BookPage January 2024

DISCOVER YOUR NEXT GREAT BOOK

A new year means a new TBR list. We’ve lined up 22 books you won’t want to miss, including Erik Larson’s first Civil War-era history, memoirs from Salman Rushdie and Christine Blasey Ford, exciting new directions for novelists Leigh Bardugo, Tia Williams and Téa Obreht, and the return of Lois Lowry.

JAN 2024

I

T R AV E L F O R E V E RYO N E !

On sale 2/6/2024 9781426222238

On sale 5/14/2024 9781426223501

AVA I L A B L E W H E R E V E R B O O K S A R E S O L D @NatGeoBooks

© 2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC

BookPage

®

JANUARY 2024

features

reviews

interview | derek b. miller. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

fiction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

The author of Norwegian by Night found the setting for his

nonfiction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

captivating World War II adventure hidden away on an

young adult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Italian hilltop.

children’s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

q&a | natalie haynes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 An author and comedian restores the goddesses of Greek mythology to their full glory in Divine Might.

columns the hold list. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

interview | gene luen yang & leuyen pham. . . . 26

audio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Two longtime friends used real details from their own lives to

romance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

create a romantic graphic novel.

book clubs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

interview | jenny sue kostecki-shaw. . . . . . . . . . 30

lifestyles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

The vividly textured Like You, Like Me conveys the joy of

whodunit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

fostering international friendships.

cozies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

cover story

OUR MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2024 22 titles we can’t wait to read.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12–13 PRESIDENT

Elizabeth Grace Herbert

CONTROLLER Sharon Kozy

MARKETING MANAGER Mary Claire Zibart

PUBLISHER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Trisha Ping

MANAGING EDITOR Savanna Walker

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Erica Ciccarone Phoebe Farrell-Sherman Yi Jiang

BRAND & PRODUCTION MANAGER

EDITORIAL INTERN

Katherine Klockenkemper

Meagan Vanderhill

CONTRIBUT0R Roger Bishop

Jessica Peng

FOUNDER

Michael A. Zibart

EDITORIAL POLICY

BookPage is a selection guide for new books.

Our editors select for review the best books published in a variety of categories. BookPage is editorially independent; only books we highly recommend are featured. Stars (H) are assigned by BookPage editors to indicate titles that are exceptionally executed in their genres and categories.

ADVERTISING

For print or digital advertising inquiries, email elizabeth@bookpage.com.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

BookPage is available in both print and digital editions. Bulk print subscriptions are available to public libraries and bookstores to distribute to their patrons.

Public libraries may subscribe to the digital edition of BookPage on its own or as a print+digital subscription bundle.

Individuals may subscribe in print.

All subscription info available at bookpage.com/subscriptions.

All material © 2024 ProMotion, inc.

B O O K P A G E • 2 1 4 3 B E L C O U R T AV E N U E • N A S H V I L L E , T N 3 7 2 1 2 • B O O K P A G E . C O M

readbookpage

readbookpage

bookpage

3

the hold list

Take comfort in these cozy reads Ready the fireplace, put the kettle on and get out some thick woolen socks. These four titles are worthy companions for long winter nights.

A Gentleman in Moscow As the days become shorter, there’s nothing more comforting than immersing myself in a sweeping historical novel—the bigger, the better! When my book club recently voted to read Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow (Penguin, $18, 9780143110439), I welcomed the opportunity to escape nightly into the grand halls of the Metropol hotel where aristocrat Count Alexander Rostov, deemed a threat by the Bolsheviks in 1922, is sentenced to lifelong house arrest.

Hotel employees, guests and other visitors round out the vibrant cast of characters in the Count’s orbit as he adjusts to his new circumstances and tries to pursue a meaningful life in confinement. His friendship with precocious 9-year-old Nina is particularly endearing; the pair’s quest to explore every nook and cranny of the hotel is a delight. All the while, outside the Count’s window, political turmoil and inevitable social change are transforming Russian society. Written with wit and warmth, Towles’ tale is one you’ll want to curl up with and return to night after night.

—Katherine, Subscriptions

The Name of the Rose

The Guest Cat

The New Life

I spent a few sublime weeks last winter in the company of Umberto Eco’s magisterial debut novel, The Name of the Rose (HarperVia, $19.99, 9780063279636). This medieval whodunit is intellectually absorbing and slyly hilarious as it tracks Brother William of Baskerville and Brother Adso of Melk’s quest to solve a spree of bizarre murders at a monastery in Italy. A historian, philosopher and literary theorist, Eco transports readers into the 14th-century mind, and while things get heady (at one point, Adso contemplates a door for more than a page), Eco never lets his own erudition run away with him. There are impressively gruesome deaths to describe, tangled little dramas of monastery life to tease out and one of the most unforgettable libraries in literature to explore. I read long into the night, wrapped in blankets with a mug of tea at hand, happily looking up Latin phrases and medieval heretics until arriving at Eco’s grand finale, a satisfying conclusion with a few icy notes of existential dread to balance things out.

—Savanna, Managing Editor

To me, coziness is a cat dozing on my lap, but a book that captures the magic of our purring friends will also do. A sublime, delicate meditation on the passage of time within everyday life, Takashi Hiraide’s The Guest Cat (New Directions, $14.95, 9780811221504) washes over you like a dream, making it an ideal read for a long winter night. A male narrator and his wife fall in love with their neighbor’s cat, naming her Chibi as she begins visiting them at their rented house. The wife tells the man how a philosopher once said that “observation is at its core an expression of love,” and indeed, Hiraide’s ruminations on the quotidian—dragonflies flying towards water sprayed from a garden hose, Chibi climbing a tree—carry tremendous emotion despite the unembellished prose.

With equal parts joy and melancholy, the couple’s relationships with the cat and each other shift, along with the course of their lives and Japan, as the late ’80s economic bubble bursts. Hiraide slips in and out of reflection and memory with the precise grace of a cat.

—Yi, Associate Editor

There is something so pleasurable about spending a chilly day absorbed in the concerns of another time and identifying resonances with our own. Tom Crewe’s debut novel, The New Life (Scribner, $18, 9781668000847), provides just such a pleasure, placing vivid characters and thorny moral dilemmas against a finely textured historical backdrop.

Based on two real life freethinkers in late Victorian Britain, Crewe’s John Addington and Henry Ellis are documenting the lives of gay men for a book that they hope will shift cultural perceptions of homosexuality. It’s risky, but they believe in the cause—and that their status as married men will protect them.

However, ideological differences emerge, and Addington begins to wonder if ideals can be legitimate if they are not lived openly. Crewe excels when depicting the nuances of conflict and the question of balancing personal risk against the ability to effect change, drawing readers in with polished old-fashioned storytelling that also speaks to a modern sensibility—A.S. Byatt meets Alan Hollinghurst.

—Trisha, Publisher

BookPage staff share special reading lists—our personal favorites, old and new.

4

audio

H The Book of (More) Delights The Book of (More) Delights (Hachette Audio, 7 hours), Ross Gay’s follow-up to The Book of Delights, further confirms his ability to discover delight even when it is hidden in sorrow or tedium.

Gay is an award-winning poet, and consequently he understands the power of punctuation, structure and, especially, sound. His careful reading releases the rhythm and rhyme that prose so often hides and subtly emphasizes descriptions of a beloved nana, flower or friend. There’s nothing pretentious about his reading; instead, it simply brims with honest pleasure.

And nothing is guaranteed to create more delight in a listener’s day than hearing Gay gleefully repeat the words “vehicular vernacular”!

—Deborah Mason

Absolution In the male-dominated landscape of war torn 1963 Saigon, Vietnam, Tricia and Charlene are two American wives striving to be the best possible “helpmeets” to their military husbands. Through author Alice McDermott’s precise, lingering prose, these women otherwise relegated to the margins bloom with agency and empathy. Carried by Rachel Kenney and Jesse Vilinsky’s warm, heartfelt narration, Absolution (Macmillan Audio, 10 hours) is not a story about remarkable events, but a story that teases out the remarkableness in everyday people. It is a breath of fresh air amongst war novels devoted to the machinations of war, speaking instead to war’s ripple effect off the battlefield and years down the line.

—Jessica Peng

New Year, New Audiobooks

READ BY SUSAN ERICKSEN

READ BY DAN BITTNER, PATTI MURIN, ELIZA FOSS, AND JOHN PIRHALLA

READ BY ALEX JENNINGS

READ BY KARISSA VACKER

READ BY LORELEI KING

READ BY AYSE BABAHAN

READ BY KARISSA VACKER

READ BY THE AUTHOR

HWellness Following Jack and Elizabeth from their meet cute as college students in 1990s Chicago to their contemplation of a move to the suburbs in the early 21st century, the audiobook of Nathan Hill’s Wellness (Random House Audio, 19 hours) chronicles not only the couple’s love story but also the ever-shifting wellness culture that forms its partial backdrop. Ari Fliakos, who also read Hill’s The Nix, excels at differentiating among a dozen or more characters, making the dialogue sections especially engaging. With wry humor and pathos, this Gen X coming-of-(middle)-age novel makes for a profoundly emotional and humanistic listening experience.

—Norah Piehl

Death Valley A woman seeks refuge in the hot California desert, far away from the pressures of her sick husband and dying father. Full of dark humor and self awareness, Death Valley (Simon & Schuster Audio, 5 hours) traces her surreal desert experience as she faces the hard truths she’s been running from.

Author Melissa Broder narrates the audiobook herself, and Broder captures both her character’s surface-level distance and her turbulent emotions underneath. Death Valley is sharp and insightful, exploring how one woman learns to celebrate pain and pleasure, restraint and intimacy, death and life.

—Tami Orendain

macmillan audio 5

romance

FIND MORE AT BookPage.com

Fiction

Nonfiction

Mystery

Romance

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

YA & Children’s

Subscriptions

Discover your next great book!

BookPage is a discovery tool for readers, highlighting the best new books across all genres. BookPage is editorially independent; only books we highly recommend are

by christie ridgway

H An Inconvenient Earl Julia London delivers a delightful heroine and a happy ending that at first appears impossible in An Inconvenient Earl (Canary Street, $9.99, 9781335498250).

To her everlasting relief, Emma Clark’s cruel earl of a husband left her behind in England when he embarked on an expedition to Africa. After many months, a stranger arrives with the bad tidings that her husband has died, meaning Emma will be left without a home or funds— unless she doesn’t tell anyone the news. That tangled web is made even stickier when the very attractive Luka Olivien, Earl of Marlaine, arrives to return Emma’s husband’s pocket watch. He knows that she’s a widow but she . . . doesn’t? Luka’s confused by her increasingly clear attempts to dodge what he knows to be true, but he also can’t resist the charming and now smitten Emma. Characters from previous books make welcome appearances in this fourth entry in London’s Royal Match series, and while this Victorian romance seems like a romp, there is wrenching emotion and a beating heart of gold underneath.

featured.

The Night Island

Discovering your next great book is easier than ever.

Browse by genre to find reading recommendations in fiction, nonfiction, romance, children’s and more!

Find the very latest features, reviews & interviews of the best new books in all genres on our homepage.

@readbookpage @readbookpage @readbookpage

6

@bookpage @bookpage bit.ly/readbookpage

Jayne Ann Krentz’s Lost Night Files series follows a trio of women who team up to determine the cause of their new psychic abilities. In the latest spooky entry, The Night Island (Berkley, $29, 9780593639856), one of the trio, podcaster Talia March, is trying to figure out what happened to Phoebe, a fan who had some vital information but has recently disappeared. Professor Luke Rand is also on Phoebe’s trail, and clues lead him and Talia to Night Island, where an exclusive, unplugged retreat is about to begin. The pair soon discover that they’re in danger from someone at the retreat and maybe from the island itself, which is inhabited by creepy and threatening vegetation. The Pacific Northwest setting enhances this shivery, senses-tickling read. As usual, Krentz’s name on the cover guarantees imaginative, immersive entertainment.

Red String Theory A scientist and an artist test their opposite philosophies of life and love in Red String Theory (Forever, $16.99, 9781538710289) by Lauren Kung Jessen. Rooney Gao is a struggling, striving artist in New York City. Jack Liu is a NASA engineer in Los Angeles. They have one night of near-magical connection, but then their numbers exchange goes awry. Fast forward a few months and Rooney is hired by NASA to be Artist-in-Residence with Jack as her liaison. Their attraction blossoms again, but logical Jack can’t swallow Rooney’s belief in the Chinese legend that a red string of fate connects everyone to their true love. The pair contemplate science, art, fate, choice and belief as they fall in love. Jessen writes such sympathetic, well-rounded characters that even cynics may believe in soulmates after reading this brainy, kisses-only love story.

Christie Ridgway is a lifelong romance reader and a published romance novelist of over 60 books.

PAGE-TURNING INSPIRATIONAL FICTION to Kick Off the New Year January 23

January 23

January 23

January 30

February 6

February 13

February 13

February 27

March 5

March 12

March 12

April 2

April 9

March 19

April 30

A division of Baker Publishing Group | BethanyHouse.com

7

book clubs

by julie hale

Reject resolutions, embrace chaos In the wake of a difficult divorce, Maggie, the 29-year-old heroine of Monica Heisey’s Really Good, Actually (William Morrow, $18.99, 9780063235427), tries to find her place in the world. As she adapts to the single life, she experiments with dating apps and enrolls in creative writing classes. But processing the divorce proves to be difficult, and Maggie finds herself on a downward spiral. Heisey uses humor to brighten the story of a woman who is mourning her marriage, and the result is a wry, probing breakup book that’s sure to resonate with readers.

In Mona Awad’s All’s Well (Marysue Rucci, $17.99, 9781982169671), Miranda Fitch hits rock bottom after an accident puts an end to her marriage and her dreams of becoming an actress. While coping with chronic back pain, she faces challenges as the director of a university theater where she hopes to produce Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Dodge the New Year Ends Well. Miranda’s life hustle with these novels takes an extraordinary turn when a trio of men—all featuring lovably strangers—tell her they can floundering protagonists. help her manage her pain.

Fitch’s exploration of identity, female desire and, of course, the work of Shakespeare makes this whimsical novel a rewarding choice for book clubs.

Candice Carty-Williams’ People Person (Scout, $17.99, 9781501196058) follows Dimple Pennington, a London-based social media influencer who’s adrift in the world. At the age of 30, she’s living with her mother, hoping to grow her online following and struggling to keep her volatile boyfriend, Kyron, in check. When she is unexpectedly reunited with her half siblings—Lizzie, Prynce, Danny and Nikisha— and their unpredictable father, Cyril, Dimple is reminded of the power and complexities of kin. CartyWilliams touches upon themes of race and self-acceptance in this intense, funny family tale.

Weike Wang’s Chemistry (Vintage, $17, 9780525432227) is narrated by an unnamed female student working on a doctorate in chemistry at Boston University. The narrator’s future looks bright until her boyfriend proposes and she’s paralyzed by doubts about their relationship. Faced with stressful lab work and the expectations of her Chinese immigrant parents, she suffers a mental collapse. Wang’s portrayal of the narrator’s emotional unraveling and path back to normalcy is powerful, compassionate and at times comic. Topics like family conflicts, the importance of work-life balance and the pressures of academia will prompt lively dialogue among readers.

A BookPage reviewer since 2003, Julie Hale recommends the best paperback books to spark discussion in your reading group.

8

lifestyles

by susannah felts

H 1000 Words A bestselling novelist and memoirist, Jami Attenberg has gathered scores of followers for her two-week online accountability sprint, #1000wordsofsummer, during which she sends quick pep talks to motivate fellow scribes . Her latest book, 1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round (Simon Element, $24.99, 9781668023600), collects and distills that project into a motivational volume every writer should keep close at hand. Wise and frank words from heavy-hitters such as Ada Limón, Deesha Philyaw and Min Jin Lee, and from Attenberg herself, serve to drown out the harsh inner critic, the constant external static and the crushing doubt that threatens to derail any big creative undertaking.

