M by Antonio Scurati; trans. by Anne Milano Appel

M Son of the Century

Scurati, Antonio Trans. by Anne Milano Appel Harper/HarperCollins (784 pp.) $35.00 | April 5, 2022 978-0-06-295-611-8

A brilliant, sprawling, polyvocal tale of the rise of Benito Mussolini in the immediate aftermath of World War I. “We are a populace of ex-soldiers, a humanity of survivors, of dregs.” So, at the beginning of this volume—the first of a projected trilogy—thinks Mussolini, who has gathered some hundred veterans of terrible alpine battles like Caporetto (“an army of a million soldiers destroyed in a weekend”) to seize state power. Mussolini, writes Scurati, shifting to third-person narration, is intelligent, kind to his friends, cruel to his enemies, and “not content with second place.” He is also a master of disguising his true intentions, capable of both carrying on an affair with a Jewish lover and then aligning himself with the rising antisemitic Nazi movement in Germany. Scurati draws on a vast dramatis personae to tell Mussolini’s story, among its number are Enzo Ferrari, the automaker and early ally, and Gabriele D’Annunzio, the dandy and poet whose “insatiable desire for female conquests becomes a desire for territorial expansion.” But always at the center is Mussolini, who envisions that “fascism will complete the nationalization of Italians,” turning them away from their attachment to towns and regions to behold the empire they are about to secure on the faraway Horn of Africa. Scurati gives Mussolini his theatrically blowhard moments (“jutting his neck out, he clenches his jaw and searches for breathable air, his already nearly bald cranium tilted up to the sky”), but he makes clear that Mussolini and his militias are deadly serious about killing their enemies— Scurati’s account of the murder of socialist legislator Giacomo Matteotti may remind readers of the most brutal moments of Bernardo Bertolucci’s film 1900—and acquiring absolute, uncontested power. Given the recent drift of so many parliamentary and democratic nations toward authoritarianism, Scurati’s book could not be more timely, and it’s a superb exercise in blending historical fact and literary imagination.

A masterwork of modern Italian literature that will leave readers eager for more.

METROPOLIS

Shapiro, B.A. Algonquin (368 pp.) $27.95 | May 17, 2022 978-1-61620-958-2

An eclectic cast of characters converges in a self-storage warehouse where crime lurks in every unit. “Metropolis” is the name of a seedy self-storage facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where several renters are hiding more than old furniture and paperwork. Liddy, a wealthy housewife with a violent husband, spends drug-fueled afternoons in a unit stuffed with her children’s old toys. Jason, a lawyer fired from his prestigious firm and left by his wife, hangs a shingle outside his unit and practices law from a makeshift office inside. Marta, a brilliant Venezuelan graduate student whose visa has been revoked, lives in her unit while on the run from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The building’s owner, Zach, and his employee, Rose, look the other way when renters break the law by occupying units intended for inanimate objects. These arrangements might have continued peacefully were it not for a violent incident, foreshadowed on the first page, in which a man is seriously injured in the building’s elevator shaft. Through chapters narrated from the perspectives of several characters, the story of the incident—and its aftermath—unfolds slowly. Unfortunately, the characters are wooden, making it difficult to invest in their demise or salvation. The attempt to create a racially diverse cast flounders due to careless reliance on stereotypes. Black characters, including

Jason, consistently curse more than White characters, both in unconvincing dialogue and in interior monologue. Marta, the undocumented immigrant, has little storyline beyond her panicked desire to stay in America. A snappy plot or spirited sentences might partially salvage the stock characters, but this novel has neither.

Boston readers might enjoy the close attention to city landmarks, but there’s not much else to recommend this thriller.

