Little Free Library, or the public library where I volunteer, I’m always thinking about my piles for November. But I do read novellas at other times of year, too. Forty-four of them between December 2023 and now, according to my Goodreads shelves (last year it was 46, so it seems like that’s par for the course). I often choose to review books of novella length for BookBrowse, Foreword and Shelf Awareness. I’ve read a real mixture, but predominantly literature in translation and autobiographical works.
My favourites of the ones I’ve already covered on the blog would probably be (nonfiction) Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti and (fiction) Aimez-vous Brahms by Françoise Sagan. My proudest achievements are: reading the short graphic novel Broderies by Marjane Satrapi in the original French at our Parisian Airbnb in December; and managing two rereads: Heartburn by Nora Ephron and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
Of the short books I haven’t already reviewed here, I’ve chosen two gems, one fiction and one nonfiction, to spotlight in this post:
Fiction
Clear by Carys Davies
Clear depicts the Highland Clearances in microcosm though the experiences of one man, Ivar, the last resident of a remote Scottish island between Shetland and Norway. As in a play, there is a limited setting and cast. John is a minister sent by the landowner to remove Ivar, but an accident soon after his arrival leaves him beholden to Ivar for food and care. Mary, John’s wife, is concerned and sets off on the long journey from the mainland to rescue him. Davies writes vivid scenes and brings the island’s scenery to life. Flashbacks fill in the personal and cultural history, often via objects. The Norn language is another point of interest. The deceptively simple prose captures both the slow building of emotion and the moments that change everything. It seemed the trio were on course for tragedy, yet they are offered the grace of a happier ending.
In my book club, opinions differed slightly as to the central relationship and the conclusion, but we agreed that it was beautifully done, with so much conveyed in the concise length. This received our highest rating ever, in fact. I’d read Davies’ West and not appreciated it as much, although looking back I can see that it was very similar: one or a few character(s) embarked on unusual and intense journey(s); a plucky female character; a heavy sense of threat; and an improbably happy ending. It was the ending that seemed to come out of nowhere and wasn’t in keeping with the tone of the rest of the novella that made me mark West down. Here I found the writing cinematic and particularly enjoyed Mary as a strong character who escaped spinsterhood but even in marriage blazes her own trail and is clever and creative enough to imagine a new living situation. And although the ending is sudden and surprising, it nevertheless seems to arise naturally from what we know of the characters’ emotional development – but also sent me scurrying back to check whether there had been hints. One of my books of the year for sure. 
Nonfiction
A Termination by Honor Moore
Poet and memoirist Honor Moore’s A Termination is a fascinatingly discursive memoir that circles her 1969 abortion and contrasts societal mores across her lifetime.
During the spring in question, Moore was a 23-year-old drama school student. Her lover, L, was her professor. But she also had unwanted sex with a photographer. She did not know which man had impregnated her, but she did know she didn’t feel prepared to become a mother. She convinced a psychiatrist that doing so would destroy her mental health, and he referred her to an obstetrician for a hospital procedure. The termination was “my first autonomous decision,” Moore insists, a way of saying, “I want this life, not that life.”
Family and social factors put Moore’s experiences into perspective. The first doctor she saw refused Moore’s contraception request because she was unmarried. Her mother, however, bore nine children and declined to abort a pregnancy when advised to do so for medical reasons. Moore observes that she made her own decision almost 10 years before “the word choice replaced pro abortion.”
This concise work is composed of crystalline fragments. The stream of consciousness moves back and forth in time, incorporating occasional second- and third-person narration as well as highbrow art and literature references. Moore writes one scene as if it’s in a play and imagines alternative scenarios in which she has a son; though she is curious, she is not remorseful. The granular attention to women’s lives recalls Annie Ernaux, while the kaleidoscopic yet fluid approach is reminiscent of Sigrid Nunez’s work. It’s a stunning rendering of steps on her childfree path. 
Reprinted with permission from Shelf Awareness.
I currently have four novellas underway and plan to start some more this weekend. I have plenty to choose from!
Everyone’s getting in on the act: there’s an article on ‘short and sweet books’ in the November/December issue of Bookmarks magazine, for which I’m an associate editor; Goodreads sent around their usual e-mail linking to a list of 100 books under 250 or 200 pages to help readers meet their 2024 goal. Or maybe you’d like to join in with Wafer Thin Books’ November buddy read, the Ugandan novella Waiting by Goretti Kyomuhendo (2007).
Why not share some recent favourite novellas with us in a post of your own?
October Books: Ballard, Czarnecki, Moss, Oliver, Ostriker, Steed & More
Apparently October is THE biggest month of the year for new releases. A sterling set came my way this year, including two beautiful novella-length memoirs, a luxuriantly illustrated work dedicated to an everyday bird species, two very different but equally elegant poetry collections, and a book of offbeat comics. Time and concentration only allow for a paragraph or so on each, but I hope that gives a flavour of the contents and will pique interest in the ones that suit you best. Plus I excerpt and link to my BookBrowse review of a poignant story of sisters and mental illness, and my Shelf Awareness review of a fantastic graphic novel adaptation.
Bound: A Memoir of Making and Remaking by Maddie Ballard
This collection of micro-essays considers sewing and much more. Each piece is headed by a pattern name and list of materials that Ballard made into an article of clothing for herself or for someone else. Among the minutiae of the craft, she slips in so many threads: about her mixed Chinese heritage and her relationship with her grandmother, about the environmental and financial benefits of making one’s own clothing, and especially about the upheaval of her twenties: the pandemic, a break-up, leaving a job to go back to school, finding roommates. I can barely mend a sock and I’m clueless when it comes to fashion, yet I can appreciate how sewing blends comfort and creativity. Ballard presents it as a meditative act of self-care:
I lower the needle and the world recedes. The process of sewing a garment – printing the pattern, tracing and cutting, sewing the first and the second and the fiftieth seam – is a lesson in taking your time.
Like gardening, sewing is an investment in the future – in what sort of person your future self will be, and how she will feel about her body, and what she will want to wear.
