In 2019, Julia Phillips published a celebrated novel called “Disappearing Earth,” set on a remote Russian peninsula called Kamchatka.
It’s not a place In 2019, Julia Phillips published a celebrated novel called “Disappearing Earth,” set on a remote Russian peninsula called Kamchatka.
It’s not a place many Western readers were likely to have heard of before. Indeed, a travel story in The Washington Post noted, “You come to Kamchatka for two reasons: bears and volcanoes.”
Now, for her second novel, Phillips has returned to America, but she’s still showing a penchant for far-flung, disconnected places. This time, it’s San Juan Island, off the coast of Washington state. And at least one of those ursine creatures has come lumbering back with her.
A grizzly haunts the pages of “Bear.” It’s hard to identify at first, and so unlikely that everyone’s giddy with excitement, but there it is: a bear swimming in the San Juan Channel, where they’d never seen one. Folks on the ferry take pictures and call out to the animal. Later, the sheriff’s deputy suggests it could have been a deer. Please. It was no deer.
But what those hundreds of pounds of muscle and fur might mean is challenging to see through the dark woods of this intense novel, which begins with an epigraph from the Brothers Grimm. For almost 300 pages, Phillips wends along the vague barrier that separates pasture from forest, reason from madness....
Kelly Link is a genius. That’s not just my opinion. In 2018, Link won a $625,000 “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Her strange and surrealKelly Link is a genius. That’s not just my opinion. In 2018, Link won a $625,000 “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Her strange and surreal short stories — along with books published by Small Beer Press, which she co-founded with her husband — have transfigured the genre of fabulist fiction. Her 2015 collection, “Get in Trouble,” was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. Last fall, The Washington Post named her “White Cat, Black Dog” one of the year’s best works of science fiction and fantasy. It was the only story collection to make the list.
With her reputation for wonderment, every new book by Link arrives trailing clouds of enchantment. And given the assumption that novels rank higher on the scale of being than short stories — a fallacy driven mostly by marketing considerations — Link’s first novel has generated outsize interest. She has obliged by delivering an outsize novel.
At 628 pages, “The Book of Love” is a book to contend with, a tome that thunders: “I Am Not a Short Story!” Adding to its epic aura, all the chapters announce themselves as parts of some fantastical bible, emblazoned with headings like “The Book of Daniel,” “The Book of Laura” and “The Book of Mo.”
With this story for adults, Link is wending her way through an old-growth forest of fantasy novels that stretches from “Harry Potter” to “The Chronicles of Narnia,” adventures in which a small group of young people must confront a dark challenge and a maniacal adversary. But she’s also cutting her own distinctly Linkian path by following the struggles of modern-day teens as they figure out who they are and who they love in an unstable world shimmering with deception. . . .
By the time ghosts start gathering in Daniel Mason’s “North Woods,” it’s too late to flee. You’re already rooted to this haunting, haunted novel aboutBy the time ghosts start gathering in Daniel Mason’s “North Woods,” it’s too late to flee. You’re already rooted to this haunting, haunted novel about a homestead in western Massachusetts.
Don’t be afraid: Go in the house.
I’ve been raving about Mason’s work since his gorgeous debut, “The Piano Tuner,” was published more than 20 years ago while he was in medical school. He’s since won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, along with a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Prize and a National Magazine Award. In 2021, his first collection of short stories, “A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.
And yet Mason somehow still feels always about to break out. The literary gods are inscrutable — the book club overlords even more so — but I’m praying you’ll consider getting lost in “North Woods” this fall. Elegantly designed with photos and illustrations, this is a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic.
The novel begins some 400 years ago with two naughty Pilgrims fleeing their settlement and hiding from soldiers sent out to drag them home. “They were Nature’s wards now,” Mason writes. “Barefoot they ran through the forest … to the north woods.” They dare to marry themselves in the hollow of an old oak and swim naked in the brook. The young man, an “ungodly” rake who “consorted with heathens,” hauls a flat stone out of the water and sets it down in a clearing to mark the corner of their new home. From that act of illegal passion and wild optimism arises a vast tale that eventually contains. . . .
Elizabeth Holmes, the infamous Stanford dropout, is no longer the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Forbes estimates her current worth atElizabeth Holmes, the infamous Stanford dropout, is no longer the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire. Forbes estimates her current worth at $0, but she’ll long be remembered as one of the world’s greatest grifters, which is its own species of immortality. Her Silicon Valley start-up, Theranos, promised to revolutionize medicine by quickly running more than 200 tests on a drop of blood.
It was a remarkable technological breakthrough, except for the pesky fact that it was a massive fraud. A coterie of savvy investors lost hundreds of millions of dollars, but on the bright side, the victims included Henry Kissinger and Betsy DeVos.
Theranos would probably have collapsed under the weight of its own chicanery, though recent political events suggest how long even the most ludicrous mass deceptions can stay afloat on the wind of a very stable genius. But Holmes was rushed to ruin by the tenacious reporting of John Carreyrou in the Wall Street Journal. And in 2018, he published an excoriating book, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup,” which laid out the whole sorry story of gobsmacking duplicity.
Now, in a heartbeat, comes a weird companion novel of sorts called “Sucker,” by Daniel Hornsby. Released just as Holmes begins the second month of her 11-year sentence in federal prison, this is not so much a roman à clef as a roman avec des dents: Hornsby retells the bloody story of Elizabeth Holmes as a vampire spoof.
As metaphors go, this is, admittedly, not too original. Plenty of commentators have remarked on Holmes’s hypnotic powers of persuasion, her pale visage, her preternatural youth and, of course, her company’s vampiric thirst for blood. But Hornsby brings a sharp wit to this worn crypt. “Sucker” highlights the “Twilight” in “The Twilight Zone” to create a caustic satire of obscene....
The dead hover so closely around Lorrie Moore’s mournful new book that it feels more like a séance than a novel. Even the long title — “I Am Homeless The dead hover so closely around Lorrie Moore’s mournful new book that it feels more like a séance than a novel. Even the long title — “I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home” — seems determined to linger.
But readers among the living may be reluctant to take on such a necrotic tale. Suspended somewhere between Moore’s celebrated short stories and the novels she publishes every decade or so, this slender book is equally haunting and cursed.
If you read “A Gate at the Stairs,” one of my favorite books of 2009, you’ll never forget that grotesque moment when the narrator climbs into a loved one’s coffin to say goodbye. Beware: Moore’s new novel shows the bereaved settling in the grave for a much longer embrace.
The story opens in 2016, just a month after homemade bombs placed around New York have reignited memories of 9/11. While the traumatized city tries once again to find its equilibrium, a high school teacher named Finn arrives from Illinois with his own conspiratorial fears and a litter box that once belonged to his landlady’s cat. Single and recently suspended from his job, Finn has driven across the country to see his older, more successful brother, Max. But he hasn’t come for advice. Max is lying in a hospice dying of....
The year 1989 has just ended when our dearly departed narrator introduces himself with a disappointing revelation:
“You wake up with the answer to the The year 1989 has just ended when our dearly departed narrator introduces himself with a disappointing revelation:
“You wake up with the answer to the question that everyone asks. The answer is Yes, and the answer is Just Like Here But Worse. That’s all the insight you’ll ever get. So you might as well go back to sleep.”
That voice — poking you in the face with its brash cynicism — belongs to the ghost of Maali Almeida, who was, until very recently, a reckless photojournalist, a chronic gambler and an unreliable boyfriend in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Initially, the afterlife feels like an LSD trip at a poorly staffed customer return center. But once Maali gets to the front of a queue, he learns that he’s dead. To prepare his spirit for eternity with The Light, he has one week — “seven moons.”
That makes a tight schedule for Maali and a breakneck pace for readers because this is a ghost with an attitude and a lot of unfinished business. For one, Maali isn’t sure how he died, and watching goons chop up his corpse with a cleaver doesn’t provide as much clarity as you might expect. After all, in life, Maali accepted photography gigs from anybody who would pay him — government officials, foreign journalists, human rights organizations, even (possible) spies. And he freely snapped pictures of things no one wanted him to see.
“They say the truth will set you free,” Maali notes, “though in Sri Lanka the truth can land you in a cage.” Knowing how dangerous his homeland is, Maali always prided himself on his discretion, a quality perfected as a closeted gay man in a violently homophobic society. But apparently, somebody wanted to guarantee his silence.
