18 new books to look out for this week.
What is the absolute maximum number of books one can fit into a single Joan Didion tote? Asking for a friend!
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Belinda Huijuan Tang, A Map for the Missing
(Penguin Press)
“…spectacular … A breathtaking portrait of the regret that can forever shape a life when someone helplessly sticks to the path of least resistance.”
–Booklist
Jennette McCurdy, I’m Glad My Mom Died
(Simon & Schuster)
“…insightful and incisive, heartbreaking and raw, McCurdy’s narrative reveals a strong woman who triumphs over unimaginable pressure to emerge whole on the other side. Fans will be rapt.”
–Publishers Weekly
Natsuo Kirino, tr. Stephen B. Snyder, Out
(Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
“Crime and Punishment meets A Simple Plan—yet in the end Kirino manages her banal heroines’ descent into hell like no one you’ve ever read before.”
–Kirkus
Megan Giddings, The Women Who Could Fly
(Amistad)
“Giddings pulls off a dynamite story of a Black woman’s resistance in an oppressive dystopia.”
–Publishers Weekly
Randall Kenan, Black Folk Could Fly: Selected Writings by Randall Kenan
(W. W. Norton)
“A superb introduction to a writer deserving much greater recognition.”
–Kirkus
Kayla Maiuri, Mother In the Dark
(Riverhead)
“A tender and achingly vulnerable story in the vein of memoirs like Educated and The Glass Castle, Maiuri’s debut novel peels back layers of multigenerational trauma in a complicated, dysfunctional family.”
–Booklist
Emi Yagi, tr. David Boyd and Lucy North, Diary of a Void
(Viking)
“Diary of a Void advances one of the most passionate cases I’ve ever read for female interiority, for women’s creative pulse and rich inner life.”
–The New Yorker
Mark Braude, Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris
(W. W. Norton)
“[A]n irresistible romp through 1920s Paris … vibrant prose as beguiling as Kiki herself.”
–The Toronto Star
Phong Nguyen, Bronze Drum
(Grand Central)
“When Beyoncé asked, ‘Who run the world?’ was she thinking about the legendary Trưng sisters? … Nguyen reminds us that the power of women is nothing new.”
–Kirkus
Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble
(Modern Library)
“Here’s a fast paced journalist’s record of the European theater of war. Starting with ten chapters giving the best rounded impression of Spain, Republican and Nationalist, I’ve seen — and coming on up to England under the bombers.”
–Kirkus
Adam Levin, Mount Chicago
(Doubleday)
“In his opening disclaimer, Levin says that ‘”ideas” get in the way of art,’ but his art is all about how affirming it can be, during these times of Covid-narrowed lives, to dose on ideas … boldly rewarding work of metafiction.”
–Kirkus
No’u Revilla, Ask the Brindled: Poems
(Milkweed Editions)
“To read Ask the Brindled, by No’u Revilla, is to visit a shapeshifting dictionary.”
–RHINO
Kendra Allen, Fruit Punch: A Memoir
(Ecco)
“There are no tropes or platitudes here; Allen exhibits the same assertiveness and transparency that she showed in her previous books … In Fruit Punch, her vulnerability is particularly palpable.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Melody Razak, Moth
(Harper)
“Moth has a backdrop of religion, politics, class and violence, but the central focus is on family life. The character portrayal is so intricate that as the plot twists and turns, you’ll truly care what happens to them.”
–Independent
Kimberly Garza, The Last Karankawas
(Henry Holt)
“Drawing on her firsthand experience of south Texas and its communities, Garza immerses her readers in sensory details.”
–Shelf Awareness
Jana Prikryl, Midwood: Poems
(W. W. Norton)
“Jana Prikryl is a poet of unique gifts: unexpected images, ingenious syntax, and wide-ranging erudition.”
–Louise Glück
Alice Feiring, To Fall In Love, Drink This
(Scribner)
“A wine writer’s happy discoveries … An enjoyable quaff for wine lovers.”
–Kirkus
Justin Gregg, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal
(Little, Brown)
“Gregg’s book If Nietzsche Were A Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity makes some extraordinary and thought-provoking points…It is not only engagingly written, but its controversial thesis is worth taking seriously.”
–Wall Street Journal