Similar to two other very short works of nonfiction I’ve read from The Emma Press, How Kyoto Breaks Your Heart by Florentyna Leow and Tiny Moons by Nina Mingya Powles (Ballard, too, is from New Zealand), this is a graceful, enriching book about a young woman making her way in the world and figuring out what is essential to her sense of home and identity. I commend it whether or not you have any particular interest in handicraft.
With thanks to The Emma Press for the free copy for review.
Encounters with Inscriptions: A Memoir Exploring Books Gifted by Parents by Kristin Czarnecki
When Kristin Czarnecki got in touch to offer a copy of her bibliomemoir about revisiting the books her late parents gifted her, I was instantly intrigued but couldn’t have known in advance how perfect it would be for me. Niche it might seem, but it combines several of my reading interests: bereavement, books about books, relationships with parents (especially a mother) and literary travels.
The book starts, aptly, with childhood. A volume of Shel Silverstein poetry and A Child’s Christmas in Wales serve as perfect vehicles for the memories of how her parents passed on their love of literature and created family holiday rituals. Thereafter, the chapters are not strictly chronological but thematic. A work of women’s history opens up her mother’s involvement in the feminist movement; reading a Thomas Merton book reveals why his thinking was so important to her Catholic father. The interplay of literary criticism, cultural commentary and personal significance is especially effective in pieces on Alice Munro and Flannery O’Connor. A Virginia Woolf biography points to Czarnecki’s academic specialism and a cookbook to how food embodies memories.
It seems fitting to be reviewing this on the second anniversary of my mother’s death. The afterword, which follows on from the philosophical encouragement of a chapter on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, exhorts readers to cherish loved ones while we can – and be grateful for the tokens they leave behind. I had told Kristin about books my parents inscribed to me, as well as the journals I inherited from my mother. But I didn’t know there would be other specific connections between us, too, such as being childfree and hopeless in the kitchen. (Also, I have family in South Bend, Indiana, where she’s from, and our mothers were born in the first week of August.) All that to say, I felt that I found a kindred spirit in this lovely book, which is one of the nicest things that happens through reading.
With thanks to the author for the advanced e-copy for review.
The Starling: A Biography by Stephen Moss
Moss has written a whole series of accessible bird species monographs suitable for nature buffs; this is the sixth. (I’ve not read the others, just Moss’s Wild Hares and Hummingbirds and Skylarks with Rosie, but we do have a copy of The Robin on the shelf that I’ve earmarked for Christmas.) The choice of the term ‘biography’ indicates the meeting of a comprehensive aim and intimate detail. The book conveys much anatomical and historical information about the starling’s relatives, habits, and worldwide spread, yet is only 187 pages – and plenty of those feature relevant paintings and photographs, too. It’s well known that starlings were introduced to Anglophone countries as part of misguided “acclimatisation” projects that we would now dub cultural imperialism. In the USA and elsewhere, the bird is still considered common. But with the industrialisation of agriculture, starlings are actually having less breeding success and thus are in decline.
Overall, the style of the book is dry and slightly workmanlike. However, when he’s recounting murmurations he’s seen in Somerset or read about, Moss’s enthusiasm lifts it into something special. Autumn dusk is a great time to start watching out for starling gatherings. I love observing and listening to the starlings just in the treetops and aerials of my neighbourhood, but we do also have a small local murmuration that I try to catch at least a few times in the season. Here’s how he describes their magic: “At a time when, both as a society and as individuals, we are less and less in touch with the natural world, attending this fleeting but memorable event is a way we can reconnect, regain our primal sense of wonder – and still be home in time for tea.”
With thanks to Square Peg, an imprint of Vintage (Penguin Random House) for the free copy for review.
The Alcestis Machine by Carolyn Oliver
Carolyn is a blogger friend whose first collection, Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble, was on my Best Books of 2022 list. Her second is again characterized by precise vocabulary and crystalline imagery, often related to etymology, book history, or pigments (“You and I are marginalia shadowed / by a careless hand, we are gall-soaked vellum / invisible appetites consume.”). Astronomy and technology are a counterpoint, juxtaposing the ancient and the cutting-edge. I loved the language of sea creatures in “Strange Attractor” and the oblique approach to the passage of time (“Three popes ago, you and I”). The repeated three-word opening “In another life” gives a sense of many worlds, e.g., “In another life I’m a florist sometimes accused of inappropriate gravity.” Prose poems relay childhood memories. Love poems are tantalizing and utterly original: “If I promise not to describe the moon, will you / come with me a ways further into the night? / We’ll wash the forest floor / of ash and find a fairy ring / half-eaten, muted crescent bereft of power.” And alliteration never fails to win me over: “Tonight, snow tumbles over sophomores and starlings” and “the pillars in the water make a pillory not a pier”. Some of the collection remained cryptic for me; there was a bit less that grabbed me emotionally. But it’s still stirring work. And how flabbergasted was I to spot my name in the Acknowledgments? (Read via Edelweiss)
The Holy & Broken Bliss: Poems in Plague Time by Alicia Ostriker
“The words of an old woman shuffling the cards of her own decline the decline
of her husband the decline of her nation her plague-smitten world”
Out of pandemic isolation come new rituals: watching days and seasons pass, fighting for her own health but mostly her husband’s, and lamenting public displays of hate. Lines feel stark with honesty; some poems are just haiku length. Elsewhere, repetition and alliteration create a wistful tone. Jewish scripture and mysticism are the source of much of the language and outlook. Music and nature, too, promise the transcendent. Simple and remarkable. Here’s a stanza about late autumn:
It is almost winter and still
as I walk to the clinic the gingkos
sing their seraphic air
as if there is no tomorrow
With thanks to Alice James Books for the advanced e-copy for review.
Forces of Nature by Edward Steed
Steed is a longtime New Yorker cartoonist who produces single panels. This means there is no story progression (as in a graphic novel), just what you see on one page. Some of the comics are wordless; many scenes are visual gags which, to be entirely honest, I didn’t always grasp. Steed’s recurring characters are unhappy couples, exiles on desert islands, and dumb cops or criminals. His style is deliberately simplistic: the people not much more advanced than stick figures and the animals especially sketchy. There are multiple attempted prison breaks and satirical depictions of God and the Garden of Eden. Many of the setups are contrived, and the tone can be absurd or prickly, even shading into gruesome. These comics weren’t altogether my cup of tea, though I did get a laugh out of a few of them (a seasonal example is below). Endorsed if you fancy a cross between Edward Gorey and The Book of Bunny Suicides.