Now, reduced to airy thinness, Maali will find justice only if he can publish a secret cache of his most incendiary pictures, “photos that will bring down. . . .
Nothing could be more ordinary. But that common tale of woe feels shocking in Julia Armfield’s debut novel, “Our Wives Under the SeLovers drift apart.
Nothing could be more ordinary. But that common tale of woe feels shocking in Julia Armfield’s debut novel, “Our Wives Under the Sea.”
The very first line of her exceedingly moody story warns us to expect the unexpected: “The deep sea is a haunted house,” Armfield writes, “a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness.”
And yet even that gothic portent can’t prepare us for what lies beneath the surface of this queer romance.
In one sense, the plot is simple, even daringly static. Two young women are stuck in their apartment, where they will remain almost until the end of the novel. Leah works as a marine biologist, and Miri writes grant applications, but their normal lives have been entirely suspended.
When the novel opens, Miri is caring for Leah, who’s just returned from a deep-sea disaster. We learn that a three-week research mission went horribly awry and dragged out over six hope-crushing months before she was unexpectedly rescued. During that period of worry and arrested grief, Miri fantasized about. . . .
Three years ago, Booker Prize winner Marlon James sliced through enough carotid arteries to fill an ocean. "Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” the first volumeThree years ago, Booker Prize winner Marlon James sliced through enough carotid arteries to fill an ocean. "Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” the first volume of his Dark Star trilogy, washed into fame on a wave of blood. James joked that he was writing “an African ‘Game of Thrones,’” but his real target was higher and older: He reanimated modern fantasy with the bones and sinews of African mythology. The result was a genre-stretching, canon-scrambling triumph that The Washington Post called one of the top 10 books of the year.
In an ancient world riven by war, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” spins a story about the search for a boy who may be the key to the kingdom’s survival. Much of the book — a collection of adventures oxidized by the mist of legend — describes a posse that sets off to find the lost child. Throughout their years-long search, the Red Wolf and his lover, the shapeshifting Black Leopard, work in uneasy collaboration with a buffalo, a melancholy giant and a witch named Sogolon.
That old woman, who insists she’s not really a witch, is now the subject of the second volume of the Dark Star trilogy. “Moon Witch, Spider King” is a companion rather than a sequel to the earlier book. Its story begins more than a century before the adventures of Wolf and Leopard — indeed, you’ll want to sit down: They don’t appear in this new volume for 500 pages.
This is the memoir of a reluctant killer, a 177-year-old disconsolate woman who claims, “I never have a happy day ever.” She wants nothing more than to be left alone or to die. She never gets either wish. “Everything annoy me,” she says in her heavy patois. . . .
A few weeks ago, I noticed water pooling in our basement. Ever the optimist, I pretended it was just rain leaking in, but then I saw toilet paper floaA few weeks ago, I noticed water pooling in our basement. Ever the optimist, I pretended it was just rain leaking in, but then I saw toilet paper floating by.
It could have been worse. Real estate, after all, is the foundation of gothic horror. From the Castle of Otranto to the House of Usher to those abandoned buildings that you should definitely not investigate at night, the call is always coming from inside the house!
That warning is true for Jenni Fagan’s deliciously weird new novel, “Luckenbooth.” As this Scottish author did in her unnerving debut, “The Panopticon,” and her dystopic follow-up, “The Sunlight Pilgrims,” Fagan once again examines the way people are affected by unhealthy spaces. Having survived the state care system that bounced her among dozens of homes, she writes about placement and displacement with an arresting mix of insight and passion.
“Luckenbooth” starts in 1910 and then creeps across the 20th century on cloven feet. In the opening section, a poor young woman named Jessie MacRae says goodbye to her father’s corpse and rows across the North Sea in a coffin. “How buoyant such a thing can be,” she says, but buoyancy is not my first concern here. . . .
With anti-mask vigilantes, the omicron virus and lost luggage, you already have enough to worry about when flying.
But here’s one more variant of conceWith anti-mask vigilantes, the omicron virus and lost luggage, you already have enough to worry about when flying.
But here’s one more variant of concern: Before landing, you might be spontaneously duplicated.
