The 33 pieces in this entertaining collection from Keret (Fly Already) lay bare the absurdities, anxieties, and ironies of contemporary existence. In the Cinderella story “Soulo,” a neuroscientist who cofounded the Faculty of Loneliness Studies of the Berlin Free University designs a robotic companion who fits her every need. The bickering childless couple in “Chinese Singles Day” buy a bargain-priced dining set complete with a free baby seat, which forces them to discuss whether they plan to have children. The fatalistic “Genesis, Chapter 0” chronicles a man’s existential frustrations, beginning with the boredom he feels after recovering from chronic pain following an accident and continuing through his difficult marriage (their couple’s therapist views their relationship as “an incurable disease”) and his worries about his son’s military service. War’s terror and absurdity permeate several of the entries, such as the breathtaking “Cherry Garcia Memories with M&Ms on Top,” which begins with the line, “Sometimes I wonder how many of the people I know have ever killed someone,” before describing a nightmarish face-off between two opposing soldiers whose rifles have jammed. Taken together, these vignettes form a vibrant tapestry of surprising depth. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Halász’s intelligent debut novel chronicles a fractured marriage in contemporary Budapest. Vera, an animator, flees her verbally and physically abusive husband, Péter, and relocates to her father’s house with her two young daughters. She and Péter had tried couples therapy in an effort to make the marriage work for the sake of the children, but as she reflects on Péter’s abuse and her resultant insomnia, she considers a divorce. Complicating matters further is her fixation on her ex-lover from high school, Iván, who seems to share her affection, but who is also now married. Vera also feels regret over her stalled artistic career, which she abandoned after becoming a mother. At the urging of her best friend, Andi, she reconnects with Márk, an old classmate of Andi’s who has recently divorced. They begin sleeping together, and Márk introduces Vera to cocaine. Halász hits some false notes late in the novel, as it turns toward Vera’s surreal spiritual visions, but for the most part, she vividly portrays Vera’s world through a seamless blend of impressionistic narration and dialogue. Readers will find much to admire in this striking portrait of a woman’s search for fulfillment. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

This brilliant interlocking diptych from Énard (Compass) begins with a soldier emerging from a battlefield into a nightmarish future. What has become of the world is a mystery, as is the identity of this haunted survivor. The answers may lie in a conference celebrating the work of the late mathematician and concentration camp survivor Paul Heudeber, held aboard a cruise ship on the inauspicious date of September 11, 2001. In attendance are theorists and intellectuals, each with their own agenda and ax to grind. Chief among them is Heudeber’s daughter, Irina, who’s there to present a paper on the irrational numbers of Persian mystic Nasir al-Dun Tusi. Irina has an ulterior motive: to pry the secret of her father’s life and suicide from his widow, Maja. What ensues is a fervent collage of letters, arguments, and confessions that spans from Buchenwald and the GDR to the fall of the Soviet Union and the Twin Towers. When Énard returns to the lone soldier, he’s seen scaling an unforgiving rock face on the other side of which he discovers another survivor amid the ruins. With an unflinching depiction of civilization’s decline and its dystopic aftermath, Énard builds a great work of art from “the remains, the traces, and the great mourning of the future.” It’s a masterpiece. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Carr (The Rule of the Land, a travelogue) serves up an enticing panorama of a small Irish fishing village transformed by the discovery of an infant abandoned in a barrel on the beach. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar and his wife, Christine, take in the baby and raise him alongside their toddler, Declan. They name the boy Brendan and he becomes the talk of the townsfolk, who refer to him as “the boy from the sea” and are pleased when the Bonnars formally adopt him, even as the move causes a rift between Christine and her sister, who resents being left alone to care for their aging father. When the kids enter school, however, Declan distances himself from Brendan and ignores him. By the time Brendan is a preteen, he takes to going on long aimless walks around the village, during which he encounters residents who tell him their troubles and he gives them his blessings. The perspective continuously shifts from one character to another, and readers will wish for a bit more depth, especially when it comes to the one-dimensional Declan. Still, Carr manages to paint a colorful portrait of the townsfolk via their curiosity about Brendan’s origins and their belief that he can help them. Readers will be hooked. Agent: Irene Baldoni, Georgina Capel Assoc. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Mattia (The Fifth Wound) dazzles with this genre-spanning collection of stories about queer and trans characters navigating desire and love. Raphael, the protagonist of “Valentine’s Day,” submits to a series of hookups on Grindr while pining for the man he loves. In “Wild and Blue,” Peach and Sandy go on the run after stealing an experimental drug from a pharmaceutical company. As the drug strips Sandy of his memories, Peach, who is trans, worries her lover’s altered mind will dismantle his ability to see her as a woman. Mattia draws on Greek and Roman mythology with “Celebrity Skin,” about two trans women who become lovers during their quest to reach a cult that performs the mystical and gender-affirming Aphroditos ritual. In “Cradle Me, Lucifer,” the narrator details her bond with her pet python, Milky, who was given to her by an ex. As she chronicles her beautiful and heartbreaking relationship with the snake, her own life and those of the people around her come into focus. Ripe with poetic metaphor, Mattia’s narratives blend reality, magical realism, and autofiction to create a fever dream of yearning. Readers will be enthralled. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

