Welcome to another Tuesday gathering to talk about fiction. Although my diary was begun with the aim of featuring new literary fiction, I am no genre snob and enjoy reading, hearing about and chatting about all kinds of stories. Still on a nonfiction and mystery kick, so I know lit fic will soon be calling. All the different types of books seem to act as palate cleansers for each other in my reading preferences, and that makes me happy.
Featured new releases this week are noted below, with links to The Literate Lizard bookstore of our Readers and Book Lovers nonfiction colleague, DebtorsPrison. Blurbs are from the publishers, with a few of my notes added.
Whatever kind of story you enjoy, here's to taking time this week to enjoy a bit of one.
A controversial LA author attempts to revive her career and finally find true love in this hilarious nod to 1950s lesbian pulp fiction.
(Note: Thinking of trying this one; if the voice works this could be good.)
Janelle Wolf longs to be the woman she once was— an adored wife, a loving mother, a career woman, a force in her community— before a mysterious car accident stole her memories, ruined her reputation, and upended her life. These days, her troubled family needs that capable woman from the past, the one she calls “Janelle Before.” Enter Lana, an alluring and magnetic psychic healer who meets secretly with Janelle. Lana coaxes Janelle to remember the circumstances of her accident in order to recover Janelle’ s “best self.” Instead, Janelle uncovers the ugly truth behind that night.
Wait by Gabriella Burnham
A young woman reunites with her teenage sister in their childhood home on Nantucket Island after their mother disappears in this alluring coming-of-age novel from the acclaimed author of It Is Wood, It Is Stone.
The Guncle Abroad by Steven Rowley
Patrick O'Hara is called back to his guncle duties . . . This time for a big family wedding in Italy.
Patrick O’Hara is back. It’s been five years since his summer as his niece Maisie and nephew Grant’s caretaker after their mother’s passing. The kids are back in Connecticut with their dad, and Patrick has relocated to New York to remain close by and relaunch his dormant acting career.
(Note: Didn't know about the first novel but this could be entertaining.)
It's 1992, and ten-year-old Molly is tired of living in the fire-rotted, nun-haunted House of Friends: a Semi-Cooperative Living Community of Peace Faith(s) in Action with her formerly blind dad and their grieving housemate Evelyn. But when twenty-three-year-old Jeanie, a dirt bike-riding ex-con with a shady past, moves in, she quickly becomes the object of Molly's adoration. She might treat Molly terribly, but they both have dead moms and potty mouths, so naturally Molly is the moth to Jeanie's scuzzy flame.
As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text color to white so no one can see. That is until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.
(Note: As someone who used to exchange strepitous notes to a co-worker, this looks like a book I should find.)
In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, “Father of Gyno-Psychiatry,” as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the state—women he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation.
(Note: Cannot imagine trying to read this.)
A biographical historical fiction retelling of Ho Chi Minh's immigration and radical life in underground Paris in the 1920s
Blue Skies by T.C. Boyle
Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry” to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young “Burmie” she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival.
(Note: Boyle has consistently entertained me and allowed me to think.)
In the stories of Exile in Guyville, probable futures and alternate realities take aim at unruly women, and show how they refuse to be ruled.
(Note: I'm in.)
A woman leaves her coastal Greenland village to translate the works of a renowned Provençal poet and finds her life irrevocably changed, in this tender and romantic novel set in a French village.
(Note: A love letter to France novel? If so, sounds like a summer read.)
An erotic, surreal novella from the author of Organ Meats and Bestiary.
Seven, who works as a cleaner at a chiropractor's office, reencounters Cecilia, a woman who has obsessed her since their school days. As the two of them board the same bus--each dubiously claiming not to be following the other--their chance meeting spurs a series of intensely vivid and corporeal memories. As past and present bleed together, Seven can feel her desire begin to unmoor her from the flow of time.
(Note: "Erotic" and "surreal" should be used together more often.)
The most influential book of Taiwan’s #MeToo movement—a heartbreaking account of sexual violence and a remarkable reinvention of the trauma plot, turning the traditional Lolita narrative upside down as it explores women’s vulnerability, victimization, and the lengths they will go to survive.
At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.
Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise.
Morning and Evening by Jon Fosse
A child who will be named Johannes is born. An old man named Johannes dies. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed. Beginning with Johannes's father's thoughts as his wife goes into labor, and ending with Johannes's own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different, Morning and Evening is a novel concerning the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning.
(Note: I loved the Fosse I’ve read so also want to read this.)
Julio is a disillusioned professor of literature, a perpetual wanderer who has spent years away from his home, teaching in the United States. He receives a posthumous summons from an old friend, the writer Aliza Abravanel, to uncover the mysteries within her final novel.
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