With thanks to Drawn & Quarterly for the e-copy for review.
Reviewed for BookBrowse:
Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner – “No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister” is a wry aphorism that appears late in Lerner’s debut novel. Over the course of two decades, there is much heartache for the Shred family, but also moments of joy. Ultimately, a sisterly bond endures despite secrets, betrayals, and intermittent estrangement. Through her psychologically astute portrait of Olivia (“Ollie”) and Amy Shred, Lerner captures the lasting effects that mental illness can have on not just an individual, but an entire family.
Reviewed for Shelf Awareness:
The Worst Journey in the World, Volume 1: Making Our Easting Down: The Graphic Novel by Sarah Airriess – The thrilling opening to a cinematically vivid adaptation of Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s 1922 memoir. He was an assistant zoologist on Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole. Even before the ship entered the pack ice, the journey was perilous. The book resembles a full-color storyboard for a Disney-style maritime adventure film. There is jolly camaraderie as the men sing sea shanties to boost morale. The second volume can’t arrive soon enough.
Three on a Theme: Trans Poetry for National Poetry Day
Today is National Poetry Day here in the UK. Alfie and I spent part of the chilly early morning reading from Pádraig Ó Tuama’s super Poetry Unbound, an anthology of 50 poems to which he’s devoted personal introductions and exploratory essays. He describes poetry as “like a flame: helping us find our way, keeping us warm.”
Poetry Unbound is also the name of his popular podcast; both were recommended to me by Sara Beth West, my fellow Shelf Awareness reviewer, in this interview we collaborated on back in April (National Poetry Month in the USA) about reading and reviewing poetry. I’ve been a keen reader of contemporary poetry for 15 years or so, but in the 3.5 years that I’ve been writing for Shelf I’ve really ramped up. Most months, I review a couple poetry collections for that site, and another one or more on here.
Two of my Shelf poetry reviews from the past 10 months highlight the trans experience; when I recently happened to read another collection by a trans woman, I decided to gather them together as a trio. All three pair the personal – a wrestling over identity – with the political, voicing protest at mistreatment.
Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon (2023)
In her Isabella Gardner Award-winning fourth collection, queer poet Subhaga Crystal Bacon commemorates the 46 trans and gender-nonconforming people murdered in the United States and Puerto Rico in 2020—an “epidemic of violence” that coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The book arose from a workshop Bacon attended on writing “formal poems of social protest.” Among the forms employed here are acrostics and erasures performed on news articles—ironically appropriate for reversing trans erasure. She devotes one elegy to each hate-crime victim, titling it with their name and age as well as the location and date of the killing, and sifting through key details of their life and death. Often, trans people are misgendered or deadnamed in prison, by ambulance staff, or after death, so a crucial element of the tributes is remembering them all by chosen name and gender.
The statistics Bacon conveys are heartbreaking: “The average life expectancy of a Black trans woman is 35 years of age”; “Half of Black trans women spend time in jail”; “Trans people are anywhere/ between eleven and forty percent/ of the homeless population.” She also draws on her own experience of gender nonconformity: “A little butch./ A little femme.” She recalls of visiting drag bars in the 1980s: “We were all/ trying on gender.” And she vows: “No one can say a life is not right./ I have room for you in me.” Her poetic memorial is a valuable exercise in empathy.
Published by BOA Editions. Reprinted with permission from Shelf Awareness.
I was interested to note that the below poets initially published under both female and male, new and dead names, as shown on the book covers. However, a look at social media makes it clear that the trans women are now going exclusively by female names.
I Don’t Want to Be Understood by Jennifer Espinoza (2024)
In Espinoza’s undaunted fourth poetry collection, transgender identity allows for reinvention but also entails fear of physical and legislative violence.
Two poems, both entitled “Airport Ritual,” articulate panic during a security pat-down on the way to visit family. In the first, a woman quells her apprehension by imagining a surreal outcome: her genitals expand infinitely, “tearing through her clothes and revealing an amorphous blob of cosmic energy.” In the second, the speaker chants the reassuring mantra, “I am not afraid.” “Makeup Ritual” vacillates between feminism and conformity; “I don’t even leave the house unless/ I’ve had time to build a world on my face/ and make myself palatable/ for public consumption.” Makeup is “your armor,” Espinoza writes in “You’re Going to Die Today,” as she describes the terror she feels toward the negative attention she receives when she walks her dog without wearing it. The murders of trans people lead the speaker to picture her own in “Game Animal.” Violence can be less literal and more insidious, but just as harmful, as in a reference to “the day the government announced another plan to strip a few/ more basic rights from trans people.”
Words build into stanzas, prose paragraphs, a zigzag line, or cross-hatching. Espinoza likens the body to a vessel for traumatic memories: “time is a body full of damage// that is constantly trying to forget.” Alliteration and repetition construct litanies of rejection but, ultimately, of hope: “When I call myself a woman I am praying.”
Published by Alice James Books. Reprinted with permission from Shelf Awareness.
Transgenesis by Ava Winter (2024)
“The body is holy / and is made holy in its changing.”
Winter’s debut full-length collection, selected by Sean Hill for the National Poetry Series, reckons with Jewishness as much as with gender identity. The second half of the title references any beginning, but specifically the scriptural account of creation and the lives of the matriarchs and patriarchs of the Abrahamic faiths. Poems are entitled “Torah Study” and “Midrash” (whence the above quote), and two extended sections, “Archived Light” and “Playing with the Jew,” reflect on Polish paternal family members’ arrival at Auschwitz and the dubious practice of selling Holocaust and Nazi memorabilia as antiques. Pharmaceuticals and fashion alike are tokens of transformation –
Let me greet now,
with warm embrace,
the small blue tablets
I place beneath my tongue each morning.
Oh estradiol,
daily reminder
of what our bodies
have always known:
the many forms of beauty that might be made
flesh by desire, by chance, by animal action.
(from “Transgenesis”)
The first time I wore a dress in public without a hint of irony—a Max Mara wrap adorned with Japanese lilies that framed my shoulders perfectly—I was still thin but also thickly bearded and men on the train whispered to me in a conspiratorial tone, as if they hoped the dress were a joke I might let them in on.
