YA author Anderson (Feed) makes an auspicious adult debut with this rollicking tale of 11th-century relic hunters. After Brother Nicephorus, a Benedictine monk in the pox-riddled Italian city of Bari, has a dream about St. Nicholas, the archbishop orders him to travel to Myra, in the Byzantine Empire, to procure the saint’s bones, which are reputed to leak a mysterious liquid that can heal those afflicted with the disease. Accompanied by legendary relic hunter Tyun and his dog-man sidekick, Reprobus, Nicephorus sets sail for Myra, only to discover they are in a race with a rival crew of Venetian relic hunters. After reaching Myra, Nicephorus and company experience many setbacks on their way to disinter the bones from the basilica where they are guarded. Anderson stocks the exhilarating narrative with sea battles, comely spies, duels, and double crosses, and succeeds at transporting the reader back to 11th-century Italy and Byzantium. Readers will be swept up in this marvelous adventure. Agent: David McCormick, McCormick Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Brazilian author Drummond’s sharp English-language debut, curator and self-proclaimed “misandrist and misogynist” Vivian Noronha navigates her privileged life of designer goods, endless parties, drugs, and sex in Rio de Janeiro. She recounts her family’s multigenerational history of serving as diplomats and her difficult teen years, when she was diagnosed with depression and heavily medicated. Now she’s in her early 30s, and though her family is less well-off than it once was, she coasts on her upper-class status. While attending a rave with mostly white, gay, and wealthy revelers, she witnesses the police attack a street vendor named Darlene. First they smash Darlene’s illegal caipirinhas stand, then they beat her, but the ravers continue filing into the club, unbothered by the brutality. As the party continues, Vivian considers the abuses and hypocrisies of Brazil’s classist and racist society. The book’s power comes from Vivian’s scathing assessment of the elite: rich people are painted as oblivious to the concerns of others, the artistic class as disingenuous in their calls for social equality, and even the protagonist herself as more interested in being glamorous and sexually desirable than anything else. Drummond’s incendiary tale burns bright. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Tripp (Georgia) offers an intimate portrait of Jackie Kennedy during her courtship and marriage to JFK. The story starts in 1951 when Jackie has just graduated from Vassar and hopes to break into magazine publishing. Friends and family members try to set her up with Jack Kennedy, but initially she’s uninterested in the boyish congressman, perceiving him as the type who “loves a game and will leave it once he’s won.” As the two keep running into each other socially, she starts to fall for him, and eventually breaks off her engagement to stockbroker Johnny Husted. She and Jack begin dating as he hits the campaign trail in his bid for the Senate and get married in 1953. Jack’s infidelities, the death of their third child, and the stress of the Cold War cause fractures in their relationship, which are only beginning to heal in the months before their fateful trip to Dallas in 1963. Tripp brings Jackie and Jack’s romance to life through carefully crafted scenes, and offers a humanizing portrayal of Jackie’s complex love for her husband. Camelot devotees, take note. Agent: Kimberly Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Wroblewski delivers a gratifying if overstuffed prequel to his 2008 bestseller, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. In May 1919, 22-year-old Wisconsin automotive worker John Sawtelle witnesses his boss’s murder and heads north with his wife, Mary, and their friends Ulysses Elbow and Frank Eckling out of fear he’ll be falsely implicated in the crime. After the four settle on a dilapidated farm, John works as a dog breeder, raises two sons, Edgar and Claude, and encounters some unsettling surprises in the woods surrounding the property. One plot thread features a neighbor with supernatural abilities—she ages at half the normal human rate and can see into a person’s future. Another involves a violent and tragic episode, which results in the Sawtelles and their friends going their separate ways. The author tends to lose his way in lengthy sections of backstory and drawn-out conversation pieces as the plot slowly approaches the events of the first novel. Still, there are beautiful passages on the bonds between humans and animals and plenty of folksy charm. Fans of the first book will be satisfied. Agent: Eleanor Jackson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bordas (How to Behave in a Crowd) sets her clever twist on the campus novel at the country’s first MFA program for stand-up comedy. Unfolding over a single December day at an unnamed university in Chicago, the narrative begins with a faculty department meeting and progresses to a student workshop. Everyone involved in the program is nervously anticipating the arrival of a controversial guest lecturer, recently disgraced comedy legend Manny Reinhardt. Dorothy, the only female faculty member, hopes to make a comeback in her comedy career, while her colleague Kruger dreams of quitting teaching and ascending to movie stardom. Among the students, Artie fears he’s “too good-looking to be funny,” while Jo is constantly on the lookout for Andy Kaufman, who she thinks is still alive. A subplot involving reports of an active shooter on campus feels unnecessary; more successful are Bordas’s explorations of what a stand-up routine requires of its writer and what, if anything, is off-limits, either because the subject is too offensive or because the material belongs to someone else. Occasional moments of broad comedy, like an embarrassing bathroom scene, spice up the observational humor incorporated throughout. It’s a knockout. Agent: Jackie Ko, Wylie Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Sanchez debuts with a dazzling chronicle of a queer immigrant’s coming of age in Colombia and Miami. In late 1990s