Black TV “I’m rooting for, um, everybody Black,” said actor/writer/producer and “Insecure” creator Issa Rae at the 2017 Emmy Awards.

The essential Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television from “Soul Train” to “Black-ish” and Beyond (Black Dog & Leventhal, $35, 9780762481514), from Washington Post reporter Bethonie Butler, does the same, showcasing prime-time television shows of a “new era in Black television: one in which viewers would have more say in what they watched and Black writers, producers, and talent would have more creative control over the stories they brought to television.” Among these noteworthy series, Butler highlights Donald Glover’s “Atlanta,” Quinta Brunson’s “Abbott Elementary” and Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us,” swiftly surveying their impact on the industry and showing how Black creators open doors for one another.

Sad Happens Brandon Stosuy is a master of pulling together the inspiring words of artists. Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears (Simon & Schuster, $28.99, 9781668003459) is a book of reflections, illustrated by Rose Lazar, about the experience and catharsis of sadness and weeping, a “collective, multifaceted archive of tears.” Stosuy sources from his vast artist network, including The National’s Matt Berninger and the ultimate #sadgirl Phoebe Bridgers. “The shared emotion of Sad Happens has real power,” writes Stosuy. “It gives us permission to open up, let down our guard, embrace those things that make us feel vulnerable. By sharing, we see that crying is universal, and that tears should, in fact, be celebrated.” Tears come when they will, like it or not: during the “emotional exorcism” of massage for writer Nada Alic, while singing for Gelsey Bell, and while flying for Hanif Abdurraqib. The effect of reading these candid takes on sadness may elicit your own, and maybe that’s a good thing.

Susannah Felts is a Nashville-based writer and co-founder of The Porch, a literary arts organization. She writes a weekly Substack called FIELD TRIP.

whodunit

by bruce tierney

H Ilium

Two Dead Wives

As Lea Carpenter’s Ilium (Knopf, $27, 9780593536605) It is unsurprising, I suppose, that a spate of recent crime opens, the unnamed narrator feels not unlike an actor novels have been set during the first COVID-19 lockin a play: “I had no sense of what scene would come down. You would think that time would be the perfect next, but as each scene evolved, I could start to see milieu for a locked-room mystery, but Adele Parks’ Two the way I would handle it. . . . It never occurred to me Dead Wives (MIRA, $18.99, 9780778333579) is anything that the life you have is only in part the life you choose, but. Once upon a time, there was a woman named Kylie because the moment you Gillingham. Somewhere along the way, she took start to think you know Abbott Kahler’s debut thriller on two identities—one what’s coming next, that’s delights our mystery columnist, named Kai, one named when lightning strikes, (Ky-Lie, get it?)— shatters those windows, plus Lea Carpenter’s latest literary Leigh and rain starts to pool on married two different men the floor.” This is a heavy and lived two separate espionage novel impresses. lives. Now, she has been thought for a 21-year-old who has just wed a man 33 years her senior, and she missing for two weeks. Statistically, that suggests she is will come to find out it is deeply portentous. Her new dead, and conventional wisdom pegs the husband as the husband is a man of many secrets, not the least of which likely perpetrator. But which husband? One is currently is that he is grooming her for a major role in a joint CIAin lockdown in his London apartment, and the other has Mossad operation, a task she had been chosen for well done a runner to his native Netherlands. Meanwhile, a before their “chance” meeting and subsequent engageseparate narrative unfolds about a woman named Stacie ment and marriage. All that said, Ilium is not merely an Jones, who is recovering at her dad’s seaside cottage after espionage novel, although there is a certain amount of surgery to remove a brain tumor. She has lost a lot of her subterfuge, to be sure. It is rather a story of relationships memory post-operation and, naturally, that suggests that in which the good guys are neither especially good nor a key to an important lock or two is buried somewhere especially bad, and pretty much the same can be said in her mind. The investigators—one by the book, the for the bad guys. Ferreting out the truth of who someone other impetuous—play off one another well, and the truly is must be secondary to achieving the operation’s two-pronged storyline is bound to engage fans of twisty desired outcomes, and “therein,” noted the Bard, “lies thrillers and police procedurals alike. the rub.” Ilium is a masterful literary novel posing as a spy novel, and succeeds brilliantly on both levels.

Where You End

H

Northwoods There’s precious little bucolic woodland ambience to be found in Northwoods (Emily Bestler, $27, 9781668017265), Amy Pease’s debut mystery set in Shaky Lake, a resort town in northern Wisconsin.

Sheriff’s Deputy Eli North is plagued by a host of debilitating issues that date back to his military service in Afghanistan, chief among them post-traumatic stress disorder, an increasing dependence on alcohol and a strained relationship with his ex-wife and their son. He is about as beaten down as a man can be, yet he still possesses some sparks that make the reader root for him.

As the tale begins, Eli is well on his way toward being drunk. He receives a call about a noise disturbance at a lakeside cabin and stumbles (almost literally) upon the lifeless body of a teenage boy. Murder is somewhat outside the purview of a rural sheriff’s department, so when it is discovered that a teenage girl has gone missing as well, Sheriff Marge North—who just so happens to be Eli’s mother—calls in the FBI to investigate. The winding road to the crime’s solution involves everyone’s favorite boogeyman, Big Pharma, and touches on the tension between townies and wealthy “summer people.” I strongly hope that Eli will be afforded a sequel or 10, and that he will find his way back to something resembling a normal life.

Where You End (Holt, $27.99, 9781250873248), Abbott Kahler’s debut novel, reads like the work of a seasoned writer. There is a reason for this: She has published a number of historical nonfiction titles as Karen Abbott, and boasts an Edgar Award nomination for Best Fact Crime for The Ghosts of Eden Park. As her first thriller begins, Katherine “Kat” Bird is not at all sitting in the catbird seat. She barely survived a car accident a couple of weeks back, and her memory has virtually been erased. She can form sentences and understand when people talk to her, but the only person she recognizes is her twin sister, Jude. Jude is Kat’s mirror twin—she parts her hair on the other side from Kat; her dimple shows up in the opposite cheek when she smiles. Slowly, Jude brings Kat up to date on the events that helped shape their lives for better and for worse: their father’s disappearance when they were young, their mother’s death, their post-high school backpacking trip to Europe. But there are nagging inconsistencies in Jude’s narrative.

As Kat learns more about herself and as bits of memory fall into place, she begins to harbor doubts that Jude is being truthful. Couple this with newfound evidence of her own propensity for (and expertise at) violence, and Kat is shaken to her core. However much Kat thinks she knows, however much she is able to relearn, there is one person who knows her better: Jude, for better or worse.

Don’t miss this scary, tense and provocative thrill ride!

Bruce Tierney lives outside Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he bicycles through the rice paddies daily and reviews the best in mystery and suspense every month.

9

interview | derek b. miller

SHINING LIGHT ON A FORGOTTEN STORY OF WWII The author of Norwegian by Night found the setting for his captivating World War II adventure hidden away on an Italian hilltop.

As Derek B. Miller sat down to write his seventh novel, The Curse of characters sprang into focus. As his name implies, Houdini is a largerPietro Houdini, something magical happened. “I wrote a great first senthan-life character who may not be what he claims to be: a “master artist tence that somehow embedded the whole book,” he says, speaking from and confidant of the Vatican.” “I just love big, opinionated, risk-taking, his home in Spain. “This is the only time this has ever happened to me.” take-no-prisoners central characters,” Miller says.

Miller had already chosen the setting “Once the name popped out,” Miller for this spellbinding historical saga—a continues, “once I had Houdini and a Benedictine abbey near Montecassino, curse, and the abbey all sort of there, I Italy, during World War II. In 1944, realized that interrogating the curse matAmerican pilots dropped more bombs tered. And I was wondering who else was on this hilltop sanctuary than any other there? Who was he talking to? Who would single building, mistakenly believing it care about something like that?” Before to be occupied by German forces. While long, Miller envisioned an orphaned 14-year-old—Massimo—whom Pietro stories abound about the invasion of finds lying beaten in a gutter. The two Normandy, few Americans are familiar with this military operation. walk up the hill to the abbey, setting into “I have a Ph.D. in international relamotion a vibrant, well-crafted tale that’s rich in history, drama, tragedy and welltions,” Miller notes, “and I didn’t know placed doses of humor—at which Miller about it.” Part of the reason, he explains, is that “it’s just not a good old-fashioned excels. Ultimately, he has created a story American hero story. The battle went on about both the heroics and the horrors of for months and months and killed a lot war, as well as the powerful bonds that of people.” What’s more, the abbey had can form in the midst of calamity. been housing thousands of irreplaceable Massimo’s first-person narration manuscripts and art, sent there for safeconvincingly guides the book, and it is keeping in 1943. Thankfully, night after framed by an introduction and conclunight, a German and an Austrian officer, sion written from Massimo’s adult perwith the help of the monks, loaded this spective decades later. “When I’m writtreasure trove into carts and moved it ing,” Miller explains, “I really have no to Rome before the Allied destruction idea what’s going to happen next. I only began—a secretive mission described had milestones and a chronology [of hisin his book. “I don’t think an abbey has torical events] that I decided to stick to called out to have its own story since The seriously, partly because I’m a scholar.”

Name of the Rose,” Miller adds, referring Many readers, in fact, may be reminded to Umberto Eco’s famed murder mystery. of Anthony Doerr’s beloved World War II Miller was introduced to the novel, All the Light We Cannot See. “This is going to sound shocking,” Miller says, Montecassino abbey while working on “but I haven’t read it yet.” a previous novel, Radio Life, which was inspired by the acclaimed 1959 science Similarly surprising comparisons were made after the publication of his fiction classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, a H The Curse of Pietro Houdini award-winning novel, Norwegian by post-apocalyptic story about monks who Avid Reader, $28, 9781668020883 Night: People complimented him on protect books during nuclear war and its doing such a wonderful job writing aftermath by hiding them in an abbey.

Historical Fiction The book’s author, Walter J. Miller (no Scandinavian crime. “I said, ‘That’s interrelation) was a radioman and tail gunner whose role in the Montecassino esting, I’ve never heard of it.’ I thought I was writing a story about an old Jewish guy running through the woods in Norway. But apparently, it was abbey bombing left him with post-traumatic stress disorder and undoubtpart of an entire genre that I was unaware of, even though I was living in edly inspired Canticle. Now, Derek Miller wanted to explore the setting Norway at the time.” of the abbey itself, but he was having trouble deciding what “I haven’t really written love stories as such—you Both Norwegian by Night and story he wanted to tell. “This The Curse of Pietro Houdini know, boy-meets-girl, that kind of thing. But there feature an adult and child isn’t nonfiction,” Miller says. “I paired as main characters. “A didn’t want to be an academic. is, very much with Pietro and Massimo, love.”

I wanted to be a dramatist. And lot of my books are really quite I wanted to find the story within the story that could be mine.” multigenerational,” Miller says. “It gives me tremendous scope for wisdom, The plot finally began to emerge when Miller wrote that first sendialogue, humor, misunderstanding and competing interpretations. And tence—“Pietro Houdini claimed that life clung to him like a curse and if it’s fun, because old people being frustrated with young people, and young he could escape it he would.” Instantaneously, one of the novel’s two main people being frustrated with old people is just hilarious.”

10

© CAMILLA WASZINK

cozies

by jamie orsini

Murder at the Book Festival Jane Bettany takes readers back to the quaint English village of Merrywell in her charming second Violet Brewster mystery. The town is readying for its first literary festival, and bestselling author Leonie Stanwick has agreed to appear.

Leonie was born and raised in Merrywell and left shortly after she turned 18. But when former journalist Violet Brewster discovers a woman’s body, she realizes Leonie’s return may have stirred up dangerous memories among the Merrywell residents. Murder at the Book Festival (HQ Digital, $2.99, 9780008589691) moves fast but still hits all the right notes with unerring precision, revealing clues and surprises at ideal moments. The book festival provides an interesting backdrop to murder, and Violet is an engaging heroine, too. She’s smart, compassionate and deeply relatable, especially when balancing the attention of her just-returned ex-husband and her new love interest, Matthew.

The Mystery Guest Visit BookPage.com to read our starred review of The Curse of Pietro Houdini.

Miller also describes the pairing as a “useful literary device,” saying, “It’s always helpful for somebody in the know to have somebody to talk to who’s not in the know for the benefit of the reader. And in my books, there’s a lot going on.” Such a marvelous embarrassment of riches is certainly the case in The Curse of Pietro Houdini, in which many of Pietro’s discussions of art, history and the war with Massimo serve as vital backstory provided in an entertaining fashion. Miller points to the power of the connection that these characters establish, saying, “Being alone and then finding someone to connect with in the midst of that loneliness is essential in the human experience. I haven’t really written love stories as such—you know, boy-meets-girl, that kind of thing. But there is, very much with Pietro and Massimo, love.”

“Writing is a full-contact blood sport,” Miller concludes. “It’s a crazy way to make a living—almost an impossible way.” He started trying his hand at fiction during a number of unscheduled months spent waiting for his Ph.D. program to begin in Switzerland, and he continued with the craft alongside his studies. He eventually published his third manuscript, Norwegian by Night, in 2008, after 12 years of writing. That book came together when he elevated Sheldon Horowitz, who had been a minor character in a draft manuscript, to a central character. He turned out to be such a wonderful personality that Miller later wrote a prequel about his childhood, the suspenseful tragicomedy How to Find Your Way in the Dark.

Now Miller is working on a book set in the late 1950s on the coast of Spain, where Salvador Dalí had his house in Cadaqués. Miller and his family live about an hour south of Barcelona, after living and working in Norway for a number of years (Miller’s wife is Norwegian). “I needed a change and it’s an adventure for the kids,” he says. “Life is short, so you take some bold decisions, if you’re so inclined.”

At some point, Miller hopes to finally visit the Montecassino abbey, which has been rebuilt since the World War II bombing. He says, “My deep, deep hope is that I can get The Curse of Pietro Houdini translated into Italian and that I have an excellent reason to go.”

—Alice Cary

Molly Gray has come a long way since Nita Prose’s bestselling debut, The Maid. She’s now the head maid of the five-star Regency Grand Hotel and blissfully in love with her boyfriend, Juan Manuel, another Grand employee. But when celebrated author J.D. Grimthorpe drops dead in the hotel tearoom, Molly’s plunged into chaos once again. The Mystery Guest (Ballantine, $29, 9780593356180) is a delightful sophomore novel that showcases how Molly has changed since the first entry in the series: She’s as sharp and honest as ever but has grown into her roles of head maid and girlfriend. Molly’s a singular character—she’s intelligent, unfailingly honest and the epitome of a professional maid—and readers will enjoy checking in to the Regency Grand to follow her and her exploits.

Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night Agatha Christie fans, rejoice: Sophie Hannah brings back famed detective Hercule Poirot in the riveting Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night (William Morrow, $30, 9780062991638), the latest entry in her authorized reboot of the iconic series. Hercule Poirot and Inspector Edward Catchpool (Hannah’s own invention) are taking on a new case, this time brought to them by Cynthia Catchpool, Edward’s mother. A wellliked and amiable man was recently murdered in a busy hospital ward, and Cynthia’s friend Arnold is due to be admitted to that very ward. Poirot and Catchpool are asked to unmask the killer before Arnold is admitted—and possibly murdered. Catchpool is a likable narrator: intelligent; bitingly funny, especially when ruminating on his complicated relationship with his mother; and devoted to Poirot. Readers looking for another puzzling outing with the famed Hercule Poirot will be richly rewarded with this new installment.

Jamie Orsini is an award-winning journalist and writer who enjoys cozy mysteries and iced coffee.