(from “WWII SS Wiking Division Badge, $55”)
– and faith grants affirmation that “there is beauty in such queer and fruitless bodies,” as the title poem insists, with reference to the saris (nonbinary person) acknowledged by the Talmudic rabbis. “Lament with Cello Accompaniment” provides an achingly gorgeous end to the collection:
I do not choose the sound of the song
In my mouth, the fading taste of what I still live through, but I choose this future, as I bury a name defined by grief, as I enter the silence where my voice will take shape.
Winter teaches English and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. I’ll look out for more of her work.
Published by Milkweed Editions. (Read via Edelweiss)
More trans poetry I have read:
A Kingdom of Love & Eleanor Among the Saints by Rachel Mann
By nonbinary/gender-nonconforming poets, I have also read:
Surge by Jay Bernard
Like a Tree, Walking by Vahni Capildeo
Some Integrity by Padraig Regan
Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith
Divisible by Itself and One by Kae Tempest
Binded by H Warren
Extra goodies for National Poetry Day:
Follow Brian Bilston to add a bit of joy to your feed.
Editor Rosie Storey Hilton announces a poetry anthology Saraband are going to be releasing later this month, Green Verse: Poems for our Planet. I’ll hope to review it soon.
Two poems that have been taking the top of my head off recently (in Emily Dickinson’s phrasing), from Poetry Unbound (left) and Seamus Heaney’s Field Work:
September Releases, Part II: Antrobus, Attenberg, Strout and More
As promised yesterday, I give excerpts of the six (U.S.) September releases I reviewed for Shelf Awareness. But first, my thoughts on a compassionate sequel about a beloved ensemble cast.
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
“People always tell you who they are if you just listen”
Alternative title ideas: “Oh Bob!” or “Talk Therapy in Small-Town Maine.” I’ve had a mixed experience with the Amgash novels, of which I’ve now read four. Last year’s Lucy by the Sea was my favourite, a surprisingly successful Covid novel with much to say about isolation, political divisions and how life translates into art. Oh William!, though shortlisted for the Booker, seemed a low point. It’s presented as Lucy’s published memoir about her first husband, but irked me with its precious, scatter-brained writing. For me, Tell Me Everything was closer to the latter. It continues Strout’s newer habit of bringing her various characters together in the same narrative. That was a joy of the previous book, but here it’s overdone and, along with the knowing first-person plural narration (“As we mentioned earlier, housing prices in Crosby, Maine, had been going through the roof since the pandemic”; “Oh Jim Burgess! What are we to do with you?”), feels affected and hokey.
Strout makes it clear from the first line that this novel will mostly be devoted to Bob Burgess, who is not particularly interesting but perhaps a good choice of protagonist for that reason. A 65-year-old semi-retired lawyer, he’s a man of integrity who wins confidences because of his unassuming mien and willingness to listen and help where he can. One doesn’t read Strout for intrigue, but there is actually a mild murder mystery here. Bob ends up defending Matt Beach, a middle-aged man suspected of disposing of his mother’s body in a quarry. The Beaches are odd and damaged, with trauma threading through their history.
Sad stories are indeed the substance of the novel; Lucy trades in them. Literally: on her visits to Olive Kitteridge’s nursing home room, they swap bleak stories of the “unrecorded lives” they have observed or heard about. Lucy and Bob, who are clearly in love with each other, keep up a similar exchange of gloomy tales on their regular walks. Lucy asks Bob and Olive the point of these anecdotes, pondering the very meaning of life. Bob dismisses the question as immature; “as we have said, Bob was not a reflective fellow.” And because the book is filtered through Bob, we, too, feel this is just a piling up of depressing stories. Why should I care about Bob’s ex-wife’s alcoholism, his sister-in-law’s death from cancer, his nephew’s accident? Or any of the other unfortunate occurrences that make up a life. Bob and Lucy are appealingly ordinary characters, yet Strout suggests that they function as secular “sin-eaters,” accepting confessions. Forasmuch as they focus on others, they do each come to terms with childhood trauma and the reality of their marriages. Strout majors on emotional intelligence, but can be clichéd and soundbite-y. Such was my experience of this likable but diffuse novel.
With thanks to Viking (Penguin) for the proof copy for review.
Reviewed for Shelf Awareness:
Poetry:
Signs, Music by Raymond Antrobus – The British-Jamaican poet’s intimate third collection contrasts the before and after of becoming a father—a transition that prompts him to reflect on his Deaf and biracial identity as well as the loss of his own father.
With thanks to Picador for the free copy for review.
Want, the Lake by Jenny Factor – Factor’s long, intricate second poetry collection envisions womanhood as a tug of war between desire and constraint. “Elegy for a Younger Self” poems string together vivid reminiscences.
Terminal Maladies by Okwudili Nebeolisa – The Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate’s debut collection is a tender chronicle of the years leading to his mother’s death from cancer. Food and nature imagery chart the decline in Nkoli’s health and its effect on her family.
Fiction:
A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg – Her tenth book evinces her mastery of dysfunctional family stories. From the Chicago-area Cohens, the circle widens and retracts as partners and friends enter and exit. Through estrangement and reunion, as characters grapple with sexuality and addictions, the decision is between hiding and figuring out who they are.
Nonfiction:
We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood by Jennifer Case – Case’s second book explores the evolution, politics, and culture of contemporary parenthood in 15 intrepid essays. Science and statistics weave through in illuminating ways. This forthright, lyrical study of maternity is an excellent companion read to Lucy Jones’s Matrescence.
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan – Ten years after his Booker Prize win for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Richard Flanagan revisits his father’s time as a POW—the starting point but ultimately just one thread in this astonishing and uncategorizable work that combines family memoir, biography, and history to examine how love and memory endure. (Published in the USA on 17 September.)
With thanks to Emma Finnigan PR and Vintage (Penguin) for the proof copy for review.
Any other September releases you’d recommend?