Ibague, Santiago and his older half brother, Manuel, are raised by his single mother, a doctor who often neglects to pick Santiago up from school (“Today she forgot to be a mother,” he narrates on one such occasion). After the family moves to Miami when Santiago is six, his mother struggles to find work. Manuel resents being dragged away from Colombia and begins to rebel, while Santiago comes to realize he is gay and develops an active sex life by the time he’s a teen. In his early 20s, after moving to Brooklyn and finding work as a waiter, Santiago joins his mother on a trip back to Colombia. There, he looks up his taciturn father, an erstwhile civil engineer who now drives a cab, and reconciles with the disconnection he feels from his birthplace. Santiago’s sad and dreamy perspective immerses readers into his search for a sense of home, and the many raw and sensual sex scenes speak to his hunger for connection. This is a triumph. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

First published in 1991, the harrowing English-language debut from Skorobogatov centers on a Soviet Afghan war veteran driven to commit violence by a monstrous apparition. Nikolai, who is unemployed and living off his military pension with his actor wife, Vera, begins to hallucinate a mysterious sexual rival who takes up residence in their home. At first Nikolai only hears whispers between Vera and an unidentified man, but his paranoia soon manifests as the phantasmagorical Sergeant Bertrand, who flirts with Vera and ceaselessly accosts Nikolai with stories of her infidelity. As his jealousy intensifies, Nikolai regularly beats Vera and attacks other men he believes are after her, including an audience member at the theater where she performs, her costar, and a visiting friend. Through it all, Vera remains devoted to Nikolai. He’s eventually committed to a psychiatric hospital, but his delusions continue, and he escapes to attack Vera one final time. Skorobogatov’s atmospheric horror story, smoothly translated by Chavasse, makes clever use of gothic conventions to build an allegory of the embittered psyche of a fallen empire, and to sketch a chilling portrait of PTSD. Readers won’t be able to turn away. Agent: Markus Hoffmann, Regal Hoffmann & Assoc. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

This inspired anthology demonstrates the enduring influence of Franz Kafka’s fatalistic worldview and mordant humor. In the introduction, Becca Rothfeld muses on Kafka’s “mystifying” aphorisms and recurring theme of imprisonment, suggesting that “we might begin to sympathize with the cage looking for a bird, for we, too, are desperate to catch the fugitive flutter of comprehension.” Standout entries include “The Board,” Elif Batuman’s amusing tale of a woman who goes through bureaucratic hoops to purchase a basement apartment, and Joshua Cohen’s “Return to the Museum,” written from the perspective of a Neanderthal on display at a natural history museum as it reopens after a pandemic. Lingering pandemic fears also pop up in Tommy Orange’s “The Hurt” and Helen Oyeyemi’s “Hygiene,” though both fail to stick their respective landings. More successful is Yiyun Li’s “Apostrophe’s Dream,” which takes the form of a play staged by various punctuation marks about the gradual abandonment of their proper usage. Charlie Kaufman’s metafictional closer is equally clever, unspooling the story of an author who, after his book launch, learns he inadvertently copied Kafka’s language and sees his life upended. These stories will do the trick for the Kafka curious and diehard fans alike. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Murrin’s smashing debut follows two unhappily married women in a small town in Ireland as they test the bounds of independence. In 1994, Izzy Keaveney heads to mass after a night spent fighting with her husband, James, over his refusal to support her wish to reopen her flower shop, which she ran until the birth of their first child, who’s now a teen. At church, she encounters poet Colette Crowley, who has recently returned from Dublin and whose husband, Shaun, has banned her from seeing their three sons ever since she had an affair and announced she was leaving him some months earlier. When Colette starts a writing workshop in town, Izzy enrolls, and after class one evening, she agrees to help Colette secretly meet with one of her sons. After Shaun learns what Colette’s up to, he forbids her from making a promised Christmas visit, pleads with James to put a stop to Izzy’s meddling, and intimates to him that Izzy is having an affair with the new parish priest. Heartbroken, Colette drinks heavily and stumbles into an affair with her married landlord, whose wife is pregnant; meanwhile, Izzy considers separating from James. Each of the characters is vividly rendered, and Murrin excels at portraying the rippling consequences of small-town gossip and intolerance. This is a marvel. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Residents of a California suburb reckon with betrayals and unwanted visitors in Stix’s offbeat debut collection. The drama kicks off with the title story, a 15-point list of items to be returned to Spirit Rosenblatt by her unfaithful lover, beginning with a sequined cellphone case. The stakes are even higher in “Alice,” which finds the narrator trying to free a Guinea worm embedded in his sister’s stomach. More bizarre incidents occur in entries like “The Acorn,” in which a man’s nagging mother is reincarnated as a mole and torments him by perching on his shoulder. Spirit Rosenblatt resurfaces in “While I Am Away,” which takes the form of instructions for her dog sitter while she’s at a life coaching conference. “Party at the End of the World” revisits the theme of infidelity as doting wife Betty discovers her travel writer husband, Robert, in the throes of passion with a neighbor. In “Migration,” Robert has a chance meeting with Spirit, who also lives in the neighborhood. The tonal shifts are sometimes jarring, though Stix credibly portrays the indignities of modern life. It’s a solid first outing. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink