19 paperbacks to be grateful for this November.
Never not giving thanks for paperbacks.
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Gish Jen, Thank You, Mr. Nixon: Stories
(Vintage, November 1)
“There are 11 [stories] here—insightful, wistful, nuanced—sometimes heartbreaking and often funny. Each tale packs in social commentary, political asides, and keen observations that lodge the characters in time and place like thumbtacks on a map.”
–The Christian Science Monitor
Paul Auster, Burning Boy
(Holt McDougal, November 1)
“This is a writer’s book, and much of its interest lies in the opportunity to see how one brilliant writer responds to another.”
–The American Scholar
Nadifa Mohamed, The Fortune Men
(Vintage, November 1)
“Mohamed balances colonial history and violence with the evocative interior lives of Mahmood and Violet Volacki … Mohamed brilliantly depicts the complexities of community within the Black diaspora.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter
(Grove Press, November 1)
“Five Tuesdays in Winter features stories that pull you in instantly and make you wonder what the author is going to spring on you next … Long form or short, this is a writer who has mastered the art of conveying depths of human feeling in one beautiful sentence after another.”
–NPR
Richard Powers, Bewilderment
(W. W. Norton, November 1)
“I daresay Richard Powers has brought off something more than two exemplary and superb fictions of the climate crisis. He’s also unearthed and refurbished the timeless link between artist and shaman, a voice crying in the wilderness.”
–The Brooklyn Rail
Laird Hunt, Zorrie
(Bloomsbury, November 1)
“Writing in lyrical but economic prose, he masterfully paints a detailed portrait of a remarkable woman with the finest details while still managing to weave in sweeping historical events without ever distracting from his main character.”
–Bookreporter
Ann Patchett, These Precious Days
(Harper Perennial, November 1)
“Witty and warm, the essays succeed because of Patchett’s inimitable, endearing voice. Sincere but never simplistic, generous without being cloying, and accessible rather than anodyne, These Precious Days feels at once bracing and comforting.”
–The Boston Globe
Octavia E. Butler, Fledgling
(Grand Central Publishing, November 1)
“A finely crafted character study, a parable about race and an exciting family saga. Exquisitely moving fiction.”
–Kirkus
Mel Brooks, All About Me!
(Ballentine, November 1)
“Brooks is generous with his praise and steadfast in his belief that no comedy icon ever achieves great heights alone … Brooks writes both like a man grateful for his blessings and one unwilling to saddle his final years with regret.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
Mina Seçkin, The Four Humors
(Catapult, November 8)
“A deliciously bittersweet meditation on the elastic, shifting narratives we weave from the fragile threads of our daily existence, the people around us, and the places we call home.”
–The Los Angeles Review of Books
Siri Hustvedt, Mothers, Fathers, and Others
(Simon & Schuster, November 8)
“Hustvedt has combined the lively and tactile with more wide angled philosophical questions about perception and reality.”
–NPR
Daphne Palasi Andreades, Brown Girls
(Random House, November 15)
“Andreades’s writing has economy and freshness. Brown Girls reads as much like poetry as it does like a novel.”
–The New York Times
Sang Young Park, tr. Anton Hur, Love in the Big City
(Grove Press, November 15)
“The prose, translated by Anton Hur, reads like an iPhone screen, vibrant and addictive. What a joy it is to see such a profound exploration of contemporary queer life — its traumas and its ecstasies throbbing in harmony.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Mario Vargas Llosa, tr. Adrian Nathan West, Harsh Times
(Picador, November 15)
“Vargas Llosa has constructed a compelling and propulsive literary thriller, deeply informed by his experience as a public intellectual and a practicing politician.”
–The New York Times Book Review
Joyce Carol Oates, The (Other) You
(Ecco, November 15)
“Oates’s mastery of the form remains fierce and formidable in this unsettling collection of lamentations and missed opportunities.”
–Publishers Weekly
John Edgar Wideman, Look For Me and I’ll Be Gone: Stories
(Scribner, November 22)
“The book’s style is so deceptively modest it stares you down and waits for you to realize it’s cut your heart out while you coasted along on the calm surface of the syntax into a seething indictment of every aspect of society.”
–4Columns
Sarah Hall, Burntcoat
(Mariner, November 22)
“…pretty intense … Burntcoat is marked by superb stylistic economy. As in her short stories, her concerns are expansive.”
–The Times
Lydia Davis, Essays Two
(Picador, November 29)
“Whatever the topic, Davis is always superb company: erudite, adventurous, surprising.”
–The New York Times
Neel Patel, Tell Me How to Be
(Flatiron, November 29)
“Tell Me How to Be is a quietly wise novel, a love song to families, however imperfect they may be, as well as a tender and fierce celebration of queerness. It’s a lot of books in one, and each one is a knockout.”
–Alta Journal of California