The charming debut from Evans takes the form of letters and emails exchanged by a divorced and retired woman with her friends, family, foes, and literary idols. It begins in 2012 as Sybil Van Antwerp, 73, politely declines an invitation to visit her brother, Felix, in France, then fancifully invites the author Ann Patchett to use her Maryland home as a writer’s retreat. Sybil spent her career clerking for a judge, and after reading of his death in the newspaper, she begins receiving strange and threatening letters from an aggrieved former defendant, who calls her a “cold metal bitch.” Evans juxtaposes these screeds with Sybil’s intimate fan mail to Joan Didion, who writes her back in 2013, expressing empathy as a fellow member of “the club of parents who have buried children” (Sybil lost a son at eight). Sybil, who was adopted, grows curious about her ancestry after her older son gives her a DNA test for Christmas, and she brushes off concerns about her declining eyesight from her daughter, Fiona, who lives in Australia. As the years go on, Sybil’s relationships brim with tension waiting to be released, and the detailed connections between each character are brilliantly mapped through the correspondence. It adds up to an appealing family drama. Agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. (May)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

The phenomenal English-language debut from Daanje weaves an affecting love story through a tangle of memories and dreams. Four years after WWI, amnesiac veteran Noon Merckem lives in a Ghent asylum, where he’s visited by women looking for their husbands who went missing in action. Noon was found with no identity papers and wearing a combination of Flemish, French, and German uniforms. He knows nothing of his past, and he’s haunted by nightmares of the trenches. One woman, Mrs. Julienne Coppens, identifies him from a scar on his forehead and insists he is her missing husband, Amand. Noon is released to her care, and they return to Kortrijk, where they try to rebuild their lives together. As Julienne slowly unveils details of their past, their love blossoms, but her shame and guilt over things she did while he was away threaten to overwhelm their newfound peace, as do his increasingly violent nightmares and growing distrust of the memories Julienne fills his head with. His blackouts, during which he believes he’s another man with an entirely different backstory, also become more frequent and prolonged. The complex and layered narrative is as moving as it is unsettling, and it will keep readers wondering about the truth long after the final page. It’s a remarkable achievement. (May)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Cox (A Christmas at Highbury) serves up a charming retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma set during the Great Depression. Melody Merriweather resents having to leave college to run the Merc, her family’s general store in Merriweather, Wis. But with her father recovering from a heart attack, she doesn’t have much choice. At first, Melody tries to modernize the store by offering luxury items, but no one in town can afford them. After learning that her father lost the family’s fortune in bad investments, she hatches a plan to save the store and their home by brewing and selling cider. For help, she turns to the store’s handsome but aloof butcher, Cal Fraiser, innocent shopgirl Harriet Mueller, and her father’s partner, the huffy old Mrs. Haufbrau. Neither the cider nor Melody’s attempts at matchmaking on Harriet’s behalf go as planned, and she soon discovers that her family’s situation is even worse than she’d thought. While Cox glosses over the darker aspects of the Great Depression—the townsfolk pinch pennies, but no one is in dire straits—she’s crafted a believable Midwest town filled with colorful characters. Silly and spoiled at first, Melody matures over the course of the novel and learns the importance of putting herself in others’ shoes. Readers are in for a treat. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Dreams and reality blur in this caustic and Kafkaesque tale from Egyptian author Kheir (Slipping). Translator Warif Shaheen finds his native Cairo transformed upon his release after seven years in prison for a Facebook post. Chain cafés have replaced market stands, busy intersections have been converted to parks, and, most troubling, every organization and government bureau is staffed by foreigners, who provide a stipend to the locals in exchange for the right to be there. All Warif wants is his old job as a translator back, and as he goes through a series of condescending interviews, it ironically comes to light that the current situation mirrors the one he’d flippantly called for in his offending post, in which he’d suggested the country would be better off if it were run by foreigners. Warif attempts to adjust to the new normal with the help of his on-and-off girlfriend, Sally Adam, and childhood friend Wagdi, but he’s plagued by panic attacks and flashbacks to his time in prison. The plot ramps up after Wagdi goes missing and Warif discovers a dark, perplexing secret of the new regime. This eerie and taut tale will leave readers with plenty to chew on. (May)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

This pensive novel from Kennedy (The Little Snake) finds a London grade school teacher reflecting on her past and struggling to find a way forward during the Covid-19 lockdown. In between teaching classes online, Anna begins chronicling her life, remembering halcyon days of anti nuclear peace protests with a motley street theater troupe called the UnRule OrKestrA. She uses the Brothers Grimm’s story of Rumpelstiltskin, which she’s been teaching to her students, to make sense of the villains of her past, such as her former lover Buster, who turned out to be an undercover cop infiltrating her potest group. Buster inserts himself into Anna’s present-day narrative by leaving a diary at her doorstep, in which he confesses his more recent sins, which involve working as an assassin for a shadowy reactionary group called the Squad. Buster’s bizarre prose style and abstract claims nearly derail the book (“A place of dark waters wanted me and I wanted to plumb depths. The Squad was the ultimate library of concealments”), but Anna’s heartfelt and searching narration reels the reader back in, as she reflects on the strength of “ordinary people who can live in this world at this time without screaming” and hopes there can be a place for them after Covid. It’s a noble if uneven effort at capturing life during the pandemic. (May)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink