Literary Fiction
Creation lake : a novel
Rachel Kushner
FICTION Kushner Rachel
Literary Fiction
"Creation Lake is a novel about a freelance agent, a 34-year-old American woman of ruthless tactics and bold opinions and clean beauty, who is sent to do dirty work in France. "Sadie Smith" is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. We never learn her real name. Sadie has met her lover, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by "cold bump"- making him believe the encounter was accidental. And like everyone she chooses to interact with, Lucien is useful to her, used by her. Sadie operates on strategy and dissimulation, based on what her "contacts," shadowy figures in business and government, instruct. First, these contacts want her to incite provocation. Then they want more. In this region of centuries-old farms and ancient caves, Sadie becomes entranced by a mysterious figure named Bruno Lacombe, a mentor to the young activists, who lives in a vast network of underground caves on his daughter's land and communicates only by email. Bruno believes that the path to emancipation from what ails modern life is not revolt, but a return to the ancient past before civilization. Just as Sadie is certain she's the seductress and puppet master of those whom she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.
Cuentos completos
Onetti, Juan Carlos, 1909-1994.
SPANISH FICTION Onetti
Literary Fiction
“La compilación de la narrativa breve de Juan Carlos Onetti supone una oportunidad única para atender a la producción más sucinta del que muchos, entre los que se cuentan García Márquez y Vargas Llosa, consideran el renovador de la novela hispanoamericana. Desde los tempranos acercamientos a la soledad hasta el insoportable peso de la culpa; desde la crueldad inherente a la naturaleza del hombre hasta la triste ternura de las relaciones humanas; desde los pulsos más íntimos de la sexualidad hasta la certeza de un inevitable fracaso que es el de todos: la de Onetti es una obra compleja que rezuma alcohol, tabaco, trajes negros, corbatas mal anudadas y sábanas sucias. Acercarse a sus relatos es acercarse a un mundo cargado de un pesimismo inexorable y, sin embargo, incandescentemente hermoso”. Contratapa del libro.
El cuento “El infierno tan temido” es el que más me ha gustado e impactado de esta colección. Onetti tiene una capacidad única para narrar los episodios más íntimos y dramáticos del hombre. -Alex
Swimming in Paris : a life in three stories
Colombe Schneck
FICTION Schneck Colombe
Literary Fiction, Short Story
In Seventeen, Friendship, and Swimming, Colombe Schneck orchestrates a coming-of-age in three movements. Beautiful, masterfully controlled, yet filled with pathos, they invite the reader into a decades-long evolution of sexuality, bodily autonomy, friendship, and loss. Schneck’s prose maintains an unwavering intimacy, whether conjuring a teenage abortion in the midst of a privileged Parisian upbringing, the nuance of a long friendship, or a midlife romance. Swimming in Paris is an immersive, propulsive triptych—fundamentally human in its tender concern for every messy and glorious reality of the body, and deeply wise in its understanding of both desire and of letting go.
Colombe Schneck is dabbling with biographical fiction here—each novella (there are three) from a different stage in her life (?) or her alter-ego's life (?). I’m not going to speculate on how closely these events follow Schneck’s life—because the focus should be on how good these stories are. In the first story, she discusses the shock of an unplanned pregnancy. The second story explores a lifelong friendship, grappling with the loss of a friend and how formative a friend’s influence can be. Schneck really shows how a single friendship can ebb and flow, change, and move throughout a lifetime. The last story is about having an affair after ending a marriage--the adjustment, excitement, and anxiety of starting a new romance. The overarching theme is growth and self-awareness and Schneck works with this theme through subtlety in language and narrative. But she is also direct in how she discusses complex issues, which is refreshing. This is the first time Schneck’s work has been translated into English—and I guess there is more to come. -Anne M
Worry : a novel
Alexandra Tanner
FICTION Tanner Alexandr
Literary Fiction
"Frances Ha meets No One Is Talking About This in a debut that follows two twenty-something siblings-turned-roommates navigating an absurd world about to suffer great change-a Seinfeldian novel of existentialism and sisterhood. It's March of 2019, and twenty-eight-year-old Jules Gold-anxious, artistically frustrated, and internet-obsessed-has been living alone in the apartment she once shared with the man she thought she'd marry when her younger sister Poppy comes to crash. Indefinitely. Poppy is a year out from a suicide attempt only Jules knows about, and as she searches for work and meaning in Brooklyn, Jules spends her days hate-scrolling the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for life to happen. Then the hives that've plagued Poppy since childhood flare up. Jules's uterus turns against her. Poppy brings home a maladjusted rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. The girls' mother-a newly devout Messianic Jew-starts falling for the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules's online mommies. A trip home to Florida ends in disaster. Amy Klobuchar may or may not have rabies. And Jules struggles halfheartedly to scrape her way to the source of her ennui, slowly and cruelly coming to blame Poppy for her own insufficiencies as a friend, a writer, and a sister. As the year shambles on and a new decade looms near, Jules and Poppy-comrades, competitors, permanent fixtures in each other's lives-must ask themselves what they want their futures to look like, and whether they'll spend them together or apart. Deadpan, dark, and brutally funny, Worry is a sharp portrait of two sisters enduring a dread-filled American moment from a nervy new voice in contemporary fiction"--
I found much relatable about this, even if the characters are a little younger than me. It's a bittersweet and still funny exploration of being siblings and dealing with your weird parents, all while navigating your 20s and figuring out what you want from life. It's quirky with dry humor throughout. -Amanda
James : a novel
Percival Everett
FICTION Everett Percival
Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
" When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin...), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a "cult literary icon" (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature"--
While I'm writing this in April of 2024, I can attest that "James" is one of the best books of the year. It doesn't matter that there are eight more months of books coming out in 2024. It's very good. As a book, it is smart and funny, yet tragic where it needs to be. It is an homage to Twain, yet stands on its own. -Anne M
Held
Anne Michaels
FICTION Michaels Anne
Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction
"A breathtaking and ineffable new novel from the author of the international best sellers Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault-a novel of love and loyalty across generations, at once sweeping and intimate. 1917. On a battlefield near the River Aisne, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory as the snow falls-a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night. 1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near a different river. He is alive but still not whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and tries to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts with messages he cannot understand. So begins a narrative that spans four generations of connections and consequences that ignite and re-ignite as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, and transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later. Held is affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom, and compassion, a novel by a writer at the height of her powers"--
“Held” is a little like a literary puzzle. The narrative is organized in generational fragments; but “organized” isn’t quite the right word. Each chapter is connected with the others by a thread—a child, a grandchild, a spouse, a mother--advancing or in some cases, retreating through the 20th century. Each chapter gives you a little more understanding of the family as a whole. It is fitting that we are first introduced to a photographer, John, just back from the trenches in 1917 to find that his photographs contain the ghosts of his subjects. It’s a little like a metaphor for how this book develops. Anne Michaels’s prose shimmers. -Anne M
So late in the day : stories of women and men
Claire Keegan
FICTION Keegan Claire
Literary Fiction