YOU HAVE A FRIEND IN 10A

Shipstead, Maggie Knopf (272 pp.) $27.00 | May 17, 2022 978-0-525-65699-9

Ten stories from the apprenticeship of a novelist. Last year, Shipstead published Great Circle, an ambitious novel far more complex than her earlier work. This collection of short stories, mostly written in grad school at the Iowa Writers Workshop and all previously published in literary journals, takes us backward rather than forward. Experimenting with a range of styles, subject matter, and effects, the collection is uneven. Shipstead was still in her 20s when the first story, “The Cowboy Tango,” was selected by Richard Russo for Best American Short Stories 2010. A slow-burn love triangle set on a dude ranch in Montana, its unusual female protagonist could be seen as a foremother of the aviatrix in Great Circle, with her difficult childhood, independence, capability, and powerful internal compass. Similarly, the narrator of the title story seems a prototype of the other main character of Great Circle, a troubled young movie star. “I’m told I went catrastic for the first time in 1984, when Jerome Shin (yes, the director) took me up to my bathroom—my gaudy childhood bathroom with the big pink Jacuzzi and mirrors on all four walls—and cut me my first line and asked me to hold his balls while he jerked off.” Catrastic is a neologism from a Scientology-like cult the narrator becomes involved with, marrying the megastar who is its most famous acolyte. And catrastic? It’s when degradons damage your Esteem, probably because you’ve gotten involved with a Usurper. Weirdly, this satire contains a plotline about a plane carrying home the body of a young veteran (our movie star is in seat 10A), an element which does not fully succeed. However, good writing and funny observations about sex are found throughout. From “Backcountry”: “Back in her teens, Ingrid had learned that ejaculation sometimes emptied men of a certain animating humanity. The energies they used to attract women in the first place—attentiveness, empathy, vitality—were commandeered and diverted by their bodies toward the essential project of replenishing their testicles, and they became lumpen and taciturn.”

Not the next novel we were waiting for.

GEIGER

Skördeman, Gustaf Trans. by Ian Giles Grand Central Publishing (432 pp.) $28.00 | May 10, 2022 978-1-5387-5437-5

The Cold War threatens to rise from the dead in this fast-paced Swedish spy thriller. Grandparents Stellan and Agneta Broman have been married for almost 50 apparently idyllic years. Stellan is a widely beloved television personality. But one night, Agneta receives a brief phone call, shoots her 80-year-old husband in the back of the head, and disappears into the night. Police think at first that the retired celebrity’s murder might simply be a botched burglary, but police officer Sara Nowak believes that Stellan has been targeted. Then, on beginning to learn about his past, investigators think it may be the “beginning of a much bigger chain of events.”

They fear that the killer or killers may have kidnapped Agneta. Poor Stellan. He’d been “Sweden’s playful uncle….It was like someone murdering Santa Claus.” Readers learn long before the authorities do that Agneta is on a mission and has waited for decades to receive the signal to kill this man she pretended to love. It’s a complex plot wherein a “gang of senile old spies” regret the demise of the Cold War, particularly the fall of East Germany. Lurking in the shadows is the mysterious Abu Rasil, who wants to be remembered as the greatest terrorist ever. As it happens, Stellan had a couple of secret lives unknown to his adoring public. He had once been an informal collaborator for the Stasi, the East German security service. Perhaps Stellan was Geiger, the man who had ruined so many Swedish lives. And to put it delicately, Stellan had disturbing relationships with young girls. Decades ago, Sara’s mother used to clean house for the Bromans, and Sara had been the occasional and socially unequal playmate of their daughters. As tension builds, people die in bursts of bombs and profanity. Has the Cold War never really ended? Sara’s boss tries to take her off the case, but naturally that doesn’t stop her. There is plenty of excitement right up to the end. All seems lost until, like a deus ex machina, the solution appears.

Dark, violent, and engrossing but with a contrived ending.

THE WISE WOMEN

Sorell, Gina Harper/HarperCollins (352 pp.) $26.99 | April 5, 2022 978-0-06-311-184-4

When misfortune finds the three women of the Wise family, they are forced to wise up to their historic dysfunction. It begins with the dissolution of Clementine Wise’s marriage, which comes with a heap of debt and threatens the careful life she’s built for her 6-year-old son. Clementine’s being in trouble is a call to action for her older sister, Barb, though Barb has overleveraged herself financially as well as in the volume of support she is able to give her loved ones and business associates. Swooping in to rescue them both is their mother, Wendy, a storied advice columnist recently edged out of her magazine gig and fresh into her third marriage. Though she initially seems like a narcissist bent on making up for past neglect, Wendy proves to be startlingly open-minded and humorously unpredictable in her meddling (one iffy but pivotal plot thread has her bonding with an Instagram influencer). The questions are: Will Barb forgive her mother for leaving her to largely raise Clementine in the wake of their father’s untimely death? Will Clementine develop a backbone and pave her own way rather than doing what the other Wise women think is best for her? The answers are unsurprising. While the novel begins with lots of human complexity and daily-life detail, characters are soon giving honest, heartfelt speeches about changing their lifelong attitudes, and everyone is taking the sage advice of everyone else. The characters are warm and quirky in an enjoyably familiar way, and the settings— mostly a couple of lower-key White neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens—are nicely detailed.