11

cover story | most anticipated

22 BOOKS WE CAN’T WAIT TO READ IN 2024

Everyone knows that reading resolutions are the best kind of resolutions.

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

by Tia Williams Grand Central | February 6 The Seven Days in June author returns with an exuberant romance set around a flower shop in Harlem. A Love Song for Ricki Wilde follows the titular character as she strikes out on her own, away from her wealthy and judgmental Atlanta family, only to encounter a mysterious and charming musician.

Ten Little Rabbits

by Maurice Sendak HarperCollins | February 6 This picture book by the late Where the Wild Things Are author invites readers to learn numbers at Mino’s magic show, where he struggles to control a succession of rascally—yet insanely adorable—rabbits.

The Fox Wife

by Yangsze Choo Holt | February 13 Fans of The Night Tiger are eagerly awaiting Yangsze Choo’s next historical novel, an epic adventure set in Manchuria at the very end of the Qing Dynasty that promises to bring together mystery and legend to dazzling effect.

With a Little Luck

by Marissa Meyer Feiwel & Friends | February 13 YA fantasy icon Marissa Meyer’s Instant Karma marked her first foray into romcoms, and now she’s taking fans back to Fortuna Beach to meet Jude, whose life is transformed when he finds a 20-sided die that gives him incredible luck.

Anita de Monte Laughs Last

by Xochitl Gonzalez Flatiron | March 5 Xochitl Gonzalez is back with a campus novel entwining the stories of two

12

women: an artist, Anita de Monte, who died mysteriously in 1985, and an art history student, Raquel, who is determined to uncover what happened to Anita and bring new attention to her art.

As in her bestselling, award-winning debut, Olga Dies Dreaming, Gonzalez turns a sharp, thoughtful eye to the cost of success.

The House of Hidden Meanings

by RuPaul Dey Street | March 5 We love a reinvention story almost as much as we love drag. Long before Her Highness RuPaul set the stage for his outrageously popular “Drag Race,” he was a poor, queer kid in San Diego.

Through performance, he found escape, acceptance, family . . . and, later, fame, fortune and 12 Emmy awards. We’re expecting a vulnerable self-portrait of a queer icon.

The Morningside

by Téa Obreht Random House | March 19 Much of the plot of Téa Obreht’s extraordinary 2011 debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife, sprang from mythical stories. The Morningside continues that tradition, but this time Obreht steps into the near future, following a mother and daughter who have taken refuge in a dilapidated luxury apartment in an abandoned island city.

One Way Back

by Christine Blasey Ford St. Martin’s | March 19 History will remember the four hours during which a woman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee as it considered the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. In her long-awaited memoir, Christine Blasey Ford recounts her decision to publicly accuse the justice of sexual assault, the overwhelming

aftermath and how she’s continued to persevere since.

The Princess of Las Vegas

by Chris Bohjalian Doubleday | March 19 After a thriller set in 17th-century Boston and a suspenseful tale of an Old Hollywood safari gone wrong, Chris Bohjalian is back with another impressively original novel. The setting is modern-day Las Vegas and the protagonist is Princess Diana impersonator Crissy Dowling, whose messy life gets even messier when her boss is murdered.

Where Sleeping Girls Lie

by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé Feiwel & Friends | March 19 Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé won a 2022 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for her heart-pounding debut thriller, Ace of Spades, about two Black prefects at a private academy. So it’s with bated breath that we anticipate Where Sleeping Girls Lie, another YA mystery set at an elite school that promises just as many twists and turns, on top of thoughtful, multilayered social commentary.

There’s Always This Year

by Hanif Abdurraqib Random House | March 26 In the first section of Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year, he addresses his readers directly as “beloveds.” As is always the case with the poet and cultural critic, you know you are in safe hands. This book is about basketball and LeBron James. But it is also about what he calls “close readings of pleasure,” his father, belonging and grace.

As the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America, Abdurraqib imbues the things he loves—A Tribe Called Quest, Black performance, playing spades—with prayerful universality and ease.

cover story | most anticipated The Cemetery of Untold Stories

by Julia Alvarez Algonquin | April 2 The latest novel from beloved writer Julia Alvarez has a captivating premise: Author Alma Cruz inherits a plot of land in the Dominican Republic and decides to create a cemetery to bury her unfinished manuscripts. Cared for by the cemetery’s groundskeeper, Filomena, the characters from Alma’s drafts begin to speak from beyond their graves, seeking closure for their stories and inspiring both Alma and Filomena to reconnect with their family histories.

The Familiar

by Leigh Bardugo Flatiron | April 9 Every time you think Leigh Bardugo can’t get bigger, she somehow does. A historical fantasy set during the Spanish Inquisition, The Familiar could bring Bardugo’s unforgettable characters and spellbinding prose to an even larger audience.

Tree. Table. Book.

by Lois Lowry Clarion | April 23 Two-time Newbery medalist Lois Lowry has captivated generations with her unforgettable novels, which include The Giver and Number the Stars. Tree. Table.

Book. follows best friends and neighbors named Sophie: One is 11 years old, while the other is 88 and beginning to struggle with her memory. The younger Sophie’s attempts to help lead to conversations about the older Sophie’s experiences in World War II, which will most assuredly be delivered with Lowry’s signature power and grace.

Knife

by Salman Rushdie Random House | April 16 More than 30 years after an Iranian leader called for his assassination, master storyteller and literary icon Salman Rushdie was repeatedly stabbed at a public appearance in 2022, suffering

life-threatening wounds. He describes the attack and his recovery in Knife, which Rushdie has called “a necessary book for me to write: a way to take charge of what happened, and to answer violence with art.”

Missing White Woman

by Kellye Garrett

range. After their gorgeous romance, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty, Emezi is pivoting in a darker direction. Following five friends over the course of one chaotic, devastating weekend, the thrilling Little Rot is sure to be a page turner, and we can’t wait.

Mulholland | April 30

The Pairing

by Casey McQuiston

Kellye Garrett’s Like a Sister was among the most poised and gripping debuts of recent memory, so expectations are high for her sophomore thriller.

Breanna, a Black woman on vacation, wakes up one morning to find her boyfriend gone and the internet’s latest obsession, a missing white woman named Janelle Beckett, dead in their rental home.

Two exes. On the same food and wine tour of Europe. By Casey McQuiston.

Is there anything else to say? Fine: McQuiston is one of our finest purveyors of rom-coms working today, capable of delivering pure joy and happy tears alike, and people will be screaming about this book from its release until the end of 2024.

Griffin | August 6

The Demon of Unrest

by Erik Larson

Circle of Hope

by Eliza Griswold

Crown | April 30

FSG | August 6

Erik Larson’s books are comprehensively researched, vividly rendered and narratively spry—sometimes reading more like novels than nonfiction. The bestselling author of The Devil in the White City returns with an account of the five tense months before the Civil War, when President Lincoln tried in vain to avert a cataclysm. The Demon of Unrest promises to be a political horror story with teeth.

Eliza Griswold won a 2019 Pulitzer for Amity and Prosperity, which chronicled the devastating impact of fracking in a small Pennsylvania town. Now, the journalist and poet turns her attention to Circle of Hope, a progressive Anabaptist church that relies on both scripture and public protest as articles of faith. Circle of Hope follows the congregation’s reckoning with the pandemic, our country’s religious landscape and internal rifts as it fights for its survival.

Traveling

by Ann Powers Dey Street | June 11 The best music critics balance accessible writing with obsessive attention to the history and analysis of sound.

Author and NPR music critic Ann Powers has been laying it on the line for decades, and her biography of Joni Mitchell is sure to win the author more fans.

Little Rot

by Akwaeke Emezi Riverhead | June 18 It’s hard to think of another author with Akwaeke Emezi’s genre-disrupting

A Sorceress Comes to Call

by T. Kingfisher Tor | August 20 T. Kingfisher’s work is a pitch-perfect blend of the hopeful and the grim, the macabre and the magical. The worlds she creates are often bleak, but bright spots can always be found in her characters’ irrepressible humor. This book is inspired by the Brothers Grimm’s “The Goose Girl,” and if it’s anything like her marvelous novella Thornhedge, which flipped the tale of Sleeping Beauty on its head, A Sorceress Comes to Call will be full of nasty surprises and bursts of hope alike.

Visit bookpage.com/most-anticipated to see our full list of anticipated 2024 titles, including the first book for young readers from David Sedaris; James Patterson’s biography of Tiger Woods; a new romance from Emily Henry; Gabriel García Márquez’s posthumous novella and more.

13

© JAMES BETTS

q&a | natalie haynes

Sing, o muses Author Natalie Haynes celebrates the unsung goddesses of the ancient world in Divine Might.

In Divine Might: Goddesses in Greek Myth, were so few examples of her in contemporary Natalie Haynes shoves aside the male-centric fiction and art that at the beginning of her lens through which we’ve long viewed godchapter, I wasn’t sure I would be able to write desses like Aphrodite, Demeter and Artemis, it at all. But it turned out to be a really beautiful whether in history, literature, art or music. process, finding her where I could, and trying She steps into that breach to explain how and why she armed with a sharpened “Female anger is had disappeared. I don’t gaze and copious research have favorites—I change my frightening to men. mind with every chapter! as she reveals to readers how these otherworldly women Always.”

What differences do you see have been misrepresented and misunderstood in the past, and explores between art created by men and art by women? the ways in which they inspire and inform us I think the more women make art, the more in the present. BookPage asked the acclaimed we’ll see different interpretations of what it author/scholar/comedian/broadcaster about means to be a woman. I was thinking about it today reading a review of Britney Spears’ new her fascinating career and what she thinks we can all learn from the undersung women of the book: How she chooses to present herself seems ancient world. completely different from how her management/family chose to present her when they In last year’s Pandora’s Jar, you brought the controlled so much of her life. There’s a terrible likes of Medusa and Jocasta to the forefront. poignancy to how long she has had to wait to be And now in this book, you turn to the godallowed to be her full self. And—more cheerdesses in all their power and glory. What ingly—look at the Taylor Swift juggernaut. She drives you to interrogate and explore how remakes herself with each album, sometimes women were portrayed in more than once. It’s a masmyth and in art? ter class in depicting powI can’t imagine not being erful womanhood in hugely interested in the portrayal varied ways. She’s inspiring of women: We’re half the millions of girls as she does world! And since almost it, so I think we could be in all literature and art that for an exciting time ahead. survives to us from the ancient world is by men, it You describe in colorfully provides a fascinating canunflinching detail some of Hera’s “spectacular vas to explore. How did men imagine women, and how and creatively unpleasant did they imagine powerful revenges.” And you note women, when they knew that modern culture often no such people in real life? turns this exasperation into fodder for comedy What kind of goddesses rather than, say, a reawould these men worship? I really wanted to explore the sonable explanation for rage. Why do you think goddesses, the temples built Hera’s and other godto them, the stories depicting them, the art embodydesses’ anger was avoided Divine Might and downplayed? ing them. So that is how Harper, $30, 9780063377097 Divine Might happened.

Female anger is frightening to men. Always. And it’s History What was the most surprismuch easier to deny that if you claim that it’s irrational, that it comes out ing, challenging and/or gratifying thing you of nowhere, that it’s the consequence of being discovered in the course of your research? crazy or cruel. Otherwise you’d have to accept Do you now have a favorite goddess?

The most challenging thing I discovered was that structural inequality is irritating and make just how little impact the goddess Hestia—once an effort to change it for the better. Sometimes I central to worship of all the gods in ancient feel like Bruce Banner in The Avengers: “That’s Greece—had made on the modern world. There my secret, Captain. I’m always angry.” He

14

Visit BookPage.com to read our review of Divine Might.

doesn’t wait for an alien invasion to be mad, he lives there. Well, me too.

Since your first book, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life, you’ve written several more that challenge our assumptions about the ancient world. Have you met with any pushback to the new perspectives you’ve offered?

I am told by academic friends that I am generally appreciated in their profession for encouraging so many students to pursue classics and ancient history. I’ve no doubt there are some scholars who hate me—that’s just a statistical reality—but I can’t honestly say I give them a moment’s thought. Who has the time?

Comedy + classicism is a pairing that’s worked quite well for you, to say the least!

Which came first? When were you first inspired to combine the two? Does your BBC podcast “Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics” inform your books and vice versa?

Ha—I guess I would say I was funny before I was a classicist, but I was a classicist before I was a comedian. I started doing stand-up during my undergrad years. Since then the two have swirled around me most of the time, I suppose.

The first few years in comedy were pretty low on classics (not much call for jokes on the ancient world in the late ’90s comedy circuit). But now these two fields have really merged for me. I love doing the live shows and making the BBC podcast. I’m extremely lucky!

What are you most hoping readers take away from this book?

I’m hoping that readers will come away from the book thinking that women’s stories are every bit as valuable and compelling as men’s, every bit as important as I believe them to be.

I hope they’ll have a newfound respect for the huge power of these goddesses and the centrality of their role in the ancient world.

—Linda M. Castellitto

ENEWSLETTER PERSONALIZE YOUR TBR

Stay on top of new releases!

Sign up for our enewsletter to receive weekly reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

BookPage.com/email @readbookpage

@bookpage

@readbookpage

bit.ly/readbookpage

15

reviews | fiction

H My Friends

By Hisham Matar

Literary Fiction Being an émigré isn’t that unthinkable: Just imagine that you have to leave home forever, potentially never to return. Or imagine that you never had a home in the first place; that the very word “home” taunts and perpetually eludes you; that everywhere you go, you try to find or create it to no avail. A scintillating novel that’s equal parts history and fiction, Pulitzer Prizewinning author Hisham Matar’s My Friends (Random House, $28.99, 9780812994841) follows Khaled Abd al Hady, a young Libyan man who moves from Benghazi to London.

Khaled is the son of a school headmaster and a headstrong mother. Innately curious, he spends days reading books from his father’s vast library. When Khaled and his family hear a short story read over the radio about a man being eaten by a cat, broadcast by Libyan BBC reporter Mohammed Mustafa Ramadan (a real journalist who was assassinated in broad daylight in

Holiday Country

By Inci Atrek

Coming of Age Set in a dreamy coastal town, Inci Atrek’s debut novel, Holiday Country (Flatiron, $28.99, 9781250889461), is about three generations learning to make peace with the choices they have made. Narrated by the youngest of them all, Ada, it is as much a coming-of-age story as it is one about lost opportunities and how far one may go to recover them.

Things are just as you might imagine in the tiny town of Ayvalık off the Aegean coast of Turkey—sleepy and slow-moving. Oleander bushes line the pathways connecting the villas, the market and the two lone restaurants, and gossiping is as crucial a part of the lives of its mostly retired residents as swimming, eating and sleeping.

19-year-old Ada has spent all her summer holidays here since she was 4, in a consistent but mostly unsuccessful attempt to please Ada’s opinionated and controlling grandma, Mukadder, who never quite forgave Ada’s mother for marrying an American and moving away.

16

1980), they are fascinated.

They discover that the author, Hosam Zowa, is a Benghazian living abroad to pursue university in the U.K. Khaled is inspired to apply to university in Edinburgh and is miraculously accepted. Although he is thrilled to embark on this adventure, his family seems hesitant: They know, though he doesn’t, that once Khaled leaves, he will never come back.

In Edinburgh, Khaled meets other Libyan students, though they all live under the shadow of the Qaddafi regime, unable to trust even one another. At a demonstration in front of the Libyan embassy in London, an actual event that took place on April 17, 1984, Khaled is shot by a gunman in the embassy and, in the aftermath, is outed as a radical. Eventually, he meets Hosam, the

author of that strange short story, and his life is forever changed.

From its opening when Khaled and Hosam part ways for what is likely the last time, My Friends flows quickly and vividly. The story is structured around Khaled’s reminiscing as he walks around London, visiting the spots where the events he is retelling took place. This foundation of memory allows Matar to imbue each scene with rich, nostalgic emotion, especially as much of the book is based in reality.