"Celebrated for her powerful short fiction, Claire Keegan now gifts us three exquisite stories together forming a brilliant examination of gender dynamics and an arc from Keegan's earliest to her most recent work. In "So Late in the Day," Cathal faces a long weekend as his mind agitates over a woman with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently; in "The Long and Painful Death" a writer's arrival at the seaside home of Heinrich Böll for a two-week writing residency is disrupted by an academic who imposes his criticisms and opinions; and in "Antarctica" a married woman travels out of town to see what it's like to sleep with another man and ends up in the grip of a possessive stranger.' Each story probes the dynamics that corrupt what could be between women and men: a lack of generosity, the weight of expectation, the looming threat of violence."--
I’m resolved to read anything that Claire Keegan publishes. “Foster” and “Small Things Like These” made such an impression. “So Late in the Day” is comprised of three short stories on a theme: men and women together. Whether in a long-term relationship or an impromptu meeting or as a tryst, none of it goes well. There is resentment, judgement, anger, fear, and in one story, violence. These are themes Keegan explores well. Keegan stays concise and compact in her writing, but wow, is able to build so much tension. -Anne M
The liberators : a novel
EJ Koh
FICTION Koh Ej
Literary Fiction
"At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California, with an infant and Sungho's overbearing mother-in-law. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and her divided homeland, finding herself drawn into an illicit relationship that sets into motion a dramatic saga and echoes for generations to come. From the Gwangju Massacre to the 1988 Olympics, flashbacks to Korean repatriation after Japanese surrender, and the Sewol ferry accident, E. J. Koh's exquisitely drawn portraits and symphonic testimony from guards, prisoners, perpetrators, and liberators spans continents and four generations of two Korean families forever changed by fateful past decisions made in love and war. Extraordinarily beautiful and deeply moving, The Liberators is an elegantly wrought family saga of memory, trauma, and empathy, and a stunning testament to the consequences and fortunes of inheritance"--
This tiny but mighty novel was praised for its sparse language, making every word matter. While the words are precise, Koh created a saga here. Spanning three generations, four generations of a Korean family grapple with the past (both their own and their country's)--showing that our ties aren't always severed when we cross an ocean. -Anne M
The fraud
Zadie Smith
FICTION Smith Zadie
Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
"It is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper-and cousin by marriage-of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years. Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems. Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story. The "Tichborne Trial"-wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title-captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task.""--
Zadie Smith is swinging for Dickens with this novel. There are some glimpses of brilliancy here: the humor, the cast of characters, and the atmosphere Smith creates showing the crushing nature of Victorian society. -Anne M
The wren, the wren : a novel
Anne Enright
FICTION Enright Anne
Literary Fiction
"From Booker-prize winning author Anne Enright, an astonishing novel about the love between mother and daughter--sometimes fierce, often painful, but always transcendent. "Carmel had been alone all her life. She had been alone since she was twelve years old. The baby knew all this. They looked at each other; one life into another life, and the baby knew exactly how alone her mother had been." Nell--funny, brave and so much loved--is a young woman with adventure on her mind. As she sets out into the world, she finds her family history hard to escape. For her mother, Carmel, Nell's leaving home opens a space in her heart, where the turmoil of a lifetime begins to churn. And across the generations falls the long shadow of Carmel's famous father, an Irish poet of beautiful words and brutal actions. In this penetrating and beautifully written novel, Anne Enright luminously brings to life the essence of what makes a family survive the vicissitudes of life. The Wren, the Wren is a meditation on love: spiritual, romantic, darkly sexual, or genetic. A generational saga that traces the inheritance not just of trauma but also of wonder, it is a testament to the glorious resilience of women, by one of the greatest living writers of our age"--
While this novel centers around Carmel and her daughter Nell, the elephant in the room for both characters is Phil, Carmel's father and Nell's grandfather--Irish poet and national treasure. It's about the poetry--the beauty and the heartbreak in the meanings behind those words. Carmel tries to reckon with them, while Nell is trying to discover and find connection. What we inherit can be so different. -Anne M
I feel like I’m reading a lot of fiction that takes on how to find meaning. These books begin with a divorce or a job loss or the death of a family member and the protagonist is trying to make sense of themselves now that their vision of who they are is no longer reality. “Creation Lake” is also about meaning, but “Sadie,” our narrator, is never who she is at any given moment. There is no sense of self—no past sense—no future self-aspirations. She is a spy that works for some multinational corporation or the like and she is who her alias is: someone who doesn’t really exist. This time she is infiltrating a rural French group opposed to corporate industrial agriculture and European Union trade agricultural regulations. It is just a job, one that involves building relationships, playing a part, instigating actions, and hacking emails. It’s this last task that moves Sadie to question herself for among the emails are missives from Bruno Lacombe, a hero of this group cooperative, who lives in caves and writes eloquently about the loss of things that make us human (I cannot detail the entire essence of his philosophy—you’ll have to read it). Sadie is so strong in her facade and skeptical of pretty much everything—does she even want meaning? This is a really compelling book. -Anne M