A Review for PKD Awareness Day: The Mourner’s Bestiary by Eiren Caffall
Today is PKD Awareness Day. Because the author and I both have polycystic kidney disease, I’m doing something I rarely do and reprinting an early review of mine that has already appeared on Shelf Awareness. I could hardly believe it when I was trawling through the list of review book offers and saw that Eiren Caffall also has PKD, then even more astonished to learn that it is a major theme in her memoir, which also weaves in marine biology and environmental concerns. An altogether intriguing book that, of course, held personal interest for me.
The Mourner’s Bestiary by Eiren Caffall
Eiren Caffall’s debut is an ardent elegy for her illness-haunted family and for the ailing marine environments that inspire her.
For centuries, the author’s family has been subject to “the Caffall Curse.” Polycystic kidney disease, a degenerative genetic condition, causes fluid-filled cysts to proliferate in a person’s enlarged kidneys. PKD can involve pain, fatigue, high blood pressure, kidney failure, and a heightened risk of brain aneurysm. Given Caffall’s paternal family history, she expected to die before age 50.
Caffall’s melancholy memoir spotlights moments that opened her eyes to medical and environmental catastrophe. In 1980, when she was nine years old, she and her parents vacationed at a rental cottage on Long Island Sound. They nicknamed the pollution-ridden site “Dogshit Beach”—her mother spent idyllic summers there as a child, yet now “both the ecosystem and my father were slipping away.” For the first time, Caffall became aware of her father’s suffering and lack of energy. She realized that she, too, might have inherited PKD and could face similar struggles as an adult.
In 2014, Caffall, then a single mother, took her nine-year-old son, Dex, on vacation to the Gulf of Maine. During the trip, she had a fall that prompted a seizure, and she and Dex were evacuated from Monhegan Island by Coast Guard ship. Although no further seizures ensued and no clear cause emerged, the crisis served as a wake-up call, reminding her of how serious PKD is and that it might afflict her son as well.
The book draws fascinating connections between personal experiences and ecological threats. Caffall structures her story as a gallery of endangered marine animals such as the Longfin Inshore Squid and Humpback Whale, tracing their history and exposing the dangers they face in degraded environments. Red tides (massive algal blooms) and floods are apt metaphors for physical trials: “the Sound was dying, hypoxic … from an overwhelm of nutrients flooding an ecosystem—nitrogen, phosphorus, imbalanced saline—the same things that overwhelm a body when kidneys can no longer filter blood properly.”
Re-created scenes enliven accounts of family illness and therapeutic developments. The lyrical hybrid narrative, informed by scientific journals and government publications, is as impassioned about restoring the environment as it is about ensuring equality of access to health care. Personal and species extinction are just cause for “permanent mourning,” Caffall writes, but adapting to change keeps hope alive.
(Coming out in the USA from Row House Publishing on October 15th)
Posted with permission from Shelf Awareness.
[I couldn’t help but compare family members’ trajectories. Like her father, my mother was on dialysis for a time before getting a transplant, from her cousin. Like her aunt, my uncle died of a brain aneurysm, which is an associated risk. It sounds like Caffall has been much more severely affected than I have thus far. She is 53 and on Tolvaptan, a cutting-edge drug that slows the growth of cysts and thus the decline in kidney function. But even within families, the disease course is so varied. A cousin of mine was in her thirties when she had a transplant, whereas I am still very much in the early stages.]
A shout-out to the PKD Foundation in the States and the PKD Charity here in the UK.
A related post: In 2017 I reviewed four books for World Kidney Day.
From the supermarket last week: a plum that wanted to be a kidney.
August Releases: Sarah Manguso (Fiction), Sarah Moss (Memoir), and Carl Phillips (Poetry)
Today I feature a new-to-me poet and two women writers whose careers I’ve followed devotedly but whose latest books – forthright yet slippery; their genre categories could easily be reversed – I found very emotionally difficult to read. Gruelling, almost, but admirable. Many rambling thoughts ensue. Then enjoy a nice poem.
Liars by Sarah Manguso
As part of a profile of Manguso and her oeuvre for Bookmarks magazine, I wrote a synopsis and surveyed critical opinion; what follow are additional subjective musings. I’ve read six of her nine books (all but the poetry and an obscure flash fiction collection) and I esteem her fragmentary, aphoristic prose, but on balance I’m fonder of her nonfiction. Had Liars been marketed as a diary of her marriage and divorce, Manguso might have been eviscerated for the indulgence and one-sided presentation. With the thinnest of autofiction layers, is it art?
Jane recounts her doomed marriage, from the early days of her relationship with John Bridges to the aftermath of his affair and their split. She is a writer and academic who sacrifices her career for his financially risky artistic pursuits. Especially once she has a baby, every domestic duty falls to her, while he keeps living like a selfish stag and gaslights her if she tries to complain, bringing up her history of mental illness. The concise vignettes condense 14+ years into 250 pages, which is a relief because beneath the sluggish progression is such repetition of type of experiences that it could feel endless. John’s last name might as well be Doe: The novel presents him – and thus all men – as despicable and useless, while women are effortlessly capable and, by exhausting themselves, achieve superhuman feats. This is what heterosexual marriage does to anyone, Manguso is arguing. Indeed, in a Guardian interview she characterized this as a “domestic abuse novel,” and elsewhere she has said that motherhood can be unlinked from patriarchy, but not marriage.
Let’s say I were to list my every grievance against my husband from the last 17+ years: every time he left dirty clothes on the bedroom floor (which is every day); every time he loaded the dishwasher inefficiently (which is every time, so he leaves it to me); every time he failed to seal a packet or jar or Tupperware properly (which – yeah, you get the picture) – and he’s one of the good guys, bumbling rather than egotistical! And he’d have his own list for me, too. This is just what we put up with to live with other people, right? John is definitely worse (“The difference between John and a fascist despot is one of degree, not type”). But it’s not edifying, for author or reader. There may be catharsis to airing every single complaint, but how does it help to stew in bitterness? Look at everything I went through and validate my anger.
There are bright spots: Jane’s unexpected transformation into a doting mother (but why must their son only ever be called “the child”?), her dedication to her cat, and the occasional dark humour:
So at his worst, my husband was an arrogant, insecure, workaholic, narcissistic bully with middlebrow taste, who maintained power over me by making major decisions without my input or consent. It could still be worse, I thought.
Manguso’s aphoristic style makes for many quotably mordant sentences. My feelings vacillated wildly, from repulsion to gung-ho support; my rating likewise swung between extremes and settled in the middle. I felt that, as a feminist, I should wholeheartedly support a project of exposing wrongs. It’s easy to understand how helplessness leads to rage, and how, considering sunk costs, a partner would irrationally hope for a situation to improve. So I wasn’t as frustrated with Jane as some readers have been. But I didn’t like the crass sexual language, and on the whole I agreed with Parul Sehgal’s brilliant New Yorker review that the novel is so partial and the tone so astringent that it is impossible to love. 
With thanks to Picador for the proof copy for review.
And a quote from the Moss memoir (below) to link the two books: “Homes are places where vulnerable people are subject to bullying, violence and humiliation behind closed doors. Homes are places where a woman’s work is never done and she is always guilty.”
20 Books of Summer, #19:
My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss
I’ve reviewed this memoir for Shelf Awareness (it’s coming out in the USA from Farrar, Straus and Giroux on October 22nd) so will only give impressions, in rough chronological order:
Sarah Moss returns to nonfiction – YES!!!
Oh no, it’s in the second person. I’ve read too much of that recently. Fine for one story in a collection. A whole book? Not so sure. (Kirsty Logan got away with it, but only because The Unfamiliar is so short and meant to emphasize how matrescence makes you other.)
The constant second-guessing of memory via italicized asides that question or refute what has just been said; the weird nicknames (her father is “the Owl” and her mother “the Jumbly Girl”) – in short, the deliberate artifice – at first kept me from becoming submerged. This must be deliberate and yet meant it was initially a chore to pick up. It almost literally hurt to read. And yet there are some breathtakingly brilliant set pieces. Oh! when her mother’s gay friend Keith buys her a chocolate éclair and she hides it until it goes mouldy.
Once she starts discussing her childhood reading – what it did for her then and how she views it now – the book really came to life for me. And she very effectively contrasts the would-be happily ever after of generally getting better after eight years of disordered eating with her anorexia returning with a vengeance at age 46 – landing her in A&E in Dublin. (Oh! when she reads War and Peace over and over on a hospital bed and defiantly uses the clean toilets on another floor.) This crisis is narrated in the third person before a return to second person.
The tone shifts throughout the book, so that what threatens to be slightly cloying in the childhood section turns academically curious and then, somehow, despite the distancing pronouns, intimate. So much so that I found myself weeping through the last chapters over this lovely, intelligent woman’s ongoing struggles. As an overly cerebral person who often thinks it’s pesky to have to live in a body, I appreciated her probing of the body/mind divide; and as she tracks where her food issues came from, I couldn’t help but think about my sister’s years of eating disorders and my mother’s fear that it was all her fault.
Beyond Moss’s usual readers, I’d also recommend this to fans of Laura Freeman’s The Reading Cure and Noreen Masud’s A Flat Place.
Overall: shape-shifting, devastating, staunchly pragmatic. I’m not convinced it all hangs together (and I probably would have ended it at p. 255), but it’s still a unique model for transmuting life into art. 
With thanks to Picador for the free copy for review.
Scattered Snows, to the North by Carl Phillips
Phillips is a prolific poet I’d somehow never heard of. In fact, he won the Pulitzer Prize last year for his selected poetry volume. He’s gay and African American, and in his evocative verse he summons up landscapes and a variety of weather, including as a metaphor for emotions – guilt, shame, and regret. Looking back over broken relationships, he questions his memory.
Will I remember individual poems? Unlikely. But the sense of chilly, clear-eyed reflection, yes. (Sample poem below) 
With thanks to Carcanet for the advanced e-copy for review.
Record of Where a Wind Was
Wave-side, snow-side,
little stutter-skein of plovers
lifting, like a mind
of winter—
We’d been walking
the beach, its unevenness
made our bodies touch,
now and then, at
the shoulders mostly,
with that familiarity
that, because it sometimes
includes love, can
become confused with it,
though they remain
different animals. In my
head I played a game with
the waves called Weapon
of Choice, they kept choosing
forgiveness, like the only
answer, as to them
it was, maybe. It’s a violent
world. These, I said, I choose
these, putting my bare hands
through the air in front of me.
Any other August releases you’d recommend?
The Best Books from the First Half of 2024
Hard to believe, but it’s that time of year already! It’s the eighth year in a row that I’ve been making a first-half superlatives list. It remains to be seen how many of these will make it onto my overall best-of year rundown, but for now, these are my 18 favourite 2024 releases that I’ve read so far (representing the top 20% of my current-year reading). One is a bonus in that it won’t actually be published until August; six happen to be books I reviewed for Shelf Awareness. Pictured below are the ones I read in print; all the others were e-copies. Links are to my full reviews where available.
Fiction
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley: This nuanced debut novel alternately goes along with and flouts the tropes of spy fiction and time travel sci-fi, making clever observations about how we frame stories of empire and progress. The narrator is a “bridge” helping to resettle a Victorian polar explorer in near-future London. You just have to suspend disbelief and go with it. Bradley’s descriptive prose is memorable but never quirky for the sake of it. I haven’t had so much fun with a book since Romantic Comedy. A witty, sexy, off-kilter gem.
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj: Darraj’s second novel-in-stories is a shimmering composite portrait of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore. Across nine stellar linked stories, she explores the complex relationships between characters divided by—or connected despite—class, language, and traditional values. Each of the stories (four in the first person, five in the third person) spotlights a particular character. The book depicts the variety of immigrant and second-generation experience, especially women’s.
Piglet by Lottie Hazell: The protagonist works for a cookbook publisher, loves to cook, and has a history of overeating during psychological distress. When her fiancé blindsides her with a confession 13 days before their wedding, she returns to binge eating, dress fittings be damned. Food is also a sign of her education and class pretensions. Uncomfortable themes, but I kept reading in fascinated horror because Hazell writes absolutely incredible scenes. This is also about what women are allowed to want, and how they are expected to settle.
Wellness by Nathan Hill: A state-of-the-nation novel filtered through one Chicago family experiencing midlife and marital crises: underperforming academic Jack; his wife Elizabeth, a placebo researcher at Wellness; and their YouTube-obsessed son Toby. They’ve recently invested their life savings in a new condo. The addictive and spot-on novel asks questions about authenticity, purpose, and nurture. Is love itself a placebo? Hill is clearly fascinated with psychological experimentation but also turns it to humorous effect.