As Khaled reflects on the heartbreaking and life-affirming relationships he has had over the course of his life, readers are sure to be touched, coming to a deeper understanding of friendship, nation and home.

—Eric A. Ponce

This summer, however, there is uncertainty in the air for Ada, who has not only discovered that her father has been cheating on her mother, but is also unsure of how her impending adult life will change her summer getaways to Ayvalık and, by extension, her connection to her Turkish heritage and her sense of who she really is.

Amidst this angst, Ada meets a handsome older man named Levent. Soon discovering he has a romantic past with her mother, she goes on a mission to get them back together again, while unintentionally falling for him herself.

With a setting that comes through beautifully in Atrek’s writing, Holiday Country is tender, well-written and filled with just the right amount of twists and turns.

—Chika Gujarathi

poignant and sometimes startlingly vicious, The Fetishist is a wonderful novel from an author we lost too soon, and a sweeping yet intimate statement on the impacts of racism and sexism on Asian American women.

Kyoko is a Japanese American rock musician, while Alma is a Korean American cellist whose career was sidelined by illness. Both are tied irrevocably to Daniel, a white man and fellow musician whose pursuit of Asian women seems to have ruined both Alma’s life and the life of Kyoko’s late mother. Shifting between these three characters’ perspectives, Min tells us the captivating, hilariously twisted story of their intertwined lives, from a potential hit song and an infamous affair, to a kidnapping gone wrong.

Min’s prose is simultaneously playful and powerful. She crafts sentences that are somehow able to contain both breathless puns and elegant intonations on the meaning of life. The Fetishist flies on the strength of her words, and that strength transfers into her characters.

There’s not a simple narrative here, no firm sense of right and wrong that we can apply to every page. Instead, these complicated, messy characters are lent warmth and gravity in each word, each moment. Kyoko, Alma and Daniel are all searching for meaning, all trying to sort through the regrets they carry and the sins they bear. They feel whole, feel human, and therefore are free to surprise us. While The Fetishist is many things, surprising is probably the most apt word to describe Min’s posthumous work.

This remarkably clever, wickedly incisive little

The Fetishist

By Katherine Min

Literary Fiction Written before her death in 2019, and published with the help of her daughter, Katherine Min’s The Fetishist (Putnam, $28, 9780593713655) allows Min to pour out something of herself that we might otherwise have sadly missed. Darkly funny, strangely

reviews | fiction book will keep you hanging on every word and leave you with questions you’ll ponder for days.

—Matthew Jackson

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

By Shubnum Khan

Gothic Fiction Perhaps the most commonly touted piece of advice for writers is to write what you know. It’s clear that Shubnum Khan has taken this counsel to heart with this dazzling novel (her first published in the U.S.), spinning a magical and richly atmospheric gothic coming-of-age tale set in Durban, South Africa, the same city the author herself calls home.

In a piece for the literary journal Portside Review, Khan described her hometown as “a place where people leave.” Slow and stuck in time, the coastal city is somewhere to go when one wants to forget and be forgotten in turn.

Durban is the perfect backdrop for Akbar Manzil, the gothic mansion at the heart of The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years (Viking, $28, 9780593653456). Once a palace of wonders and luxury for an extremely wealthy family, Akbar Manzil is now a moribund manse haphazardly converted into apartments and home to a ragtag group of misfit tenants. Amongst the complex’s denizens are teenager Sana and her widowed father, newly arrived and looking to start fresh after a terrible loss. Whereas the other residents drift through the grounds blind and incurious to their home’s quirks and mysteries, Sana resists the soporific effects of the estate and delves into abandoned corridors and locked rooms, determined to shine a light upon the shadows, secrets and spirits that lurk within. But Sana’s relentless pursuit of the past is not without consequence.

Her discovery of a star-crossed romance that took place many years earlier agitates a grieving djinn and threatens to throw the lives of Akbar Manzil’s present-day residents into chaos.

Cinematic in scope and rendered in redolent prose, The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a deeply immersive and inventive exploration of the many facets of love, loneliness and grief. Khan’s descriptions of Durban ground the story despite its fantastical elements, making the novel all the more compelling. Fueled by its vivid details, bewitching setting and a colorful cast of characters (including the house Akbar Manzil itself ), this engrossing read acts as a potent reminder that the past does not merely hold the power to hurt us, but also to heal us.

—Stephenie Harrison

You Dreamed of Empires By Álvaro Enrigue Translated by Natasha Wimmer

Historical Fiction It was Hernán Cortés who made the ludicrous claim that Moctezuma voluntarily surrendered sovereignty of the Aztec empire to the Spanish conquistadors.

Cortés’ narrative is not easily believed, especially considering that he quotes Moctezuma as referencing the Christian Bible, but certainly there are those who believe that the Aztec people, either out of naiveté or superstition, could have been duped into a bad bargain.

Mexican writer Álvaro Enrigue’s agile modernist novel You Dreamed of Empires (Riverhead, $28, 9780593544792) offers a reimagined encounter between Cortés and Moctezuma, with far more political machination at work than superstition. It all kicks off with the Spaniard trying to hug the Aztec emperor on first greeting—a bad move considering Moctezuma’s impulsivity and comfort with executions. Although the moment somehow doesn’t end in blood, readers know that the ultimate outcome will undoubtedly be disaster.

When history is retold in such an irreverent, unprecious manner, there are no winners—except the reader.

Over the course of one day in November 1519, conquistadors bumble around the labyrinthine city of Mehxicoh-Tenoxtitlan. Their horses, lost in Moctezuma’s palace, are a novelty to their hosts but unfortunately decimate the emperor’s collection of exotic fruits. Meanwhile, Moctezuma languishes in his room, treating his depression with hallucinogenic mushrooms and cacti, while his sister (and wife) Atotoxtli tries to figure out how to save the kingdom.

“If there’s anything Spaniards and Mexicans have always agreed upon,” Enrigue writes, “it’s that nobody is less qualified to govern than the government itself.”

Readers of Enrigue’s 2016 novel, Sudden Death, have already encountered his way of dealing with lopsided accounts of Latin American history. In both books, there are translator characters deliberately mistranslating, effortless comparisons to the Roman Empire,

plenty of feathered capes and a porous fourth wall. On several occasions, Enrigue yanks us out of the story to look at events from our 21st-century vantage point, such as when Moctezuma is admiring the sound of withered fingers swaying in the breeze “to the beat of some music he couldn’t place,” and we learn that it’s the 1973 song “Monolith’’ by T. Rex. And as beautifully written as the novel is, especially in its descriptions of the metropolis of Tenoxtitlan, You Dreamed of Empires is also bone-dry funny: “In Mexico, authority has always flowed from the smack of a flip-flop.”

When history is retold in such an irreverent, unprecious manner, there are no winners— except the reader.

—Cat Acree

Goldenseal

By Maria Hummel

Literary Fiction Maria Hummel’s fifth novel offers the atmospheric story of an old friendship gone awry. As Goldenseal (Counterpoint, $27, 9781640096066) opens in 1990, Edith has arrived in Los Angeles, a city that’s unrecognizable to her after 40 years in Maine.

Her destination is a grand hotel she once knew well. Waiting for Edith is Lacey, who has withdrawn not only from her old friend, but from the world, making herself a recluse high above the city in the hotel her father owned for decades.

Lacey is agitated and doesn’t know why Edith has returned, but she has planned a fancy room service dinner for the two of them. As the dinner begins, the two are wary, feeling the presence of the long-ago rupture in their friendship. At 70, Lacey is troubled and fragile, while Edith is restrained, a cipher, “the headmistress incarnate.” Both women have been pummeled by time and by the world.

As each woman guardedly tells the other her perspective, we learn how Lacey and Edith became like sisters. Occasionally, one will wish for more of this recounting to be shown in scene rather than dialogue, because the novel describes Edith and Lacey’s youth so gorgeously, beginning with Lacey’s late-1930s childhood in her beloved Prague before the sudden move with her Mutti and Papi to New York City as war and the Holocaust loom. When Lacey is sent to summer camp in Maine, she encounters Edith, and they begin an intense friendship. They’re outwardly opposites: Lacey is a pampered only child, while Edith was born into rural poverty and is attending camp on

17

reviews | fiction scholarship because her father is the camp’s handyman. Eventually, Edith and Lacey both follow Lacey’s parents to Los Angeles to try out the film business, setting in motion the events that cause their dramatic split. In the novel’s present, the reunion dinner’s end leads to a surprising moment of tenderness: a bittersweet, fitting conclusion.

In the afterword, Hummel notes that she wrote Goldenseal as an homage to Hungarian author Sándor Márai’s novel Embers, drawing her structure—two old friends reuniting for one night after a 40-year rift—from the older novel.

Goldenseal is an inventive, immersive book recounting the particular past, old hurts and late healing of two singular characters.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

The Book of Fire

By Christy Lefteri

Popular Fiction “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful village inside an ancient forest on the slope of a mountain that looked down upon the sea.”

As the protagonist, Irini, repeats this refrain throughout Christy Lefteri’s latest novel, The Book of Fire, (Ballantine, $29.99, 9780593497272), the words start to feel like an omen of tragedy instead of a fairy-tale beginning. One scorching summer day, Irini’s idyllic Greek island village is irrevocably transformed when a fire set by a man greedy to build property burns out of control.

Irini, her husband, Tasso, and her daughter, Chara, survive the hellish experience with scars both visible and painfully unseen. In the fire’s aftermath, Irini begins to record what happened in a journal that she calls “The Book of Fire.”

She cannot bring herself to play her beloved music, much like how Tasso, an artist, cannot lift his paintbrush. Her village—the village of her great-grandfather—is mourning the beauty and innocence it has lost along with the people who died. The villagers focus their collective grief and anger into hatred for the man who started the fire. And yet, in her confusion and pain, Irini wonders about a broader shared responsibility for the devastation, asking, “Could there be something destructive and barren in all of us that bleeds out onto our land?”

Much like she did in Songbirds, which elevated the voices of migrant domestic workers, Lefteri draws on real events in this new novel, having traveled to Mati, Greece, to speak to locals about the fire they endured in 2018. In The Book of Fire, Lefteri turns her sensitive

18

gaze to global climate change and how increasingly prevalent deadly fires have become. Her zealousness in warning of the dangers posed by our neglect of the land and its needs occasionally veers into overt preaching, yet this sense of urgency does propel the plot forward. Her language, as always, is evocative and precise, and her story remains heartbreaking even as it inches toward healing and the hope of restoration. Irini observes that the “fire has burnt our souls, our hearts. It has turned to ashes the people we once were,” but this stalwart community, like the ancient chestnut tree that figures prominently in the story, is “still alive . . . and its branches reach up to the sun.”

—Melissa Brown

Bird Life

Some scenes contain extraneous dialogue and go on too long, but Bird Life is nevertheless an evocative and sensitive depiction of mental distress and the importance of perseverance. Yasuko’s father, a crystallographer, keeps a photo of the first X-ray image of DNA on his pin board because it reminds him “that there is more in the world than I can easily understand” and “that I always need to keep looking.” That’s the key message of this subtle book: Though it might be difficult to detect them during times of hardship, glimmers of hope are always visible if one knows where to look.

—Michael Magras

H Poor Deer

By Claire Oshetsky

By Anna Smaill

Literary Fiction Grief is a devastating stimulus. The manifestations of mental anguish form the subject of Bird Life (Scribe, $18, 9781957363547), Anna Smaill’s elliptical, poetic follow-up to her Booker Prizelonglisted 2015 debut, The Chimes.

The story centers on two very different women, Dinah and Yasuko. Dinah, a New Zealander, is in Tokyo on a work visa to teach English to engineering and science undergraduates. She’s mourning her twin brother, Michael, a promising classical pianist who died under circumstances Smaill leaves vague until late in the book. Shortly after her arrival, Dinah begins seeing Michael everywhere, first in reflections of darkened car windows, then in the apartment she lives in.

Yasuko, an older woman with a college-aged son, Jun, is one of Dinah’s colleagues at the university. Yasuko “came into her powers” at 13 when a cat spoke to her. Soon, trees spoke to her, too, and she could even hear people’s thoughts. Over the years, her abilities abandoned her, but they return when Jun moves out—“I need some space,” he explains in a message—and she hopes to use them to bring him back.

Much of the novel focuses on the friendship that develops between Dinah and Yasuko as they help one another deal with their respective traumas. Particularly memorable are scenes in which Yasuko reconnects with her powers, such as when carp break the surface of a pond and quote the I Ching to her, or when birds land in Yasuko’s cupped hands to offer helpful advice.

Literary Fiction Who gets to forgive, who gets to forget and who decides when someone has paid their debt?

These questions, like life itself, are messy and open to speculation, particularly in Claire Oshetsky’s latest novel, Poor Deer (Ecco, $26.99, 9780063327665). Her charmingly weird 2021 debut, Chouette, won the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. If there is such a thing as a sophomore slump, Oshetsky has deftly sidestepped it, producing a tale that both enchants and perplexes.

Margaret Murphy, a 4-year-old child in a Northeastern mill town, is inadvertently responsible for the death of her best friend, Agnes, when an invented game, “Awake, Oh Princess,” goes terribly wrong. Margaret is dimly aware of her misdeed but is too young to recognize its complete horror.

Much like the Under Toad in John Irving’s 1978 classic, The World According to Garp, a misheard adult phrase morphs into an ominous presence in the active mind of the young child.

This time it’s the Poor Deer, a cloven-hoofed apparition with yellow nubs for teeth who visits Margaret as accuser, judge and jury.

At the book’s outset, Margaret (now a 16-year-old) and Poor Deer are locked in a battle of wills. She has promised to finally tell herself, and the reader, the truth, and the story alternates between the present day and the fateful events surrounding Agnes’ death. Yet despite her intentions, Margaret emerges as a classic unreliable narrator. Time and again, the fog of memory occludes any attempt at a journalistic account of past events, and readers

are left with the task of winnowing the wheat from the chaff.

Oshetsky deftly pulls aside the curtain to show us Margaret’s struggle to reconcile her emotional, subjective history with the persistent, objective one that keeps intruding on her psyche. Ultimately, even if the details are somewhat suspect, emotional honesty may earn Margaret the right to the forgiveness she so desperately craves, and convince Poor Deer to trot back into the subconscious forest from which she sprang.

—Thane Tierney

The Fury

By Alex Michaelides

Thriller Fans of Alex Michaelides’ bestselling thrillers will be delighted that he’s returned with another notably unreliable narrator: Elliot Chase, a playwright who takes the famous Shakespeare quote “All the world’s a stage” quite literally in this tantalizing slow burn murder mystery.

Elliot has a flair for the dramatic and an enthusiasm for gossipy speculation. When it comes to his own motivations, however, he is far more elusive—slippery, even—thanks to childhood wounds never fully acknowledged or healed, and present-day jealousies he attempts to stifle, with mixed results. In The Fury (Celadon, $28.99, 9781250758989), he has readers’ undivided attention, and he’s going to unapologetically enjoy it. “And before you accuse me of telling my story in a labyrinthine manner, let me remind you this is a true story—and in real life, that’s how we communicate, isn’t it?” Perhaps . . . or this is just a sly obfuscation from a seasoned dramatist.

After all, he plainly states, “We are all the unreliable narrators of our own lives.”

Elliot’s best friend, movie megastar Lana Farrar, owns a remote Greek island. She hosts Elliot, her husband and son, and her longtime stage actress friend, Kate, for a luxurious Easter holiday. But Aegean winds known as “the fury” batter the island and cut them off from civilization for the duration of the storm. It is then that one of them is murdered, and all of them become suspects.

Michaelides has cited Greek mythology and Agatha Christie as important influences; here he draws on elements of both to create a darkly immersive atmosphere rife with creeping dread, heightened passion and numerous dubious alibis. This inventive take on a lockedroom mystery reminds us people are far more

complex than they seem to be—for better or (murderously) worse.

