This week: Richard Russo's latest, plus a novel about romantic do-overs.
One Hundred Twenty-One Days
In this remarkable first novel from Oulipo member Audin, the lives of French and German mathematicians serve as vectors, but the enduring tragedy of the two world wars remains unsolvable: a "zone of ambiguity, the grey zone." Pieced together from journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, notes, and interview transcripts, the stories of Robert Gorenstein and Christian M. begin similarly: both are young, talented French mathematicians who are wounded in action during WWI, and both fall in love with the same young nurse, Marguerite. Deeply Catholic, Marguerite refuses to marry the Jewish Gorenstein, despite her feelings for him, and chooses a life with Christian, who is prone to rage and increasingly sympathetic to Nazism. In a fit of madness, Gorenstein commits an unspeakable crime, but even lifelong confinement in an asylum doesn't prevent him from continuing to amass professional achievements; his academic correspondents come to include André Silberberg, another French-Jewish mathematician whose life is imperiled by the Occupation. Audin's smart, deeply empathetic text is enriched by recurrences, coincidences, and invocations of European poetry.
The Versions of Us
British journalist Barnett’s debut novel imagines the delicious prospect of romantic do-overs, cleverly negotiating the tricky and often dizzying terrain of three versions of first love. Eva and Jim first cross paths in 1958, and in “Version One,” aspiring writer Eva’s bike runs over a nail and law student Jim fixes it, with the pair falling instantly in love and marrying. In “Version Two,” Eva’s bike misses the nail, and she marries her actor boyfriend, David. “Version Three” starts similarly to the first version, but this time, Eva leaves Jim when she discovers she’s pregnant with David’s child. The stories and careers variously unfold across 50 years—the “Version Two” Eva and Jim finally meet in 1963 in New York—with parents aging, children growing up and moving on, spouses moving in and out, with Eva’s writing and Jim’s painting flourishing or withering depending on the version. The constants are love and death—and the portraits of Eva that Jim has drawn.
The Morning They Came for Us: Dispatches from Syria
Veteran foreign correspondent di Giovanni (Ghosts by Daylight) brings her history of covering battle zones (among them Iraq, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Sarajevo) to this account of her experiences inside Syria from June to December 2012. Her work, informed by her extensive experience as a journalist, shows a keen ability to capture violent conflicts from multiple sides. Starting from the point when Syria, after a short-lived cease-fire, fell back into fighting, she describes the collapse of communities with reputations for diversity and tolerance—among them Aleppo, “the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth.” The peculiarities of modern urban warfare, in which the smells and sounds of war permeate everyday life, are graphically conveyed. Hunger prevails; vanquished diseases (polio, typhus, cholera) return; children are traumatized; and rape, torture, kidnapping, and beheading become conventional weapons. This book, haunted by the international failure to intervene effectively, gives readers an on-the-ground experience of the devastating seasons that followed the promise of the Arab Spring.
Eleven Hours
Early one wintry morning, Lore, an elementary school speech therapist who is nine-months pregnant, enters a New York City hospital alone. Her contractions have started, and though she isn't terribly far along, her assigned nurse, Franckline, quickly sets her up in the maternity ward, where the duo ride out the long process of Lore's labor together. As the hours pass, the women sit in Lore's room and walk the hospital halls, and snippets of their histories come to light—including Franckline's time as a midwife's helper in her native Haiti and Lore's difficult childhood, as well as the complicated love triangle that resulted in her solo trip to the hospital. In addition, it isn't long before Franckline's own early pregnancy is revealed. After several miscarriages, however, Franckline is afraid to tell her husband of her condition until she is certain her baby will survive. Written with incredible clarity, this third novel from Erens (The Virgins) is a wonder, shifting between two protagonists with ease to tell a deeply personal narrative of childbirth, complete with tension, horror, and deep, mature emotion.
Born on a Tuesday
This sweeping debut novel by Caine Prize–finalist John is poignant and compelling. In a rural Nigerian community called Bayan Layi, an inquisitive teen named Dantala has joined a group of homeless youths. He must flee, however, when a political election sparks a riot resulting in the death of one of his friends. Dantala goes on a harrowing journey to find his mother, Umma, in Dogon Icce. He inevitably settles in the northwestern city-state of Sokoto, at a mosque headed by Sheikh Jamal and Malam Abdul-Nur Mohammed. Over seven years, Dantala befriends Abdul-Nur’s younger brother, Jibril, and falls in love with the sheikh’s daughter, Aisha. External conflicts surround the protagonist as he grows into a thoughtful and conscientious man. Told through a blend of first-person narration and diary pages, John skillfully employs Dantala’s probing voice to pose crucial questions and explore collisions between modernity and tradition, Arabic and English, rhetoric and action.
The Romanovs: 1613–1918
Montefiore (Jerusalem: The Biography), a popular novelist and historian of Russia, describes this extensive account of the rise and fall of the Romanov dynasty as a “blood-spattered, gold-plated, diamond-studded, swash-buckled, bodice-ripping, and star-crossed... chronicle[s] of fathers and sons, megalomaniacs, monsters, and saints.” But it also reveals the author’s imaginative gift for storytelling and research acumen. From the Romanov dynasty’s inauspicious beginnings in a remote monastery to its violent end in a provincial basement, the family held the Russian crown for just over three centuries, dramatically expanding Russia’s borders and laying the groundwork for what would become the U.S.S.R. and the modern Russian Federation. Montefiore addresses questions of great import as well as more prosaic but equally illuminating details of life in the Romanov regime, examining, for instance, how Catherine the Great went from being “a regicidal, uxoricidal German usurper” to becoming one of Russia’s most successful rulers and “the darling of the philosophes."
Songs from a Mountain
If an oracle’s pronouncements were pitched into the cacophony of modern life and then retuned as scrambled wisdom coalesced into poems, what might result is this third collection from Nadelberg (Bright Brave Phenomena), a wild, careening, conceptually wily (yet somehow ruly) book that refuses to keep its feet on the ground. “Let me go again into the/ epileptic air that will render a body capable or/ less dumb to the sun signaling its framed song,” she writes early on, before noting “how the act/ of putting your shoes on is a set of expectations.” Such incisive moments stand out against the collection’s ruling chaos, especially in the longer poems (“I Steal Care 4 U,” “Mont America,” “Rad Silence Crystal Weapon Wave Mont”). It is there that Nadelberg most consistently hits her stride in a tumbling, almost overwhelming medley of various sources. Nadelberg establishes herself as an exemplar of early 21st-century artistic practice.
If I Was Your Girl
In an illuminating debut guided by hope and overwhelming kindness, Russo demonstrates the challenges teens face in finding “the truest version” of themselves. Though she was born Andrew Hardy, Amanda always knew she was meant to be a girl. After enduring classroom bullies and her father’s admonishments to toughen up, Amanda moves to Atlanta with her mother for a long, difficult physical transition. Afterward, Amanda returns to her father and a new town in Tennessee, eager to finish high school and move to a big city. Amanda wishes to go unnoticed, but her beauty attracts friends and potential boyfriends. The more she begins to feel like “a normal teenage girl,” the more she becomes aware of the secrets those around her keep—secrets that, like hers, have the power to both destroy and liberate. Shifting between Amanda’s past and present, Russo gently examines the emotional journey of one trans teen, covering acceptable language, gender expectations, and the politics of going “stealth.”
Everybody's Fool
When Doug Raymer, chief of police of the forlornly depressed town of North Bath, N.Y., falls into an open grave during a funeral service, it is only the first of many farcical and grisly incidents in Russo's shaggy dog story of revenge and redemption. Among the comical set pieces that propel the narrative are a poisonous snakebite, a falling brick wall, and a stigmatalike hand injury. North Bath, as readers of Nobody's Fool will remember, is the home of Sully Sullivan, the hero of the previous book and also a character here. Self-conscious, self-deprecating, and convinced he's everybody's fool, Raymer is obsessed with finding the man his late wife was about to run off with when she fell down the stairs and died. He's convinced that the garage door opener he found in her car will lead him to her lover's home. Meanwhile, he pursues an old feud with Sully; engages in repartee with his clever assistant and her twin brother; and tries to arrest a sociopath whose preferred means of communication are his fists. The remaining circle of ne'er-do-wells, ex-cons, daily drunks, deadbeats, and thieves behave badly enough to keep readers chuckling. The give-and-take of rude but funny dialogue is Russo's trademark, as is his empathy for down-and-outers on the verge of financial calamity.
