In this inspired outing, Bayard (Jackie & Me) explores the effects of Oscar Wilde’s gay affair and 1895–1897 imprisonment on his family. The story begins in 1892 Norfolk, England, a period Bayard dubs “the before times,” where the Wildes have rented a house for the summer. Oscar’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie, arrives for an extended stay. Oscar’s wife, Constance, is initially oblivious to the true nature of his and Bosie’s friendship. Throughout her own relationship with Oscar, she has grown accustomed to him being the focus of others’ attention, but has remained convinced he only has eyes for her. That illusion evaporates as the two men spend increasing amounts of time together and she learns Oscar is giving Bosie money. After Bosie’s father puts a stop to the affair by accusing Oscar of being a “sodomite,” leading to his conviction for gross indecency, Constance attempts a fresh start in Italy. Later sections follow the couple’s elder son, Cyril, who fights in the trenches during WWI; and his brother, Vyvyan, who has an awkward reunion with Bosie in 1925. In a moving conclusion, Constance speculates on how she might have protected Oscar from the authorities back in 1892. Bayard’s superior gifts at evoking the past are on full display, and he makes it easy for readers to sympathize with his characters. Historical fiction fans will love this poignant tale. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Tulathimutte (Private Citizens) offers a shrewd novel in stories populated by characters longing for IRL connections. In “The Feminist,” a man feels “oppressed” by the patriarchy on account of his “narrow-shouldered” physique. After failing to woo women with his cringey attempts at being an ally, he moderates an incel message board. In “Ahegao,” a shy Thai American man named Kant comes out as gay and lucks into dating the “well-adjusted” Julian. Things get off to a good start, but Kant worries Julian will be turned off by his sadistic sexual preferences. And in “Pics,” Alison is derailed by her friend Nick’s rejection of her after their recent hookup and exhibits increasingly antisocial behavior, such as adopting a violent raven. The lengthy “Main Character,” which includes revelations about all the preceding stories, features Kant’s younger sibling Bee, a nonbinary tech worker who shares their life story in an internet post, beginning with how they sold their gender in grade school for $40 to a boy who wanted to get into the girls’ locker room (“In this way, before I learned gender was fluid, I’d learned it was liquid”). The prose is consistently sharp and funny as Tulathimutte cuts to the truth of his characters’ dilemmas. It’s a first-rate exploration of yearning and solitude. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Pulitzer winner Powers (The Overstory) delivers an epic drama of AI, neocolonialism, and oceanography in this dazzling if somewhat disjointed novel set largely on the French Polynesian island of Makatea, where a mysterious American consortium plans to launch floating cities into the ocean. The story centers on three characters: Rafi Young, a former literature student from an abusive home in Chicago who has moved to Makatea with his wife; Rafi’s onetime friend Todd Keane, the billionaire founder of a social media company and AI platform whose connection to the seasteading project is revealed later; and Evelyne Beaulieu, a Canadian marine biologist who has come to Makatea just as the island’s residents must vote on whether to let the project proceed. For some Makateans, the seasteading initiative raises hopes of economic renewal; for others, it triggers fears of environmental destruction and a return to colonialist oppression. Powers’s characters can be implausibly cerebral and pure of heart, and his narrative threads never fully cohere, but the elegance of his prose, the scope of his ambition, and the exacting reverence with which he writes about the imperiled natural world serve as reminders of why he ranks among America’s foremost novelists. “The ocean absorbed all her hope and excitement,” Powers writes of Evelyne, “into a place far larger than anything human.” Readers will be awed. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