—Linda M. Castellitto

JOIN US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Cold Victory

By Karl Marlantes

Historical Fiction Karl Marlantes, author of the epic Deep River, returns with a new tale of the Koskis, a family of Finnish immigrants to the Pacific Northwest in the early 20th century. Set just after World War II, Cold Victory (Grove, $28, 9780802161420) follows Louise Koski, granddaughter-in-law of Aino Koski, Deep River’s fiery and unforgettable protagonist.

Louise moves to Helsinki with her husband, Arnie, who’s been appointed as the military attaché to the American legation. Soon she befriends Natalya Bobrova, while Arnie befriends Natalya’s husband, Mikael. The two men discover they previously met during the war, when Russians and Americans were still allies.

Meanwhile, Arnie’s Finnish cousin struggles to run an impecunious orphanage, which Louise, whose one sorrow in her otherwise sunny life is her childlessness, takes up as a cause. But how to raise money? After Arnie and Mikael decide on a booze-fueled lark to have a cross-country skiing race, Louise gets the idea to fundraise through a raffle where people bet on who will win.

This is a terrible idea. In an atmosphere of ratcheting Soviet-U.S. tensions, news of the race quickly travels and becomes a symbol of the international divide: Soviet communism versus American capitalism. The two men, unreachable in the snowy wilderness, have no way of knowing that if Mikael loses this race, Comrade Stalin will send him to Siberia. Or worse.

Utilizing short, punchy chapters full of period detail, Marlantes keeps you wondering how this potentially deadly breach of protocol is going to end. His investigation of postwar diplomacy just as the Iron Curtain is about to fall for good is riveting. You’ll be as shocked as Louise at how paranoid the Russians are about everything: It’s a given that friends, husbands, wives and au pairs spy on each other, that apartments are bugged, that one misstep can result in being taken away and killed. Marlantes cleverly demonstrates how, in a Soviet satellite, even American optimism becomes dangerous. As Louise realizes, “naiveté was not an excuse; it was a flaw. And it was a flaw that hurt people.” Cold Victory is another enthralling work from a great writer.

—Arlene McKanic

Let’s connect!

Follow BookPage on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for even more interviews, reviews and bookish fun.

@readbookpage

@readbookpage

@bookpage

bit.ly/readbookpage

19

reviews | nonfiction

H The Fruit Cure

By Jacqueline Alnes

Memoir As an elite college athlete, Jacqueline Alnes started experiencing mysterious, excruciating neurological episodes in which she could not speak, walk or see clearly. Finding no help from doctors and little support from her demanding running coach, Alnes was forced to quit the activity that her identity revolved around.

Desperate for answers, she turned to an online community espousing the benefits of a fruitbased, raw food diet. She found herself drawn in, eschewing all other food piece by piece.

You’d be forgiven for suspecting that Alnes is about to pitch you on a life-changing wellness regimen that ends in health. But The Fruit Cure: The Story of Extreme Wellness Turned Sour (Melville House, $32, 9781685890759) is more intriguing. It’s a cautionary tale about falling prey to too-good-to-be-true solutions to complex medical issues.

Fruitarianism didn’t restore Alnes’ body to health; it led to disordered eating that gave her a sense of control when she felt powerless. This struggle is what makes The Fruit Cure a deeply

Tripping on Utopia

By Benjamin Breen

History “Turn on, tune in, d ro p o u t .”

Psychologist Timothy Leary popularized that catchphrase in the 1960s, and it sums up what many remember about the period when he and other outspoken LSD advocates promoted widespread “acid” use. But the reckless Leary was actually a relative latecomer to the field—and did much to undo more interesting early scientific work on hallucinogens.

Arguably, the most influential pioneers were anthropologists Margaret Mead and her husband, Gregory Bateson, whose lives are the focal point of science historian Benjamin Breen’s wide-ranging Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science (Grand Central, $30, 9781538722374), a look at the rise and fall of hallucinogens from the ’30s to the ’70s.

By the end of her life, Mead epitomized establishment social science, but she sure didn’t start

20

compelling read: Alnes dives deep into the shame humans have felt about their imperfect bodies since ancient times.

She poignantly conveys the ways in which doctors and charlatans alike have taken advantage of those desperate to meet a physical ideal or simply be released from pain and medical anxiety. “My desire for a cure,” Alnes writes, “outweighed my ability to think critically about the sources of my information.”

Alnes also explores a decidedly more modern concept: the nature of parasocial relationships, like the one she developed with the online fruitarian figureheads who called themselves Freelee and Durianrider. She obsessively watched their videos on social media, “a tilt-a-whirl of fruit-forward, anti-fat content.”

Their cult of personality made it easier to believe outlandish claims, like that cooked food pollutes the body. The spell was eventually broken for Alnes when she stopped binging on social media and started reconnecting with family and friends. “The more I lived in the world, away from my screen,” she writes, “the voices saying eggs were chicken ‘menses’ and dairy was an animal ‘secretion’ grew quieter.”

Alnes, now an English professor, writes with honesty and a clear curiosity about how her own experience reflects larger societal trends. The Fruit Cure is a spellbinding reminder of how susceptible we are to quick fixes, and, ultimately, how our communities can save us.

—Amy Scribner

that way. The young Mead had an active sex life with both men and women. She and Bateson were kindred spirits who saw huge potential in the hallucinogens used in mystical rituals that they encountered in anthropological field work.

They believed that hallucinogens could open minds and create a diverse, tolerant utopia. But psychedelic science quickly shot off in less idealistic directions, with Mead and Bateson—by then divorced—taking different paths.

Breen illuminates experiments with psychedelics, from the idealistic to the sinister to the strange. The U.S. government tested their use as a psychological weapon, often on unwitting subjects. In one infamous 1953 case, biological warfare scientist Frank Olson took a fatal fall from a Manhattan hotel window after allegedly being dosed with LSD without his consent.

Other uses could turn bizarre: Breen recounts an experiment in which researchers doped dolphins to see if they could speak.

Breen chronicles these explorations by conveying the experiences of an intriguing cast of characters who were, at least temporarily, fascinated by psychedelics, including actor Cary Grant, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and poet Allen Ginsberg.

Medicine eventually moved on to drugs like lithium and Valium, leaving the full potential of psychedelics untapped. With the current resurgence of interest in plant-based hallucinogens,

Tripping on Utopia offers the historical context we need to evaluate their potential. Breen’s smart, entertaining narrative brings this history vividly to life.

—Anne Bartlett

Rental Person Who Does Nothing

By Shoji Morimoto

Memoir In 2018, Japanese writer Shoji Morimoto began renting himself out to his 300 Twitter followers, as long as the request involved doing nothing on his part. Within 10 months, his follower count ballooned to 100,000; now it’s over 400,000. Morimoto’s account of this effort (or lack thereof ) is Rental Person Who Does Nothing (Hanover Square, $21.99, 9781335017536). In it, he recounts some of the more than 4,000 times he’s been hired in his quest to fulfill his “wish to live without doing anything.”

After abandoning a corporate job he despised for freelance writing he soon concluded was

reviews | nonfiction simultaneously dull and stressful, he started the service he calls “Do Nothing Rental” as a means of assuaging his mid-30s angst. For a variety of reasons he outlines in the book, Morimoto decided not to charge his followers any money for fulfilling their requests, other than reimbursement for travel expenses, confessing that for now, at least, he’s living off his wife’s salary and savings.

Under the handle of @morimotoshoji, he fields requests—all of which require only passive involvement by his somewhat flexible definition—and then shares some of the best stories of his experiences on his feed. Rental Person Who Does Nothing details a variety of them, such as the time he accompanied a woman to the courthouse to file her divorce papers, the day he joined a man for 13 circuits of Tokyo by rail, and the conversation with a client who confessed that he had once been involved in the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, notorious for its nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. The tone throughout is consistently light and self-effacing. “I couldn’t do anything,” he writes, “so I started doing nothing.”

For all his wry humor, Morimoto makes some trenchant points about social and cultural issues like friendship, the elusiveness of human connection, artificial intelligence and the role of money. With the U.S. Surgeon General recently identifying an epidemic of loneliness in this country, one wonders whether a similar “do nothing” service might be valuable here.

—Harvey Freedenberg

Goodbye Russia

By Fiona Maddocks

Biography When 44-year-old Sergei Rachmaninoff packed a single bag and boarded a tram in November 1917, he “was aware that I was leaving Moscow, my real home, for a very, very long time . . . perhaps forever.”

Vladimir Lenin toppled Czar Nicholas II earlier that year, hastening a revolution that overturned the social class structure. Wealthy landowners were under threat. Some supporters of the czar left behind their estates, fleeing elsewhere in Europe or to the United States. As a member of the social elite, Rachmaninoff was among those who chose exile.

In Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile (Pegasus, $29.95, 978163936593), Fiona Maddocks, the classical music critic at The Observer, draws on archival materials including newly translated ones, as she paints a

riveting portrait of the Russian composer’s struggles to adapt to a new life outside his beloved homeland.

In the U.S., he would move among other groups of Russian émigrés, but his deep longing for his country estate and for his life in old Russia weighed heavily on him. While he reinvented himself as a virtuoso pianist, he composed very little, and he rejected modernist music and its cacophonous sonic structures that reminded him of the upheaval of the Revolution. Some friends even reported that they never saw him laugh.

Rachmaninoff, writes Maddocks, felt like a “ghost wandering in a world made alien,” longing always for his Russian homeland. In 1940, three years before his death, he composed his “Symphonic Dances,” a haunting melodic orchestral suite dedicated to Russia.

Maddocks provides illuminating glimpses of Rachmaninoff ’s rigorous preparations for his performances, and his insistence on “dismantling every work he played in order to understand it, and then to reassemble it in performance.”

A fan’s affectionate ode to Rachmaninoff, Goodbye Russia provides a spirited tour through the evolution of his music while he was in exile, as well as a glimpse of the cultural history of classical music in the early to mid-20th century in the U.S. —Henry L. Carrigan, Jr.

American Zion

By Benjamin E. Park

History In the past two decades, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints— widely known as the Mormon church—has relaxed its iron grip on its archives, allowing some historians to conduct research in its vast library. Professor of religious history Benjamin E. Park has availed himself of this new access and of the work of other contemporary historians to write an absorbing history of the church and its culture. American Zion: A New History of Mormonism (Liveright, $35, 9781631498657) argues that Mormon history is surprisingly complex, and its evolution mirrors the struggles of American society.

Mormons were, from the outset, outsiders.

They interpreted the Constitution’s protection of freedom of religion as extending to the practice of polygamy; this belief did them no favors as they sought a home. They were dispelled from

state to state as zealots, sometimes through violence—their founder, Joseph Smith, was murdered by a mob in Illinois. Escaping to the Utah desert, they were beset by the federal government, which refused to let them form a “State of the Desert” unless they renounced polygamy.

Wary, they zealously guarded their records, putting their own spin on their history. In this century, they allied with the religious right and the Republican Party in culture wars and more fully entered the American mainstream, even producing a formidable presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

American Zion presents an engaging account of the personalities that loom large in the religion, especially Smith and the church’s second president, Brigham Young. But Park also shows how events and attitudes outside the church have divided the faith. He traces its complicated history of racial bias; its misogyny and, fascinatingly, history of feminism among early Mormon women; its stance on LGBTQ+ rights; and how a church still governed largely by elderly white American men is faring as its membership grows internationally.

Park, a Mormon himself, tells the story from the inside with neutrality; while he’s critical of the faith’s leaders, he has no ax to grind. If you’re looking for a more dramatic treatment, a la Jon Krakauer’s The Banner of Heaven and its ensuing television series, American Zion may not be for you. But if you’re a curious, measured reader, you’ll likely agree with the author that “Mormonism is a deep well.”

—Alden Mudge

Transient and Strange

By Nell Greenfieldboyce

Science Fo r mu c h o f her career, Nell Greenfieldboyce has written about science for NPR, reporting on a range of topics, among them a giant collective of octopuses, asteroid dust, the color of dinosaur eggs, signs of life on Mars, pet cloning and the closing of NASA’s space shuttle program. In Transient and Strange: Notes on the Science of Life (Norton, $27.99, 9780393882346), Greenfieldboyce adds the personal to the scientific, threading the two together to create a memoir in essays.

In the book’s opening essay, “The Symbol of a Tornado,” Greenfieldboyce recounts a phase that most parents will recognize: the quest to calm her preschool-age son’s nighttime fears.

When he first asks her about tornadoes, she

21

reviews | nonfiction eagerly lays out the facts—a misstep that only intensifies his anxiety. The essay braids substantial reporting on the history and science of tornadoes with her earnest fumbling as she tries to help her kids feel secure in an insecure world.

Transient and Strange’s essays meld science writing with personal accounts. In one, “A Very Charming Young Black Hole,” she couches a lesson about the scientific community’s resistance to accepting black holes in an anecdote about her first kiss. As she concludes the essay, she admits that perhaps she hadn’t kissed him; perhaps she had reconstructed the memory over time. In life, as in science, the truth is sometimes nebulous.

In life, as in science, the truth is sometimes nebulous.

The sweet, quirky “Automatic Beyond Belief” ties an ancient toaster to her parents’ faith, the stability of her childhood and her predictions about what her children will remember about their younger years. The 50-page essay that closes the book, “My Eugenics Project,” is a standout. It describes Greenfieldboyce’s strategies for coping with the knowledge that she and her husband might pass a devastating genetic mutation on to their children, her obsessive quest to solve this problem and how it has affected her marriage and family.

Throughout, Greenfieldboyce doesn’t spare herself or put on a wise affect; we see and relate to her foibles and fumbling. Transient and Strange is a book that you can read as the memoir of a woman who’s measuring the shape of life at its midpoint, and also as a series of essays riffing on a range of science-related topics. Either way, it’s a thoughtful, heartfelt and idiosyncratic collection.

—Sarah McCraw Crow

You’ll Do

The Furies

By Marcia A. Zug

Cultural History American pop culture indicates we’re pretty obsessed with marriage, but while there are TV juggernauts about bachelors and housewives, plus countless books, films and songs that praise (or bemoan) wedded life, there’s of course a lot more to marriage than a love story. Family law professor Marcia A. Zug is ready to educate us via You’ll Do: A History of Marrying for

22

Reasons Other Than Love (Steerforth, $29.95, 9781586423742), an extensively researched, engagingly cleareyed look at the history of marriage in America, for better or worse.

The author, whose debut was 2016’s Buying a Bride, was inspired to write You’ll Do by her great-aunt Rosie, one of “generations of American men and women [who] have used marriage as a loophole to circumvent unfair or discriminatory laws.” As war loomed in 1937 Nazi Germany, Rosie, a Jewish woman living in Manhattan, went to Poland to marry her best friend’s brother and bring him to safety in the U.S. Zug delves into marriages entered into for money, government benefits, status, criminal defense or parental rights. She draws upon scholarly research, court cases and newspaper articles; illustrations and photos help capture the marriage-centric zeitgeist. Zug asserts marriage is a double-edged sword: “It can be beneficial, helping to combat racial, gender, and class discrimination . . . [and] can also further such oppression.” She shares numerous outrage-inducing stories, such as when Osage Indian women were married and murdered by white men pursuing land rights in early 20th-century Oklahoma. Zug cites numerous cases of domestic violence being waved away if it occurred within a marriage, and how in 2010, a Maryland woman learned that her health insurance only covered fertility treatments for the wed.

Other fascinating tidbits: Gold-digging is now associated with women, but “Early American men’s interest in marrying for money is apparent in various anti-gold-digging laws.” Benjamin Franklin greatly disdained bachelors. And at Donald Trump’s 2005 wedding, a plane flew a banner proclaiming, “Melania, You’re Hired.”