Inherited Disorders
Sachs’s stellar debut collection comprises 117 very short stories about fathers and sons: an assortment of absurdist scenarios from a Harvard-trained intellect with the timing of a borscht belt comedian. In the first story, an Austrian nature poet writing about ferns and creeks despairs when critics see in his work nothing but references to his notorious Nazi father. In “Siegel’s Shoes,” both sons of the owner of Chicago’s oldest shoe store aspire to scientific careers. The older brother takes over the family business, while the younger becomes a physicist fixated on a theory of alternate universes defined by different choices. Other protagonists include a samurai warrior, a labor historian, a historian of the Ottoman Empire, a chairman of the Federal Reserve, and a sweeper for the Canadian curling team. Whether it’s a biologist obsessed with nematodes or a philosopher taking a New England vacation, these unfortunate fellows find themselves self-destructing under the weight of their paternal relationships. With his humor, wit, and imagination, Sachs proves himself a perceptive observer of human nature and a distinctly promising talent.
So Much Synth
Shaughnessy (Our Andromeda) finds ever new ways to rend the heart in this biting and poignant anthropological study of girlhood and adolescence. The opening poem, “I Have a Time Machine,” sets the tone for the four-part collection, simmering in the obsessive nature of regrets and paths not taken. Her lush snapshots of youth portray triumph, anger, and agony, the poet unashamed to explore the abscesses of adolescence. “Dress Form,” a first-person confessional of self-esteem and body issues, pinpoints the rationale behind such self-inflicted wounds: “Like I learned: no dress could ever be// beautiful or best if it had me in it.” Shaughnessy uses language in a way that honors the power of imagery. This depiction of girlhood is not meant to serve as a unifier of personal experiences, but as the nuanced experience of growing up as a woman of color in a world dominated by white men. “This is not a book anyone wants to read,” Shaughnessy writes, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea
The first-ever English translation of Russian writer Teffi’s memoir follows the top-notch satirist as she embarks on a literary tour of Ukraine in 1918, simultaneously fleeing the Bolsheviks and journeying “south, always further south, and always without any deliberate choice” until reaching Yekaterinodar, where her account ends. Teffi’s memoir is a departure from typical self-absorbed, navel-gazing fare: she was best known in early-20th-century Russia as a feuilletonist, a writer of breezy and witty cultural essays, and her recollections center on the colorful, comical, desperate, and persistent characters she meets along the way. Here, she alternates quick, playful dialogue and sly observations of human behavior with gruesome images—a Bolshevik boiled alive, a dog dragging a chewed-off human arm, bloated cow corpses bobbing in the ocean—and occasional moments of stunning lyricism, a testament to her background as a songwriter as well as the skill of the translators. This collection of vignettes about life as a refugee is by turns hilarious, beautiful, and heartbreaking, and strikingly holds up despite being a century old.
You Can Fly: The Tuskegee Airmen
Weatherford (Voice of Freedom) again wields the power of poetry to tell a gripping historical story, reinforced by dramatically shaded scratchboard illustrations by her son, making a notable debut. Gentle yet stirring, Weatherford’s 40-plus free-verse poems create a composite portrait of the first African-American military pilots, trained at the Tuskegee Institute before fighting on the front lines in WWII, and the rampant racial prejudice that these military heroes battled throughout the war. Addressing the pilots collectively as “you,” the present-tense narrative has a palpable sense of immediacy, urgency, and encouragement: “Finally, your moment./ After eight hours of lessons,/ it’s your turn to fly solo,/ to conquer a new world./ You steer as if you and the plane are one./ You have never felt freer./ Never.” Weatherford also offers appreciative nods to the first black women allowed to serve in the Army Nurse Corps, as well as black and white civilians and officers who decried the hypocrisy inherent in a soldier risking his life to defend a country “that doesn’t respect his rights.” A timeline and other resources wrap up this absorbing book.