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim: Over 2.5 days in June 2020, a Korean American family (mother Hannah and 20-year-old twins Mia and John, home from college for the lockdown) investigates, on their own and with the help of police and tip-offs, what happened to the father, Adam, who’d been at River Falls Park with the severely disabled 14-year-old son, Eugene, who is autistic and has mosaic Angelman syndrome. Mia narrates, and it’s a pleasure spending time with her quick, systematic brain as she considers each theory and red herring.
Company by Shannon Sanders: This energetic debut novel in 13 linked stories traces several generations of the Collins clan, whose experiences at once exemplify African American gentrification and evoke timeless patterns of parental legacy and sibling jealousy. Sisters Cassandra, Fay, Lee and Suzette grew up at their parents’ Atlantic City jazz club before going their separate ways. We revisit relatives at different points in their lives, mostly between the 1990s and the present day. Celebration scenes make for memorable moments.
Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang (illus. LeUyen Pham): A super-cute teen story with gorgeous illustrations, including lots of pink and red to suit the theme. We follow Vietnamese-American Valentina through high school as she plays host to an internal debate between cynicism and romanticism. Ever since her mother left, she’s longed to believe in romance but feared that love is a doomed prospect for her family. The Asian community of Oakland, California and a new hobby of lion dancing provide engrossing cultural detail.
Nonfiction
Intervals by Marianne Brooker: An extended essay about her mother’s protracted death with multiple sclerosis and the issues it brought up around disability, poverty, and inequality of access to medical care and services. Brooker decries the injustice of the wealthy having the option of travelling to Dignitas in Switzerland for an assisted death, whereas her single mother had so such relief in sight. Brooker’s description of the vigil of the last days, like her account of her vivacious mother’s life, is both tender and unflinching.
Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley: A bereavement memoir like no other. Heart-wrenching yet witty, it bears a unique structure and offers fascinating glimpses into the New York City publishing world. Crosley’s Manhattan apartment was burgled exactly a month before the suicide of her best friend and former boss, Russell. Throughout the book, the whereabouts of her family jewelry is as much of a mystery as the reason for Russell’s death, and investigating the stolen goods in parallel serves as a displacement activity for her.
First Love: Essays on Friendship by Lilly Dancyger: Poignant interlocking essays about female friendship. Love and death coexist here. Dancyger’s first best friend was her cousin Sabina, who was raped and murdered at age 20. “Sad Girls” takes on Sylvia Plath fandom. Dancyger also maps her bisexuality and ponders whether to have a child. She is nostalgic for the freedom of being young and unsupervised in New York City and Europe. A sensitive interrogation of women’s relationships, perfect for fans of Melissa Febos and Emma Straub.
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti: Heti put 10 years of diary contents into a spreadsheet, alphabetizing each sentence, and then ruthlessly culled the results. The recurring topics are familiar from the rest of her oeuvre: obsessive cogitating about relationships, art and identity, but also the practicalities of trying to make a living as a woman in a creative profession. Heti transcends the quotidian by exploding chronology. Remarkably, the collage approach produces a genuine, crystalline vision of the self. A sui generis work of life writing.
Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children by Nicole Louie: This impassioned auto/biographical collage combines the strengths of oral history, group biography and a fragmented memoir. “Motherhood as the epicentre of women’s lives was all I’d ever witnessed” via her mother and grandmother, Louie writes, so finding examples of women living differently was key. As readers, we watch her life, her thinking and the book all take shape. It’s intimate and empathetic, with layers of stories that reflect diversity of experience.
The Age of Loneliness: Essays by Laura Marris: A perceptive, moving collection of nine braided essays linking personal experience of loss with the climate crisis. “Cancerine” is a strong example. Cancer, the sign of the crab, was her father’s cause of death; horseshoe crabs were ground into fertilizer in the 19th century, and their blood is still harvested for biomedical testing. Driven by curiosity and environmental conscience, these reflective pieces reminiscent of Helen Macdonald’s longform journalism ponder human responsibility and resilience. [Graywolf Press, 6 August]
Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie: I’ve not had much success with Rushdie’s fiction, but this is excellent, with intriguing side tendrils and lots of quotable lines. It traces lead-up and aftermath; unexpected echoes, symbolism and ironies. Although Rushdie goes into some medical detail about his recovery, you get the sense of him more as an unchanging mind and a resolute will. The most remarkable section imagines dialogues between him and his imprisoned assailant, probing his beliefs and motivations.
Poetry
Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali: In this poised debut collection by a Muslim poet, spiritual enlightenment is a female, embodied experience, mediated by the matriarchs of the Abrahamic faiths. Ali’s poems hymn women’s bodies, desire, and motherhood. She blurs the line between human and divine with her allusions to the Quran. Ambivalence towards faith is clear in the alliteration-laden verse that recalls Kaveh Akbar’s. Wordplay, floral metaphors, and multiple ghazals make for dazzling language.
Baby Schema by Isabel Galleymore: A slant-wise look at environmental crisis and an impending decision about motherhood. The title comes from Konrad Lorenz’s identification of features that invite nurture. Galleymore edges towards the satirical fantasies of Caroline Bird or Patricia Lockwood as she imagines alternative scenarios of caregiving. What is worthy of maternal concern? Does cuteness merit survival? Extinction and eco-grief on the one hand, yes, but the implacability of biological cycles on the other. Sardonic yet humane.
Inconsolable Objects by Nancy Miller Gomez: This debut collection recalls a Midwest girlhood of fairground rides and lake swimming, tornadoes and cicadas. But her Kansas isn’t all rose-tinted nostalgia; there’s an edge of sadness and danger. “Missing History” notes how women’s stories, such as her grandmother’s, are lost to time. In “Tilt-A-Whirl,” her older sister’s harmless flirtation with a ride operator turns sinister. She also takes inspiration from headlines. The alliteration and slant rhymes are to die for. (Full review to come.)