You’ll Do is an illuminating and informative read that encourages us to broaden our perspective on American marriage and the systems that support it.

—Linda M. Castellitto

Justice (Harper, $32, 9780063048805), Flock, now an Emmy-winning journalist who has written for The New Yorker, the New York Times and The Atlantic, examines three women who did what she couldn’t do. It turns out the answer to her question is “maybe, but probably not.”

The figure of the avenging female is powerful and frightening. Flock notes that the Furies of ancient Greek mythology, who tormented Orestes, were hideous and pitiless—the stuff of nightmares. Flock makes a compelling argument that women who stand up for themselves are still seen in this same light. The three “furies” in the book certainly appear powerful and frightening, at least at first glance. The first, Brittany Smith, a young mother from Alabama, was imprisoned for murder after shooting the man who had brutally beaten and raped her.

Flock travels to northern India to report on Angoori Dahariya, a Dalit woman who organized thousands of women to use bamboo canes to punish domestic abusers. In Syria, she reports on Cicek Mustafa Zibo, who joined an all-female militia to protect Kurdish women from the ISIS terrorists who were raping, torturing and murdering them.

Flock deeply admires these women for refusing to accept the terms of a society that prefers a dead, submissive woman to a living one who defends herself. But Flock also sees their frailty and their struggles. Brittany had lost custody of her four children due to her addiction to methamphetamines; at the time of her crime, she was off drugs and “confident all that was behind her.” Angoori can judge situations too quickly, sometimes with disastrous results. And Cicek is so traumatized by her physical and psychic war wounds that she becomes increasingly cut off from her family and her humanity. The women are drawn in shades of gray, and that is what makes The Furies so powerful. Brittany, Angoori and Cicek are not mythical figures, but ordinary, flawed humans who fight for their lives, their dignity and justice—despite the cost.

—Deborah Mason

The Age of Deer

By Elizabeth Flock

Social Science On vacation in Rome in her early 20s, Elizabeth Flock was drugged and raped by a tour guide.

She couldn’t defend herself during the attack, and she never reported it to the police. Over the years, she often wondered whether she would be better off if she had killed him the following morning. In The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and

By Erika Howsare

Nature In most parts of the United States, homeowners share the land with herds of wild deer seen nibbling on tender garden plants, wandering through neighborhoods and running across highways. They are so ubiquitous that it is difficult to imagine a time when they were not so abundant. But as

reviews | nonfiction poet and journalist Erika Howsare explains in The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship With Our Wild Neighbors (Catapult, $28, 9781646221349), the clearing of forests and constant unchecked hunting that Europeans wrought upon the land in colonial America began to decimate deer habitats and communities. By the early 20th century, deer populations had “gone down to zero” in many areas, only to rebound as conservation efforts allowed deer to multiply in droves throughout the U.S.

Through carefully wrought prose and evocative imagery, Howsare depicts how deer and human populations have both relied on and butted up against one another for eons.

Through carefully wrought prose and evocative imagery, Howsare depicts how deer and human populations have both relied on and butted up against one another for eons.

Traveling through history and culture, she provides insight into the practical, environmental and spiritual “kinship” between our species: Cherokee hunters were mindful of Awi Usdi, a white deer who reminded them to ask each felled deer for forgiveness; villagers in the West Midlands of England celebrate the animal with a centuries-old pagan tradition called the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance; and deer riders abound in mythology, such as the Hindu god Chandra and Slavic hunters called vile, who bewitch men with their beauty.

The animal, Howsare writes, “perfectly symbolizes the way we live with nature now, and the way we will carry on into whatever weird, paradoxical future awaits.” Her rigorous research, along with personal anecdotes, relates the impact of human intervention on the deer population and the damage that overpopulation wreaks on forests. Howsare rides along on a culling mission with Princeton, New Jersey’s sole animal control officer, and she discusses other methods government and wildlife officials have used to reduce their numbers, like sport hunting and sterilization.

Throughout the book, Howsare returns to a proposition stated in her introduction: “To look at our modern relationship with deer . . . means asking the biggest question of all: How will we live on this planet?” The Age of Deer is a thorough, eye-opening invitation to ponder our own

relationships with the natural world, practically and reverently.

—Becky Libourel Diamond

H The Last Fire Season

By Manjula Martin

Memoir In The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History (Pantheon, $29, 9780593317150), Ma n ju l a Ma r t i n offers her mesmerizing, beautifully written account of living through and trying to come to terms with the harrowing impacts of the climate crisis.

Her memoir recounts the 2020 wildfires that surrounded her Northern California hillside home under the redwoods, causing her and her partner, Max, to evacuate. Martin’s writing is so immersive that readers will feel the stress of living through “two months of near nonstop emergency mindset,” as she scrolls fire maps, listens for warning sirens and sleeps with her phone, keys and go bag by her side.

In 2017, Martin and Max moved from San Francisco to a Sonoma County neighborhood of former vacation cabins that was “by all accounts, a fire trap.” But the land nurtured her in illness when a routine removal of a birth control device caused an abscess to form, resulting in astonishing, ongoing pain that eventually necessitated a hysterectomy. The land became a refuge that “helped me to heal to whatever extent I could be considered healed”—and she desperately fears losing it.

Martin is uniquely positioned to write this book. She was born in Santa Cruz in the mid1970s in a trailer next to a half-built geodesic dome nestled under the redwoods. Her parents were part of a community called the Land, devoted to yoga and the teachings of an Indian monk. She probes the many thorny issues of California’s land history and conservation efforts, especially those tied to colonialism, capitalism and white male supremacy. Lacing the memoir with a well-researched history of fires in the region, she shows again and again how colonizers and settlers lit the match and stoked the flames.

In the spirit of Rebecca Solnit and Terry Tempest Williams, Martin’s knowledge of nature and the land illuminate every page.

With The Last Fire Season, she joins the ranks of esteemed, provocative nature writers who use their own experiences to examine our past and our future. She concludes, “To inhabit the new shape of these cycles of damage and renewal

would require new ways of being. . . . [A] constant state of reckoning with the beauty and pain of what we had done to our home.”

—Alice Cary

On Thriving

By Brandi Sellerz-Jackson

Body, Mind and Spirit “One of the many things that I love about plants is their will and determination to live by any means necessary,” Brandi SellerzJackson writes. “What if we all dared not only to reach for the sun but to take up space while doing so?”

In On Thriving: Harnessing Joy Through Life’s Great Labors (Ballantine, $28, 9780593496671), Sellerz-Jackson draws inspiration from the plant world as she shares how she’s moved from existing to thriving. As a birth, postpartum and life doula, and as a blogger and founder of the Black-mom collective Moms of Color, she has coached others through their biggest challenges. On Thriving offers guidance for flourishing in relationships and with one’s self.

Sellerz-Jackson has faced devastating challenges of her own from the time she was a hyper-vigilant child whose instinct was to hide every sharp object in the house so her abusive father couldn’t do greater harm to her mother or himself. So when she references a plant’s journey, she’s not making light of traumatic human experiences. Instead, she’s drawing an analogy between the inner work she’s completed and the plant life that inspires her. On Thriving blends memoir and self-help, with SellerzJackson excavating her own experiences and prompting others to examine the ways they’re holding back.

Most chapters conclude with questions or journal prompts meant to guide the reader back into conversation with themselves. Brief, poetic interludes provide a pause in the midst of often-heavy reflection. Throughout, and especially in the book’s final section, SellerzJackson examines ways being othered has affected her identity and healing. As a Black woman and a mother, she has wrestled with Some may have been othered in different ways, and she encourages them to examine how that experience has affected the ways they move through the world. Sellerz-Jackson uses a conversational, direct tone and tremendous empathy to guide all readers to live as the best versions of themselves.

—Carla Jean Whitley

23

reviews | nonfiction American Patriots

By Ralph Young

History Dissent has played a defining role in the history of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution established guides to governance, but it is often dissent, sometimes over many years of struggle, that has brought the principles of those writings into concrete fruition. Temple University historian Ralph Young gives us a meticulously researched and beautifully written overview of the many kinds of dissent in American Patriots: A Short History of Dissent (NYU, $29.95, 9781479826520).

Following a meaty exploration of early examples—such as the development of the colonial era’s principles of freedom of the press and the separation of church and state, and Henry David Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government”— Young focuses on the last 100 years or so. During that time, new technologies increasingly enabled dissenters to advance their causes more efficiently and to more people. Women’s rights, civil rights, workers’ rights, antiwar movements and more are highlighted in some detail.

Young discusses the difference between genuine dissent and synthetic dissent. Of the January 6 insurrection, when supporters of Donald Trump invaded the U.S. Capitol claiming that the presidential election had been stolen, he writes, “Dissenters have legitimate grievances against the dominant power structure. True dissent is based upon expressing truth and exposing injustice.” The members of the mob, he posits, were “pawns of a charismatic demagogue who were short-circuited by conspiracy theories and disinformation.” True dissenters want to bring reform from within the system—not to crush it, as terrorists and revolutionaries do, Young argues. True dissent is a deeply patriotic effort to get the country to live up to its highest ideals. In the book’s conclusion, Young quotes Dwight D. Eisenhower: “We must never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”

Dissent can be complex, whether the category is political, economic, religious, social or cultural, or an overlapping of causes. World War II is a good example of the last. As Young writes, “Although most Americans supported the ‘Good War,’ many thousands protested against the war, against the draft, and against infringements on civil liberties and civil rights.”

Martin Luther King Jr. said that “the great glory of American democracy is the right

24

to protest for right.” This wide-ranging and enlightening book illustrates the crucial truth of that statement.

—Roger Bishop

H Of Greed and Glory

By Deborah G. Plant

Social Science Dr. Deborah Plant is an independent scholar of African American Literature and Africana Studies and a former Africana and English professor at the University of South Florida. She is an expert on the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston and edited Baracoon, Hurston’s posthumously published account of the last survivor of the transatlantic slave trade. She is not, however, a historian.

Yet Plant’s latest book, Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom of All (Amistad, $28.99, 9780062898494) is in large part a work of historical nonfiction. In it, she explores how the wording of the 13th Amendment set the stage for the incarceration of millions of African Americans, who in turn provided unpaid labor that enriched their captors. Intended to prohibit slavery, the 13th Amendment exempts “the duly convicted” from its protections, that is, those who have been convicted of a crime. Plant establishes a direct line from this loophole through the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws to today’s mass incarceration, which disproportionately imprisons Black people. In other words, far from prohibiting slavery, the 13th Amendment enabled it to continue under the color of law.

While Of Greed and Glory is grounded in historical fact, it is not a history. Instead, it is a deeply subjective book, drenched with the sorrow and rage Plant feels about her brother’s unjust lifetime sentence for rape he did not commit. Most historians avoid subjectivity, but here, subjectivity is the point. The inhumanity and degradation resulting from the exploitation of the “duly convicted” clause results in the objectification of wide swaths of the population. By sharing her brother’s experience, Plant asserts that he and others like him have the right to be the autonomous sovereigns of their own lives, and not the anonymous targets of an unjust system.

This is an emotional and passionate book, raw in its grief and anger, but also imbued with hope for redemption. Based on objective historical fact and subjective experience, Of Greed and Glory has the power of a sermon and the urgency of a manifesto.

—Deborah Mason

H The Soundtrack

of Silence

By Matt Hay

Memoir In his intimate, inspiring memoir, Soundtrack of Silence: Love, Loss, and a Playlist for Life (St. Martin’s, $29, 9781250280220), Matt Hay celebrates the power of music, technology, the brain and how the human spirit can be made invincible by love.

When Hay was in elementary school, he copied his classmates’ annual audio tests to hide the fact that he couldn’t hear the tone. He continued to cover up symptoms of hearing loss until he was a college sophomore, when a free checkup at the school’s medical center led to an MRI, which led to a diagnosis of a rare disorder.

Hay had neurofibromatosis type 2, which meant that tumors were growing on the hearing nerves of his brain and eventually, he would be deaf.

Hearing aids worked for a while, but surgeries were necessary to remove the tumors, one of which was growing at the base of his brain. Hay practiced lip reading and learned sign language with his future wife, Nora, preparing for the day his world would go silent, and still hoping it would never come.

Hay wanted to preserve the sounds that mattered most, the music that conjured up memories of his youth, coming of age and falling in love. He listened to his favorites: The Beatles’ “Blackbird,” Beck’s “Beautiful Way,” Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” over and over again, embedding them in his brain, training it to preserve and be stimulated by vibrational information that corresponded with memorable times. Together, Matt and Nora created a playlist that would become the soundtrack of his life.

And then it happened: At work one day, Hay’s hearing left him. He was 25. Research led him to try a new device, an auditory brainstem implant (ABI) then in use by only 200 people.

Hays tells his story in an endearingly plain, straightforward style. His fearless approach to an insidious disease is inspirational; his attention to the science of hearing and technical remedies is educational; and his ability to showcase his personal plight in order to raise awareness and thus further benefit research is true generosity. Soundtrack of Silence is a testament to the human spirit and the forces of love and science, all wrapped up in the universal power of music.

—Priscilla Kipp

reviews | young adult

H Sky’s End

By Marc J Gregson

Fantasy An exciting start to the Above the Black trilogy, Sky’s End (Peachtree, $18.99, 9781682635766) transports readers into a dazzling setting reminiscent of Treasure Planet and “Attack on Titan,” where vast lore sets the scene for complicated ethical and cultural questions. Marc J Gregson’s debut novel features a stunning, harrowing world of floating islands and a society ordered

by Meritocracy: a culture where those who rise are rewarded, and those who fall are left to fend for themselves. Every character in Sky’s End is caught in the rigid structure of Meritocracy, which forces them to reconcile their morals with their desire to surpass everyone else.

After his treacherous uncle kills Conrad’s father and takes his title, Conrad and his mother

Shut Up, This Is Serious

By Carolina Ixta

Coming of Age Ever since Belén’s dad ab a n d o n e d Belén’s family in their East Oakland neighborhood, her older sister Ava has seemed distant and dismissive, and their mom is hardly ever home. Even Belén’s former refuge, books and reading, hasn’t come through for her. Now, in the midst of her senior year of high school, she’s on the verge of flunking out. To complicate things, Belén’s brilliant, ambitious best friend, Leti, is pregnant, and Leti’s lifelong dream of attending UC Berkeley hangs in the balance, especially when Leti’s racist parents learn her boyfriend is Black. Belén wants to be a good friend to Leti, but how can she, when she’s barely holding herself together?

In one short year, Belén’s life has become unrecognizable. Unfortunately, her relatives all claim that one thing is entirely too recognizable: Belén’s resemblance to her father, a high school dropout. Is she fated not only to look like him but also to repeat his various failings? Are she and Leti doomed to retrace old ways of thinking and being, or can they outline new and different paths for themselves?

Debut novelist Carolina Ixta lives and works in Oakland, and her knowledge of and affection for the city is apparent on every page

are exiled, leaving his sister, Ella, in his uncle’s clutches.

When Conrad’s mother is killed by gorgantauns—giant steel sky serpents—his uncle makes an offer: He’ll reveal Ella’s location if Conrad agrees to be Selected by one of the Twelve Trades. Chosen by the Hunters, Conrad and his fellow recruits compete aboard skyships to kill the most gorgantauns before time runs out. Dealing with a manipulative crew and rumors of rebellion, Conrad wrestles with opposing ideologies: Is his father’s harsh, self-preserving perspective the way to succeed, or does his mother’s plea for compassion have weight in a world like this?

Conrad’s views shift as he works with fellow crew members like Bryce, whose optimistic

outlook challenges Conrad’s pessimism, and Pound, whose long-held family rivalry with Conrad’s family makes him an automatic enemy.

Sky’s End prompts readers to reflect on their own beliefs about success and trustworthiness. Can a person be truly selfless and still get ahead?

