“Perceptive and endearing, this novel signals the arrival of a talented new voice in fiction.” groundskeeping
THEY A Sequence of Unease
prose and spans of exposition for the chance to spend time with this complicated character with a big laugh and a guarded but vulnerable heart. An unsparing exploration of the injustices wrought by misogyny and settler colonialism.
Dick, Kay McNally Editions (128 pp.) $18.00 | Feb. 1, 2022 978-1-946022-28-8
GROUNDSKEEPING
Told in interconnected vignettes, this novella (originally published in 1977) follows an unnamed narrator who apprehensively treads an uneasy coexistence with a murky, decentralized movement known only as “they.” Falling somewhere between a haunting and a populist coup, “they” sweep through England, steadily growing their numbers and targeting artists and intellectuals, in particular, as well as those living alone or apart from partners or in otherwise nontraditional arrangements. Emotional expression is likewise discouraged through violence and through containment at reeducation programs in windowless towers that begin to
Cole, Lee Knopf (336 pp.) $28.00 | March 8, 2022 978-0-593-32050-1
y o u n g a d u lt
An aspiring writer returns to his home state of Kentucky and meets a woman who will change his perspective— and his trajectory. “I’ve always had the same predicament. When I’m home, in Kentucky, all I want is to leave. When I’m away, I’m homesick for a place that never was,” Owen, the narrator of Cole’s charming debut novel, tells us in the book’s opening lines. This is also what Owen drunkenly tells Alma the night he meets her at a grad-student party in the foothills outside Louisville, where he works as a groundskeeper, tending to trees on the campus of a small private college, and Alma is a visiting writer. Well-read yet rudderless, Owen, too, has literary aspirations, taking copious notes on his life to use in his work; his humble job at the college allows him to take a writing class for free. Having returned to his home state following a stint working dead-end jobs and partying in Colorado and disinclined to move in with either of his divorced parents, whose kindness is eclipsed, in Owen’s mind, by their religious fundamentalism and political conservatism, Owen is living rent-free in his genial grandfather’s basement, watching movies with the old man and butting heads with his unemployed uncle, Cort, who, at 52, has failed to launch. Owen seems in danger of getting equally stuck. Enter Alma, whose background couldn’t be more different from Owen’s rural, working-class upbringing. Alma was raised in a liberal, loving, upper-middle-class home in an affluent Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C.; attended Princeton; and, at age 26, has found acclaim as a fiction writer. Yet her childhood was not without its challenges: A Bosnian Muslim, she was born in Sarajevo and came to America with her family to escape the war. Owen and Alma gradually fall in love, and their culture-bridging connection alters Owen, ultimately allowing him to learn and grow. But Cole’s novel is more than a love story or a coming-of-age tale. Written with superb attention to detail and subtle emotional complexities, the book also offers a lovingly nuanced look at America—its longtime residents and recent immigrants; its ramshackle rural beauty, urban revival, and suburban safety; and its generous opportunities for reinvention. In the end, it is a love letter to home. Perceptive and endearing, this novel signals the arrival of a talented new voice in fiction.
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kirkus.com
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fiction
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15 february 2022
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