Egg/Shell by Victoria Kennefick: Motherhood and the body are overarching themes. The speaker experiences multiple miscarriages and names her lost children after plants. Becoming a mother is a metamorphosis all its own, while the second long section is about her husband transitioning. Bird metaphors are inescapable. The structure varies throughout: columns, stanzas; a list, a recipe. Amid the sadness, there is dark humour and one-line rejoinders. If you’re wondering how life can be captured in achingly beautiful poetry, look no further.
Two of the novels above were among my Most Anticipated books of the year. I’ve now read 10 of the 12 on that list and DNFed another (the Sarah Perry), which just leaves Memory Piece by Lisa Ko to find – though others’ responses make me think it might not be worthwhile to do so. I sometimes wonder if designating a book as anticipated or a priority is a kiss of death, as I was at least somewhat disappointed with over half of my choices this time.
In the second part of the year, I’m looking forward to new releases from Rachel Clarke, Sarah Manguso, Charlotte Mendelson, Richard Powers, Sally Rooney, Elizabeth Strout and Evie Wyld.
What 2024 releases should I catch up on? What’s in your sights for the rest of the year?
You may also have seen me on…
Kim’s blog, Reading Matters (recommending three books for “Triple Choice Tuesday”)
&
Shelf Awareness, where I’m in conversation with another reviewer for the National Poetry Month special issue.
Just a very quick post to link to my work elsewhere over the past week.
Back to book reviews tomorrow!
The 2024 Releases I’ve Read So Far
I happen to have read eight pre-release books so far, all of them for paid review; mostly for Shelf Awareness, with one for Foreword. (I also have proof copies of upcoming novels by Tania James, Margot Livesey, Sigrid Nunez and Sarah Perry on the shelf, but haven’t managed to start on them yet.) I’ve given review excerpts, links where available, and ratings below to try to pique your interest. Early in January I’ll follow up with a list of my dozen Most Anticipated titles for the coming year.
My top recommendations so far:
(in alphabetical order)
Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali [Jan. 16, Alice James Books]: In this poised debut collection by a Muslim poet, spiritual enlightenment is a female, embodied experience, mediated by matriarchs. Ali’s ambivalence towards faith is clear in alliteration-laden verse that recalls Kaveh Akbar’s. Wordplay, floral metaphors, and multiple ghazals make for dazzling language. 
Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley [Feb. 27, MCD]: A bereavement memoir like no other. Heart-wrenching yet witty, it bears a unique structure and offers fascinating glimpses into the New York City publishing world. Crosley’s apartment was burgled exactly a month before the suicide of her best friend and former boss. Investigating the stolen goods in parallel serves as a displacement activity for her.
Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj [Jan. 16, HarperVia]: Darraj’s second novel-in-stories is a sparkling composite portrait of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore. Across nine stellar linked stories, she explores the complex relationships between characters divided by—or connected despite—class, language, and traditional values. The book depicts the variety of immigrant and second-generation experience, especially women’s. 
The Ritual Effect by Michael Norton [April 9, Scribner]: Many use the words “habit” and “ritual” interchangeably, but the Harvard Business School behavioral scientist argues convincingly that they are very different. While a habit is an automatic, routine action, rituals are “emotional catalysts that energize, inspire, and elevate us.” He presents an engaging and commonsense précis of his research, making a strong case for rituals’ importance in the personal and professional spheres as people mark milestones, form relationships, or simply “savor the experiences of everyday life.”
Other 2024 releases I’ve read:
(in publication date order)
House Cat by Paul Barbera [Jan. 2, Thames & Hudson]: The Australian photographer Paul Barbera’s lavish art book showcases eye-catching architecture and the pets inhabiting these stylish spaces. Whether in a Revolutionary War-era restoration or a modernist show home, these cats preside with a befitting dignity. (Shelf Awareness review forthcoming) 
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo [Feb. 13, Henry Holt/Quercus]: Choo’s third novel is steeped in Chinese folklore, like her previous work, this time with a focus on tantalizing stories related to foxes, which were often worshiped at village shrines in China. Two tandem searches ramp up the level of suspense: in the winter of 1908 in Manchuria, in northeast China, a detective investigates a series of unexplained deaths; at the same time, a fox-woman masquerading as a servant plots vengeance against the man who murdered her child. 
The Only Way Through Is Out by Suzette Mullen [Feb. 13, University of Wisconsin Press]: A candid, inspirational memoir traces the events leading to her midlife acceptance of her lesbian identity and explores the aftermath of her decision to leave her marriage and build “a life where I would choose desire over safety.” The book ends on a perfect note as Mullen attends her first Pride festival aged 56. “It’s never too late” is the triumphant final line. (Foreword review forthcoming)
36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem by Nam Le [March 5, Knopf]: A fearless poetry debut prioritizes language and voice to explore inherited wartime trauma and expose anti-Asian racism. Each poem is titled after a rhetorical strategy or analytical mode. Anaphora is one sonic technique used to emphasize the points. Language and race are intertwined. This is a prophet’s fervent truth-telling. High-concept and unapologetic, this collection from a Dylan Thomas Prize winner pulsates. (Shelf Awareness review forthcoming) 
Currently reading:
(in release date order; all for Shelf Awareness review)
God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music by Leah Payne [Jan. 4, Oxford University Press]: “traces the history and trajectory of CCM in America and, in the process, demonstrates how the industry, its artists, and its fans shaped—and continue to shape—conservative, (mostly) white, evangelical Protestantism.”
Raised by Wolves: Fifty Poets on Fifty Poems, A Graywolf Anthology [Jan. 23, Graywolf Press]: “Graywolf poets have selected fifty poems by Graywolf poets, offering insightful prose reflections on their selections. What arises is a choral arrangement of voices and lineages across decades, languages, styles, and divergences, inspiring a shared vision for the future.”
The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl [April 30, Random House]: “When her estranged mother dies, Stella is left with an unusual gift: a one-way plane ticket, and a note reading ‘Go to Paris’. But Stella is hardly cut out for adventure … When her boss encourages her to take time off, Stella resigns herself to honoring her mother’s last wishes.”
Will you look out for one or more of these?
Any other 2024 reads you can recommend?
That’s it for me until later next week when I start in on my year-end round-ups (DNFs, miscellaneous superlatives, books of the year, and final statistics). Merry Christmas!
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 