In the latest bracing satire from Palahniuk (Fight Club), a wave of high school suicides roils the country. The narrative centers on Samantha Deel, a brilliant and resourceful teenager who’s hit hard by the suicide of her boyfriend, Garson. When her excellent academic record attracts the notice of an organization called Greener Pastures, she agrees to enter its mysterious program. Passages from the group’s “Guide,” which blends calls for Stepford Wives–esque conformity with a vision for a new order (“The family is over”), are interspersed throughout the novel. The excerpts provide an eerie contrast to Sam’s dangerous odyssey as a complex series of events brings the teen, who is secretly pregnant with Garson’s baby, to the Orphanage, an affiliate of Greener Pastures, where her process of “induction” begins. The patchwork structure accommodates periodic sidebars and ironic observations on references high and low, from Hitler to Captains Courageous, as the narrator muses on totalitarianism and mind control. Many of the one-liners target low-hanging fruit, but there’s a cleverness to the depiction of Sam as a survivor (“Unlike Jay Gatsby,” Palahniuk writes, “Samantha Deel would live beyond her early infatuation”). Die-hard Palahniuk fans will lap this up. Agents: Sloan Harris and Dan Kirschen, ICM Partners. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller Rooney returns with a boldly experimental and emotionally devastating story of estrangement (after Beautiful World, Where Are You). After their father dies, brothers Peter and Ivan Koubek drift further apart. Peter, 32, is a depressed Dublin lawyer torn between his college girlfriend, Sylvia, who broke up with him with after she suffered a disabling accident six years earlier, and 23-year-old Naomi, a sometime sex worker. Ivan, 22, is a socially inept pro chess player whose wunderkind status is in doubt when he meets and falls for 36-year-old near-divorcée Margaret at a tournament. Peter’s reflexive disapproval of the age gap in Ivan and Margaret’s relationship causes a permanent rift, and Rooney crosscuts between their perspectives as they ruminate on their father’s death and their complicated romances. The novel’s deliberate pacing veers from the propulsiveness of Normal People and the deep character work contrasts with the topicality of Beautiful World, but in many ways this feels like Rooney’s most fully realized work, especially as she channels the modernist styles of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. Underlining Peter’s rudderlessness, she writes, “Lamplight. Walking her to the library under the trees. Live again one day of that life and die. Cold wind in his eyes stinging like tears. Woman much missed.” Moreover, her focus on Peter and Ivan’s complicated fraternal bond pays enormous dividends. Even the author’s skeptics are liable to be swept away by this novel’s forceful currents of feeling. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

An Argentine family is ripped apart by the country’s Dirty War in Sanford’s memorable debut. In 1976, Buenos Aires housewife Lorena Ledesma and her husband are kidnapped and tortured by the military junta, leaving behind their toddler son, Matías, to be raised by Lorena’s mother, Esme. As Esme’s efforts to track down her daughter and son-in-law prove futile, she’s wracked with sadness and desperation but no less resilient, and a few months later, she joins an underground group dedicated to discovering the whereabouts of missing children taken by the government. She soon learns her daughter gave birth to a girl named Ana while imprisoned, igniting a desire to unite Matías with the sister he’s never met. A parallel narrative set in 2005 New York City follows Rachel Sprague, 28, who was raised in the U.S. by adoptive parents and is shocked to learn she was born in South America. With the help of her adoptive parents, she searches for records of her birth family and learns about the impact of the Dirty War. As Sanford links the story lines, she portrays Rachel’s cathartic discoveries in commanding and poetic prose. It’s a resonant and historically rich tale. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Filmmaker Burns dips into the Irish American heritage he’s portrayed in such movies as The Brothers McMullen for his bittersweet debut novel (after the memoir Independent Ed). The story revolves around 12-year-old Kneeney’s coming-of-age in 1970s Long Island, where, after his grandfather’s funeral, he slips into his typical summer routine. There are fishing expeditions off Montauk with his stern policeman father and “dick” older brother; beach days at the Rockaways with his family; and endless stories shared by assorted relatives and family friends. Kneeney feels increasingly uneasy about the family’s stability, though, sensing a widening rift between his parents. Before the end of the fateful summer, he’ll face two more funerals, forcing him to accept that the world will break his heart. He finds a way to cope through writing, and after winning the Catholic Daughters of America poetry contest, his father gives him a typewriter and urges him to read Hemingway. Though Burns based this sketchily plotted novel on his family history, the characters are straight out of central casting. Still, there are plenty of touching moments of understated affection between father and son. At its best, Burns’s coming-of-age story suggests a Long Island version of Nick Adams. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Emerson’s effervescent debut, a conflicted 30-something woman contends with her religious obligations. Though Rina Kirsh is secretly an atheist, she performs all the exhausting rituals she was raised to fulfill in her Los Angeles Modern Orthodox Jewish community, from endless socializing and volunteering to cleaning, cooking, and baking for weekly Shabbos and religious holidays. She accepts her lot, though back when she studied art history and comparative religion at a small liberal arts college, she experimented freely with “gentile boys with names like Blaine and Kyle.” Her devotion is upended after her husband convinces her to participate in an evening of wife-swapping with other Orthodox couples, claiming the practice falls within the tenets of Jewish law. Upset from feeling “traded” by her husband, she begins an affair with a Haredi rabbi, who welcomes Rina’s superior knowledge of sex. Then, after registering for a painting class, she begins a passionate affair with her married Chicanx professor, and their determination to be together takes over the plot. Emerson provides a fascinating picture of Rina’s commitments as a Modern Orthodox woman and goes deep into the psychological battle between her duty to uphold tradition and her life-affirming desire. The result is titillating and thought-provoking in equal measure. Agents: Laura Cameron and Amanda Orozco, Transatlantic Agency. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/19/2024 | Details & Permalink

Turkish writer Atay (1934–1977) makes his English-language debut with this alluring 1975 collection, sharply translated by Hubbell, of dreamlike fables and horror stories. Each entry, several of which take the form of letters, brims with longing for human connection and is packed with parenthetical asides that lay bare their narrators’ fears of being misunderstood. In “A Letter,” a newspaper advice columnist shares (with his own interjections) a deranged letter he’s received from a man who has fallen obsessively in love. In the brief but tense “The Forgotten,” a woman finds her ex-boyfriend dead in her attic, which leads to a deeper, weirder excavation of her memories. In “Railway Storytellers—a Dream,” three people live near a train station in the middle of nowhere, a setting that feels out of time, and sell stories they’ve written to passengers. In the mesmerizing title novella, a man receives a letter that feels threatening, though it’s in a language he can’t understand. As he explores its meaning, the letter’s contents begin to derail his life, and its consequences sever his connection to the real world and the other people around him. Devotees of modernist literature will be grateful for Atay’s hypnotic and intense writing. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink

Allen (Patricia Wants to Cuddle) unfurls a bizarre and ultimately gratifying tale of an unlikely duo who find common ground. Adam, a struggling author who’s been unable to repeat the success of his memoir about being excommunicated from the Mormon church for being gay, gets a gig as ghostwriter for Roland Rogers, 50, a movie star who plans to come out as gay in his memoir. After Adam arrives at the actor’s Malibu mansion, Roland talks to him through speakers in the smart home’s appliances and confesses that he’s recently died in a skiing accident in Utah. Roland isn’t sure how he’s able to address Adam, given the fact that he’s dead, and determines to dictate his story before his body is found on the mountain. The two grow closer through offbeat interactions, such as the waves of ecstasy felt by Roland when Adam eats something delectable, and Roland begins to fall for Adam, experiencing his first loving relationship with a man. Adam’s constant references to movie stars wears thin (he unfavorably compares his physique to Mark Wahlberg’s), but there’s surprising depth to Allen’s portrayal of Roland, who spent decades hiding his true self behind the jacked-up persona he maintained for a popular action series. For those who share Allen’s fixation on celebrity culture, there’s plenty of fun to be had. Agent: Leila Campoli, Stonesong. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/05/2024 | Details & Permalink