With tidy resolutions, this novel doesn’t pack the punch of some of its peers, but it’s a fine addition to the collection.

HAPPY FOR YOU

Stanford, Claire Viking (256 pp.) $27.00 | April 19, 2022 978-0-59-329826-8

A woman in tech grapples with doubts about her profession, relationship, and family while working on a project that aims to quantify happiness. Evelyn Kominsky Kumamoto is 31 when she takes a leave of absence from her philosophy Ph.D. program to work at “the third-mostpopular internet company,” where she and two co-workers are asked to develop a prototype for the self-assessment of happiness. From Evelyn’s perspective, everyone around her is better than her at being happy, from her loving boyfriend, Jamie, to her trend-forecasting college best friend, Sharky, to her father, who has his first serious girlfriend since Evelyn’s mother died almost 20 years ago. Evelyn’s mother was White and Jewish, and her father is Japanese, as is Kumiko, his girlfriend, and Evelyn’s biracial identity informs her thoughts and interactions throughout the novel. Evelyn is dogged by ambivalence in every aspect of her life, and her uncertainty raises doubts in her new boss, Dr. Luce, who unfailingly believes in the happiness project. Her vacillations come to a head when Jamie asks her to marry him—she responds, “I don’t know.” While Evelyn is considering Jamie’s proposal, she gets pregnant and, after much thought, decides to keep the baby. Punctuating these events are questions from JOYFULL, the happiness-monitoring app that Evelyn’s team helped create. The app’s questions are suspiciously specific, creating a Greek chorus–like effect that prompts Evelyn to reflect on her relationship with her parents, her career, and what it means, or would mean, for her to be happy. Evelyn’s constant ambivalence about every aspect of her life is frustrating, and she can feel like a muted and flat protagonist. She possesses an acute awareness of racial dynamics, though, and the myriad ways her biracial identity causes friction throughout the novel provide moments of wit and insight. An emotional twist in the later chapters ups the stakes and gives the reader a reason to stay engaged.

A rumination on modern happiness that rewards patient readers in the end.

“Emotional upsets and surprises are interleaved with eccentricity in this latest slice of offbeat Englishness.”

one day i shall astonish the world

ONE DAY I SHALL ASTONISH THE WORLD

Stibbe, Nina Little, Brown (384 pp.) $27.00 | May 3, 2022 978-0-316-43034-0

Susan Faye Warren—wife, mother, worker, and friend—shares the events of her adult life, interspersed with much deadpan detail, in Stibbe’s latest comic/ domestic dispatch.

With her singular voice and deep roots in the English psyche, Stibbe has carved out a niche for oddball female narrators set against quirky provincial settings. Her fourth novel follows this pattern, tracing Susan’s interior and exterior landscapes as she traverses three decades of marriage to Roy, her parenting of their daughter, Honey, and accounts of an on/off friendship with the unpredictable Norma. The setting is England’s smallest county, Rutland, specifically the town of Brankham, where Roy and Susan meet while she’s studying English at the University of Rutland while holding down a Saturday job at the Pin Cushion, a haberdashery owned by the Pavlous, Norma’s parents. But over the years, the marriage devolves into something “that neither Roy or I seem to care about one jot,” while Honey grows into an unusual child, although devoted and loyal to Grace, the surprise sister Roy turns out to have fathered with his landlady before meeting Susan. Meanwhile, there are strange goings-on in the community, some of them sexual, and Norma becomes increasingly less reliable as she achieves enviable-seeming successes, professionally and personally. When Norma takes as her second husband the university’s vice chancellor, for whom Susan works, the women’s friendship becomes thornier still, as Norma blocks Susan’s plans and steals her ideas. But is all what it seems? Stibbe’s new novel, with its long time span and variable, sometimes chilly relationships, offers a cooler vision than some of her earlier works, but the trademark tone, humor, nostalgic detail, and skewed perspective remain as reliably diverting as ever.

Emotional upsets and surprises are interleaved with eccentricity in this latest slice of offbeat Englishness.