What is loyalty worth, and what does it cost? Instead of answering these moral questions outright, Sky’s End lets its characters work through different perspectives. While good and evil are factors in the story, each character swims in moral grayness.

Action-packed, mysterious and satisfying, Sky’s End is a great read for anyone who loves fantasy and dystopian fiction.

—Tami Orendain

of Shut Up, This Is Serious (Quill Tree, $19.99, 9780063287860). Ixta doesn’t shy away from representing the city’s complexities—its vast socioeconomic inequalities, its legacy of racial tensions, its rich but complicated Mexican American community—in clear-eyed detail through Belén’s intimate first-person narration.

While the setting is so vivid that Oakland itself almost becomes a character, Belén’s story still takes center stage. Many of her struggles—to find self-acceptance and confidence; to shed harmful relationships and seek out healthy ones; to accept help from supportive adults; to imagine a better future for herself and her loved ones—will resonate with a wide swath of readers, who will be captivated by Belén and Leti’s efforts to thrive.

—Norah Piehl

16-year-old Libby Feldman, 13-year-old Vivi and their mom, not so much.

After Libby’s recent suicide attempt, her family seeks a fresh start by moving to her mom’s childhood home, Madame Clery’s House of Masks—a grand Victorian replete with blue roses and a hedge maze. Libby has since been diagnosed with bipolar III disorder and is benefiting from medication and therapy, but delicate family dynamics have her on edge, and she’s baffled that her mom thought moving into a haunted house was a good idea.

Founded in 1894, the House of Masks has been linked to numerous disappearances over the decades. It’s filled with bizarre sounds and details, like beautiful but unsettling stained glass windows depicting tons of insects surrounding humanoid figures with voids for eyes.

Libby’s determined to ignore her gut’s youshould-flee signals, since, “I’d caused a lot of misery lately. I owed it to Mom and Vivi to make them feel good.” But urgent questions arise: Why is her mom behaving oddly and drinking so much blue-rose tea? Why is Vivi so casual about wearing one of the weird masks dangling from the windows? Handsome neighbor Flynn knows a lot about the house but is reluctant to share details. What is he—and the house—hiding?

As in her Bram Stoker Award-nominated debut novel, What We Harvest, Fraistat does a masterful job of balancing supernatural goings-on, psychological suspense and complicated relationships. She writes about the effects of trauma with sensitivity and care in this eminently entertaining horror tale rife with thrills, chills and heart.

—Linda M. Castellitto

H A Place for Vanishing

By Ann Fraistat

Horror Ann Fraistat ’s deliciously creepy, highly inventive YA gothic horror novel A Place for Vanishing (Delacorte, $19.99, 9780593382219) has a killer first line: “Days like this made me wish I’d never come back from the dead.” It just gets better from there—at least for readers who revel in cleverly conceived supernatural horror, from scary seances to oodles of sinister, clickety-clackety insects. For

25

interview | gene luen yang & leuyen pham

IT TAKES A TEAM TO LION DANCE To create Lunar New Year Love Story, Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham meshed together real details from each of their own lives.

23 years began dating, she hated Valentine’s Day, seeing it as a corporate LeUyen Pham arrives early and is already telling stories as we wait for Gene Luen Yang to hop scam. But, he explains, “I “There’s a saying in comics that to have a career, on the call. Laughing, she really liked her, so my workexplains, “You get the right around for that was to celyou just have to be two of the three: good, fast or people in the right space, ebrate the Lunar New Year and we’ll entertain you, no nice. So I’ve told Uyen she can stop being nice now.” in a very Valentines-y way.” matter what.” She’s talking Noting the frequent overlap about our conversation, which took place over Zoom, but she could just between the two holidays, he turned to love-themed Lunar New Year cards and presents, and from there, the tale of Lunar New Year Love as easily be talking about her forthcoming graphic novel with Yang, Lunar Story’s protagonist, Val (short New Year Love Story. Though they’ve been friends for years, for Valentina), was born. this is the first project they’ve Val also hates Valentine’s Day, worked on together, and the but when growing up, she loved collaboration was seamless. it. Her imaginary friend, who Pham describes their process as plays a considerable role in this graphic novel, was St. Valentine being “like two friends in class, exchanging notes.” himself (Val calls him St. V.).

As soon as Gene joins us, Though Yang wrote the manueach artist can’t stop singing script, the book was truly a colthe praises of the other. It’s laborative effort. Pham explains the many ways Yang invited her Pham who points out that Yang has just been honored with into the story, asking about her first love or her imaginary what he calls “a fancy award in Oklahoma,” which the rest of us friends, and including compowould call the NSK Neustadt nents of her answers in the narPrize for Children’s and Young rative. “It’s not very often that Adult Literature (Pham was you have such a generous writer, also a nominee for the prize but Gene has no ego, and somethis year). where along the way, it went Of Pham, Yang says, “She can from being Gene’s story to kind of meshing together.” draw in multiple styles and do them all incredibly well. And Yang agrees: “I’ve collabbecause she comes from picture orated with other artists, but this project is the one where books, she has a painterly quality in her artwork.” According there was the most bleed over to Yang, sometimes picture in terms of responsibilities.”

Pham insists on the greatness book artists making the jump to of Yang’s original manuscript comics struggle with the stamina (which, she says, he drew out required: “There’s just way more entirely) and the incredible pictures in a graphic novel. But I think Uyen has mutant powers. timeliness of it: “I had just gone She is shockingly fast.” What to Milkwood (Sophie Blackall’s might take a comics artist years farm/creative retreat), and I was to draw, Pham completed in seeing these tremendous artists under eight months—including producing tremendous work, the coloring, a task many artists and everything changed for hire out. Yang quips, “There’s a me. I came home and realized saying in comics that to have a I didn’t have the heart for the career, you just have to be two of project I had been working on.” the three: good, fast or nice. So Canceling that project made it H Lunar New Year Love Story I’ve told Uyen she can stop being possible for Pham to consider First Second, $17.99, 9781250908261 nice now.”

Yang’s book when it arrived.

Lunar New Year Love Story “It fell in my hands right at the Graphic Novel moment when I needed somestarted from what its title suggests: a love story, and one close to Yang’s heart. When he and his wife of thing to fill the soul. That sounds really corny, and I don’t know how

26

interview | gene luen yang & leuyen pham

© ALBERT LAW

amazing creative writing professor who once told me, ‘You should never else to put it. I was looking for a soul-feeder, something I could put a lot of myself into.” write about your faith.’ She was a Romanian American and a practicing Pham did put a lot of herself into Lunar New Year Love Story, including Buddhist, and I was a Chinese American practicing Catholic. Instead, her background and ethnicity. Yan knew he wanted “to tell a story about a she said, “Live your faith, and if your faith is part of your life, it will come Pan-Asian community, because that kind of community has been importout in your writing.” ant to me.” The two explain that they had a number of conversations about Agreeing, Pham says, “There’s the stadium in which these dialogues are Val’s possible ethnicity, before landing played out in public, and then there’s on Vietnamese. “That was the culture people’s private lives. And this story I understood and could communitakes place in private lives, not in a cate the best,” says Pham. When she public stadium. I prefer stories at that first read the character of Val’s grandlevel, where we’re simply showing mother, “there was an immediate what life is.” She echoes that thought familiarity in her voice, and I thought, when speaking about ethnicity: “I like ‘I know exactly who this woman is, and that the story is just a story that happens to have Asian characters in it. It I know exactly how I’m going to draw has a universality to it.” her.’ . . . It was all just my mom.”

Family is an incredibly importFrom family and friendships to ant part of Lunar New Year Love religion and culture, Lunar New Year Story, with Val having to navigate the Love Story is a rom-com that looks at changes in her relationship with her the deeper aspects of life. Pham took dad and their volatile history. But it’s an incredibly thoughtful approach to Gene Luen Yang LeUyen Pham the love story that drives most of the the novel’s colors: “We made the book narrative as Val tries to figure out if she’s doomed to never find true love. into 12 chapters, representing each month of the year. Each month has When she meets Les at the Lunar New Year festival, she starts to hope, a theme, which corresponds to a different color on the feng shui wheel. giving herself a year to prove it’s possible. Along the way, she has to deal Everything connects with a meaning.” Yang adds: “There are five elewith Les’s rude cousin Jae, ments in Asian cosmology, who turns out to complicate and each of those is associ“There’s the stadium in which these dialogues are ated with a color, each assomatters more than Val ever expected. Yang notes that ciated with different parts of played out in public, and then there’s people’s they “purposefully tried to society and culture. So what private lives. And this story takes place in private hit all of the rom-com strucUyen did was she took this ture.” But Yang and Pham lives, not in a public stadium. I prefer stories at that old, old philosophy and didn’t rest there. “Once you applied it here, and even if level, where we’re simply showing what life is.” hit that skeleton, it lets you you don’t know all of that when you’re reading, you play with a bunch of stuff.

Once you have the familiar, you can weave in the unfamiliar.” can feel a depth in the color.”

For some readers, that unfamiliar might come in the form of the tradiEach partner insists it was the work of the other that made this book tional lion dance that Val falls in love with, or the intermingling of Chinese successful. “What I love about Gene’s work,” says Pham, “is that it’s and Korean and Vietnamese cultures, or even the references to Catholic always multilayered. It’s not a single story.” Like the lion dancers in their graphic novel, they know it takes two partners to make something beausaints and other aspects of the Christian church. When asked if it has tiful and true. ever felt controversial to include issues of faith, or if he’s been cautioned —Sara Beth West against writing about faith in his books, Yang replies, “In college, I had an

review | H lunar new year love story Like the traditional Lion Dancers featured in their gorgeous Lunar New Year Love Story, graphic novel veterans Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham combine their considerable skills, bringing a tender love story to life. Yang’s writing and Pham’s illustrations blend seamlessly to introduce readers to Vietnamese American Val (short for Valentina) and her on-again, off-again relationship with love.

Valentine’s Day has always been Val’s favorite—it’s her namesake—and as a kid, she embraces the holiday wholeheartedly: making valentines for all her classmates, speaking blessings over each one, and even sending her dad a valentine from

her mom in heaven. But when a crushing pronouncement from her estranged grandmother reveals a massive lie in Val’s life, everything falls to pieces. Soon, Val has lost her faith in love. Then she meets Les, “hands down the prettiest boy” she has ever seen, at the Lunar New Year festival, and she decides to give herself one year before she gives up on her heart for good. Will Les be the true love she’s been looking for?

While the majority of the narrative takes place during Val’s junior and senior years of high school, Lunar New Year Love Story will appeal to a broad audience, including younger teens. Though it is a love story, it embraces all kinds of love: romantic, yes, but

also familial, intergenerational, spiritual and the special love between trusted friends. All these versions of love get tested, and readers will hope along with Val as she attempts to escape her family’s doomed relationship history. Yang writes wholly real teenagers: reflective and impulsive; seeking while still confident; aware of their ability to hurt and be hurt. Yang’s Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese teen characters share diverse cultural perspectives as they explore the art of lion dancing. Their teachers insist: “It isn’t just a dance. If you’re doing it right?

It’s as if you two become one animal, with one heart.”

—Sara Beth West

27

reviews | children’s

H Slugfest

By Gordon Korman

Middle Grade Superstar athlete Arnie “Yash” Yashenko can’t believe it when Principal Carmichael tells him he won’t graduate eighth grade unless he goes to summer school—for gym.

When it comes to sports, Yash is no slouch: He already plays on the high school’s JV teams.

But thanks to a change in state requirements, he’s going to be a slug, which is what everyone calls kids in the Physical Education Equivalency summer program (whose super-embarrassing acronym is indeed “PEE”). So, instead of training for high school football with his best friends Hammon and Amir, Yash grouses through gym class with the likes of sweet but super-uncoordinated Kaden; insightful former athlete Cleo; self-righteous wannabe journalist Arabella; twins and sworn enemies Sarah and Stuart; and oft-destructive class clown Jesse.

A Royal Conundrum

By Lisa Yee Illustrated by Dan Santat

Middle Grade Newbery Honor recipient Lisa Yee teams up with Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat to deliver The Misfits #1: A Royal Conundrum (Random House, $14.99, 9781984830296), a fun caper accentuated by Santat’s vivid illustrations.

Olive Cobin Zang, a Chinese American 12-year-old, knows something is up when one day her InstaFriends account vanishes, along with all evidence of her presence at school. She’s soon called to the office, where she learns that her often-absent mother is enrolling her at the Reforming Arts School of San Francisco (RASCH). Although terrified that this might be a punishment—after all, RASCH used to be a prison—Olive won’t miss her old school. She’s sure it won’t miss her either.

The only person who would have missed her was her grandmother Mimi, but she’s been gone for months, and no one will tell Olive what happened.

Once at RASCH, Olive feels instantly at home, especially once she’s sorted into a pod of fellow outsiders. This team of kids brings unusual tech

28

Slugfest (Balzer + Bray, $19.99, 9780063238091), by beloved and prolific bestselling author Gordon Korman (who published his 100th book, The Fort, in 2022), is a rousing tale filled with hilarity and heart.

Readers who love to root for underdogs and unlikely friends—a la School of Rock and The Breakfast Club—will delight in the PEE kids’ transformation from wary individuals tossed together by fate into true teammates who achieve more together than apart.

Employing multiple perspectives with realistic, appealing voices, Korman explores how biases can take hold and posits that having an open mind can lead to a more fulfilling, fun life.

We’ve all got something to offer; we just need

to find the right context.

This is true of the kids as well as septuagenarian PEE coach Mrs. Finnerty, a former second grade and home economics teacher who plies her charges with an astonishing array of delicious baked goods. Though the slugs scoff at her “kiddie games,” they learn playfulness and badassery are not mutually exclusive.

Whether he’s embodying the exquisite tension of a first date or the no-holds-barred thrills of a citywide flag football tournament, Korman’s gift for breathless play-by-play will have readers cheering for Yash and company to win at summer school and in life—whatever sporty or non-sporty form that victory might take.

—Linda M. Castellitto

savvy and unique mental and physical talents (Mimi was a circus performer who trained Olive on the trapeze) to their division of NOCK (“No One Can Know”), an elite force dedicated to preventing chaos. With their combined skills and immediate bond, the Misfits work together to unravel a string of jewel thefts and prevent their beloved RASCH from closing. From mindbending technology to sometimes hilarious hijinks, this series opener has everything a young reader—especially one who feels invisible—could want.

—Sara Beth West

One day, the museum finally receives a visitor: a girl named Lilou Starling, who later reveals that her grandfather died and left her a mysterious map with a cryptic puzzle scrawled on its back.

This puzzle can only be solved by venturing into the bog itself. Despite Jim’s warnings, Kess sets off with Lilou, determined to both save the Unnatural History Museum and impress her new friend. But between the burning watch fires and eccentric witches, Kess discovers that more of her life is tied up in the bog than she could ever have anticipated. Digging too deep might destroy the one thing she’s trying to save.

Mary Averling bewitches with her debut middle grade novel, The Curse of Eelgrass Bog (Razorbill, $17.99, 9780593624906), which straddles the line between slimy and sweet, concocting a fantasy world that balances snarky demons, magical bogs, concerned witches and awe-inspiring serpents.

The mystery left behind by Lilou’s grandfather will keep even the sharpest readers on their toes, leaving them gasping as the perfectly paced story comes to a head. Averling handles Kess’ emotional struggles—particularly her fluttery feelings toward her newfound friend, as well as her sense of obligation toward and longing for her missing parents—with a nuanced yet optimistic lens that will endear Kess to readers.

Whimsically creepy, The Curse of Eelgrass Bog will delight middle grade fans. Readers who love fantastical stories—or digging for magical bones in the dirt—should add this to their shelves.

—Nicole Brinkley

H The Curse of

Eelgrass Bog

By Mary Averling

Middle Grade The Unnatural History Museum may be falling apart, but it’s Kess Pedrock’s home and contains almost everything she loves: magical skeletons from Eelgrass Bog, her petulant and perpetually busy brother, and her best friend Jim, a demon trapped as a jarred shrunken head. Only her parents are missing, but maybe, when they come back from their trip in Antarctica, they can save the museum. Until then, it’s up to Kess.

reviews | children’s The Ramadan Drummer

By Sahtinay Abaza Illustrated by Dinara Mirtalipova

Picture Book Sahtinay Abaza immediately draws in young readers of The Ramadan D r u m m e r (Reycraft, $17.95, 9781478879145) with a visceral description of how fasting for Ramadan feels to the book’s central character: “Hunger gripped Adam like a wild beast twisting and turning for food.” Dinara Mirtalipova’s full-spread illustration brings this hunger to life as a ghostlike shadow that haunts Adam as he gazes longingly at the setting sun.

At sundown, Adam’s family breaks their fast, feasting at a table overflowing with bowls of steamed rice, lamb chops, lentil soup, salad and pizza—Adam’s favorite. Here, Mirtalipova’s illustrations pop against a bright white background, guiding readers’ attention to the action, as well as to the bold patterns of the family’s rugs and the bright, flowing fabrics worn by Adam’s mother and Aunt Norah.

As the women talk, they fondly remember the Ramadan Drummer of their youth, who would walk through the streets before sunrise, drumming to wake up residents so they could eat their pre-fast meal. Adam’s mom explains, “It’s an old tradition . . . Now we just set the alarm clock instead.”

Later that night, Adam dreams of meeting this mysterious figure, and the book’s formerly bright white pages become suddenly bathed in dark, dreamy blues, depicting a night sky bursting with many-hued stars. This glorious, exciting transformation easily distinguishes the dream sequence. The Drummer lets Adam beat the drum as they walk through the neighborhood, and together, they hear whispers carried on the wind that reveal which neighbors are hurting or in need of help. “During Ramadan, every act of kindness is rewarded tenfold,” the Drummer reminds Adam.

The next morning, Adam sets out into the real world—which Mirtalipova once again brings sharply into focus against a white background—to help the people he heard about last night. By the end of the day, “His stomach was empty, but his heart was full.” The back matter provides more context about Ramadan as well as Abaza and Mirtalipova’s own childhood experiences. With its memorable story and illustrations, this intriguing picture book will appeal to both the senses and emotions of young readers.

—Alice Cary

Everywhere Beauty Is Harlem

By Gary Golio Illustrated by E.B. Lewis

Picture Book Between jobs, Roy DeCarava would pop a new film canister into his black-andwhite camera and capture the dayto-day lives of the neighborhood he called home: Harlem. As he photographed his surroundings—from a young Black boy drawing with sidewalk chalk, to a sunlit Black woman standing in a white dress, or an older Black painter selling his work on the street—DeCarava amassed a world-renowned collection that honored his Harlem neighbors.

Everywhere Beauty Is Harlem: The Vision of Photographer Roy DeCarava (Calkins Creek, $18.99, 9781662680557) is the first book written about the life of the essential American photographer. Award-winning illustrator E.B. Lewis pays tribute by reenvisioning DeCarava’s iconic photographs as full-color paintings, imagining what DeCarava may have seen in the seconds before his film captured a moment forever in black and white. Playful juxtaposition of opposing concepts in the text, such as using eyes to listen or hungering for something that isn’t food, keeps the narrative bouncing forward. Emphasis on DeCarava’s search for beauty in every element of ordinary life— marked by the camera’s repeated “SNAP!”— provides a grounded base for relating to the photographer. Everywhere Beauty Is Harlem inspires readers to “look slowly” and discover a deep love for the everyday moments in their lives. After all, as author Gary Golio writes, “Life is how you look at it.”

Quotes from DeCarava appear throughout Golio’s precise narrative text, and a short biography in the back matter adds illuminating context. In a statement by DeCarava himself, the photographer proudly proclaims his intent to dignify Black lives and experiences through his work. A robust timeline further puts into perspective the social and cultural changes that Harlem experienced throughout DeCarava’s life. Though the book does not include any of DeCarava’s actual photography, it provides images of the artist and his camera that, along with the biography, will spark eagerness in readers for additional information.

Everywhere Beauty Is Harlem honors a classic photographer in a biographical picture book that’s both beautiful and educational.

Fans of Lesa Cline-Ransome or Carole Boston

Weatherford will find this a worthy addition to their picture book collection.

—Nicole Brinkley

H Grandma’s Roof Garden

By Tang Wei Translated by Kelly Zhang

Picture Book When Granny goes to the market, people give her sidelong glances. After all, they’re selecting pristine produce from carefully curated displays while Granny is scooping up lumpy fruit and bumpy vegetables spilling out from an overflowing dumpster.

But the charming and resourceful star of Tang Wei’s debut picture book, Grandma’s Roof Garden (Levine Querido, $18.99, 9781646147014), doesn’t mind the funny looks because she knows something important: This imperfect produce helps her feed her animals and compost her garden, a lush and colorful oasis she’s created atop a tall apartment building in the city of Chengdu, in southwest China.

Clucking hens, honking geese, an inquisitive black cat and an impressive array of plants share space in Granny’s rooftop garden. Translator Kelly Zhang maintains the playful punchiness of Wei’s couplets and quatrains in the translation from Chinese to English: “Over each and every one, / Granny proudly cries with a grin: / Look at my gorgeous, / chubby veggie children!”

Not only does Granny commune with nature and get lots of exercise every day, she creates community by sharing her bounty with her neighbors. Even better, she cooks the remaining produce for her family “to make them healthy, strong, and happy.” Wei’s expressive colored pencil drawings perfectly capture the neighbors’ surprise and delight, as well as the warm affection exuded by Granny’s family as they dine together on a host of delicious veggie dishes. A cheery mix of patterns, colors and textures brings visual interest and vibrancy to every page, from a spread overrun with the garden’s dramatically curving vines to a set piece depicting an action-packed afternoon during which the cat supervises as Granny climbs a ladder, lays brick, builds a fence and tills a patch of dirt. Phew!

In her author’s note, Wei shares that Grandma’s Roof Garden was inspired by her own beloved grandmother, who actually did create a marvelous roof garden. Readers will be touched to learn there’s a real-life Granny out there living a wonderful veggie-centric life—and perhaps be energized to grow community and

29

interview | jenny sue kostecki-shaw good health in their very own gardens too. This heartwarming tale is one to share and treasure.

—Linda M. Castellitto

Angela’s Glacier

By Jordan Scott Illustrated by Diana Sudyka

Picture Book Ang ela is born “under the milky Arctic sunlight” and grows up with her father near a glacier. They hike there often and listen, with their whole bodies, to the glacier and its “universe of sound.”

This is the enchanting opening to Angela’s Glacier (Neal Porter, $18.99, 9780823450824), written by poet Jordan Scott and illustrated by Diana Sudyka in the same beguiling peacock, indigo and duck egg blue colors described as belonging to the glacier.

Scott’s evocative text makes this picture book especially delightful to read aloud: As Angela’s father carries baby Angela on his back to visit the glacier, they hike “through lava fields covered with silver mosses, past chocolatebrown arctic foxes atop raven’s glass, crowberry, and pixie lichen.” With each step they practice pronouncing the glacier’s name: Snæfellsjökull.

As Angela grows, she takes the hikes by herself.

She puts her head to the ice and listens, even whispering her fears to it. In a palette filled with nearly every shade of blue and aquamarine, Sudyka uses textures and graceful, swerving lines to capture the landscape and cold winds of Angela’s favorite place.

School, friends, homework and extracurricular activities consume Angela as a teen: “Time just melted away.” She feels somewhat lost, and her heartbeat sounds strange. Then her father asks, “Have you visited Snæfellsjökull?” Angela heads to that “ancient blue,” and despite knowing she’s not going to stop growing up or stop being busy, she makes a promise to the glacier to always visit.

Scott’s afterword describes how the story is inspired by his friend Angela Rawlings, who shares her own note about her experiences listening to the “gentle” sounds of glaciers in Iceland. She writes how important it is that readers listen to themselves, to each other and “to the ecosystems and their inhabitants who sustain us,” particularly during a time of climate change and species extinction. A warmhearted ode to the colder side of the natural world, Angela’s Glacier gives readers everywhere a chance to ponder the “glacier’s music.”

—Julie Danielson

30

Reaching out across the world Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw conveys the joy of fostering international friendships through the vividly textured Like You, Like Me. As a child, author-illustrator Jenny Sue torn-paper collage art shows the girls comKostecki-Shaw was so shy that she didn’t municating from across the world, discusswant anyone else to see what she ing the details of their lives: ponderosa was drawing. “I was either in pines, African drumming, red-tailed a cardboard box or in the hawks and cheetahs. closet—that’s where my stuA number of spreads feadio was, and I would just draw ture each girl side-by-side all the time,” she remembers, on their own page, mirrorspeaking over Zoom from her ing the other in creative home studio in the mountains ways and making it easy for of North Central New Mexico, readers to notice the similarities where she lives with her husband and differences between their and two children. two worlds. About midway Now, Kostecki-Shaw no lonthrough the book, Tulsi looks at a flicker feather ger hides her creative talents and instead uses art to foster that she wants to share with communication and friendher friend. Kostecki-Shaw ships around the globe. Like says, “I just tilted Tulsi’s head You, Like Me, her latest book, up, and thought, maybe this is was inspired by a pen pal relaa point where they could actually tionship between her daughter, look at each other, even theoretTulsi, and a slightly younger girl ically.” In the finished spread, the flicker feather picked up by Tulsi in Tanzania, Vanessa. Kostecmagically appears on a beach in front of ki-Shaw has been homeschooling her son and daughter for nine years, and she used Vanessa, as she holds onto a shell that appears letter wr iting in Tulsi’s possesas a skill-buildsion in the next ing exercise. Her spread. “It almost children wrote feels like they’re not only to her, in the same but also to their place,” Kosteckicousins and Shaw says, “even neighbors. They though the backeven kept little grounds are difmailboxes in the ferent. From this woods. Later, point on, they’re Tulsi wrote to looking at each other.” Like You, authors she liked, and eventually, Like Me, she says, she asked for a is a book about pen pal. One of “coming together Kostecki-Shaw’s and sharing more friends—a librarand more.” ian at an internaLike You, Like Me is a compantional school— helped Tulsi and ion to KosteckiH Like You, Like Me Shaw’s earlier Vanessa connect.

Christy Ottaviano, $18.99, 9780316330084 The girls gave book, Same, Same Ko s t e c k i -S h aw but Different, Picture Book approval to use which is also their names in the book. “They were pretty about two pen pals: Elliot in the United States, excited,” she reports. Kostecki-Shaw’s vibrant, and Kailash in India. As a child, Kostecki-Shaw

had a pen pal in Belgium, and for the last 15 on a little homestead and we have goats and years, she’s had an adult pen pal from France. chickens and ducks, and we’re just a little bit more rooted in community.”

“She once sent me a small hand-sewn envelope with fine red earth Several years ago, clay from where she “My life has definitely gotten a she and her family built her art studio was born in France,” lot more beautiful because of themselves, with Kostecki-Shaw says, “and I sent her the help of a builder people I’ve met.” flicker feathers and friend. “It was so a tiny clay flicker bird I made. That’s where the empowering to me as a woman and as an artist to create my own space,” she says. Like You, inspiration came from for Vanessa and Tulsi sharing the shell and feather.”

Like Me is the first project she’s completed in that space, and she relished being able to Kostecki-Shaw grew up in St. Louis, and her global curiosity was initially ignited by spread out while creating collages with her father, who traveled often and hand-painted papers and oil sticks. “It widely for his work—the basis just felt so freeing. I would cover surfor her book, Papa Brings faces and just paint papers for days, Me the World. “I rememmaking all kinds of patterns,” she ber just wanting to go with says. “I was thinking a lot about the him, to see all those places,” seasons and nature here in New she says. Her first book, My Mexico, and the color palettes of Travelin’ Eye, was inspired photos from Tanzania, and looking by difficulties with a lazy eye, at patterns that would show up in which made learning to read the ocean, leaves and flowers there.” a struggle. “I loved stories so She uses a variety of techniques much, and I loved books,” she to add texture. “Texture is one of recalls, “so I would copy all the my favorite things. In addition to art and ask everyone to read carving and stamping shapes,” she to me. I loved that books continues, “I printed with rubber showed me other places to go.” bands and miscellaneous small As an adult, after working for objects, splattered wet paint and a number of years as an artist for scratched dry paint with an old Hallmark cards, she traveled to raggedy paintbrush. I made texNepal and taught English, and she tures by pushing and pulling paint also spent about five months in India. “Before I blobs around with a small piece of chipboard wrote Same, Same but Different,” she explains, and a brayer, and I printed patterns with oil “my life looked so much like Elliot’s. And now sticks. Basically, kindergarten play.”’ my life looks a lot like Kailash’s in some ways.

As a child, she feared writing: “Even now, I It’s much more connected to nature. We live have to face that little bit of fear of writing until

© DILLON RUNYON

interview | jenny sue kostecki-shaw

I get far enough into the story where everything fades away, and I’m just having fun in the story and making art.” Now, as an author-illustrator, Kostecki-Shaw loves being able to simultaneously adjust both words and art, letting them “just dance together until they find their way.” She adds, “I love just sharing the inspiration that comes from connections with people you meet around the world, whether it’s through traveling or pen pals, or however you meet them. They just open you up to new ways and make your life so much more beautiful, whether through a conversation or an experience. My life has definitely gotten a lot more beautiful because of people I’ve met.”

—Alice Cary

review | H like you like me Tulsi, a girl in the mountains of northern New Mexico, became pen pals with Vanessa, who lives by the sea in Tanzania. Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw’s Like You, Like Me, which is based on the real-life friendship between her daughter Tulsi and her pen pal, Vanessa, shows how alike two girls and their worlds can be, despite living in very different places. Through collages made from painted papers and oil sticks, Kostecki-Shaw has created a vibrant exchange that celebrates global connectedness. It’s a delightful follow-up to her earlier book, Same, Same But Different, which featured two pen pals in India and the United States.

On the title page spread, the words that each child writes form a curving, yarn-like thread that crosses the page, stretching from one to another. The endpapers feature bright collage maps of New Mexico and Tanzania, along with a number of geographical facts about each place that will ground young readers and perhaps inspire them to seek out more information. Children will enjoy the intriguing local details of each girl’s home: Tulsi describes ponderosa pines that “smell like butterscotch candy” while Vanessa writes, “my city wears the sweet smell of frangipani.” They compare notes on pets, siblings, school and pastimes in spare Illustrations from Like You, Like Me © 2024 by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw. Reproduced by permission of Christy Ottaviano.

prose that is both informative and authentically childlike. Kostecki-Shaw enlivens her cheery, earthy collages with patterns and stamped textures, from the multicolored feathers of a red-tailed hawk to blue spots on a galloping cheetah. An imaginative sense of dreamlike wonder pervades the book from time to time, such as when Tulsi flies on the back of a soaring hawk while Vanessa clings to a cheetah’s neck.

The girls repeat a refrain, “Like you, like me,” to each other as they discover similarities between their lives, and Kostecki-Shaw finds a variety of creative ways to accentuate these connections. The first spread, for instance, features Tulsi on the left-hand page, sitting on a couch as she writes to her friend, with snow-covered mountains visible past her window. On the right-hand page, Vanessa also writes from a couch, while an ocean sparkles outside her window. In the center of this spread, each couch seems to blend into the other. Elsewhere, the two girls’ shadows merge across the pages as they each play different musical instruments. By the end of the book, the friends gaze directly into each other’s eyes, saying, “I see you!” and “I see you too!” Like You, Like Me is a wonderful celebration of global friendship.

—Alice Cary

31