That’s the mind-bending premise of France’s hottest novel, “L’anomalie,” by Hervé Le Tellier, a former science journalist and a member of experimental writing group Oulipo. Winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt, “L’anomalie” has already sold more than a million copies in the author’s homeland, and now it arrives in the United States on a tail wind of international acclaim.
Make sure any carry-on expectations are placed completely under the seat in front of you. Although Americans are frustratingly xenophobic when they make reading choices, “The Anomaly,” translated by Adriana Hunter, could be the rare exception. It’s French, but not trop francais. The book’s intellectuality is neatly camouflaged by its impish humor. Indeed, with its elegant mix of science fiction and metaphysical mystery, Le Tellier’s thriller is comfortably settled in the middle seat between “Lost” and “Manifest.”
Much is left unexplained in “The Anomaly,” but all the characters agree on one thing: Their Air France flight from Paris to New York in the spring of 2021 is a . . .
The coronavirus pandemic is still raging away and God knows we’ll be reading novels about it for years, but Louise Erdrich’s “The Sentence” may be theThe coronavirus pandemic is still raging away and God knows we’ll be reading novels about it for years, but Louise Erdrich’s “The Sentence” may be the best one we ever get. Neither a grim rehashing of the lockdown nor an apocalyptic exaggeration of the virus, her book offers the kind of fresh reflection only time can facilitate, and yet it’s so current the ink feels wet.
Such is the mystery of Erdrich’s work, and “The Sentence” is among her most magical novels, switching tones with the felicity of a mockingbird. She notes that the Native American language of her ancestors “includes intricate forms of human relationships and infinite ways to joke,” and she fully explores that spectrum in these pages: A zany crime caper gives way to the horrors of police brutality; lives ruined flip suddenly into redemption; the deaths of half-a-million Americans play out while a grumpy ghost causes mischief. But the abiding presence here is love.
And books — so many books. This is a novel packed to its spine with other books. I was keeping track of each one mentioned until I discovered Erdrich’s appendix, which lists more than 150 beloved titles. Be prepared: “The Sentence” is that rare novel about the life-transforming effect of literature that arrives with its own. . . .
Nghi Vo’s adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” is completely ridiculous, and I love it with the passion of a thousand burning hearts.
Not only does Vo captNghi Vo’s adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” is completely ridiculous, and I love it with the passion of a thousand burning hearts.
Not only does Vo capture the timbre of Fitzgerald’s lush prose, but she follows the trajectory of the novel’s contrails into another realm. This is a version of “The Great Gatsby” in which partygoers drink demon blood, sorcery twists the beams of reality, and Jay Gatsby is a bisexual vampire.
Say what you will about Donald Trump’s fickle loyalties, he never abandoned the witches. Like Macbeth, he kept them on his mind throughout his calamitSay what you will about Donald Trump’s fickle loyalties, he never abandoned the witches. Like Macbeth, he kept them on his mind throughout his calamitous reign. He never tired of whining that he was the victim of “the Greatest and most Destructive Witch Hunt of all time!”
But like so many of the former president’s historical memories — his marital fidelity, his election landslides — his position in the annals of witch hunts is somewhat exaggerated.
Most people who didn’t pay someone to take the SATs for them know that Salem, Mass., was the scene of a far greater and more destructive witch hunt. During that infamous terror, which started in 1692, more than 200 people were accused of satanic activity, and 20 were executed.
Even at their most puritanical, though, American colonists were amateurs compared with witch hunters in Europe. In the 16th and 17th centuries, tens of thousands of people — possibly hundreds of thousands — were killed for practicing witchcraft. The craze was particularly virulent in Germany, and the victims were usually older women, not reality-TV stars. In fact, most of those who were tortured, hanged and burned on the testimony of some superstitious neighbor or sadistic cleric are lost in the shadows of history.
But in the early 1600s, in a German town called Leonberg, an illiterate widow named Katharina was arrested for sickening a fellow villager with a demonic potion. She was imprisoned for more than a year and threatened with torture before her son finally won her release.
We know these details because Katharina’s son was Johannes Kepler. While defending his mom against a collection of witchy rumors, on the side he was revolutionizing the science of astronomy.
David Mitchell’s groovy new rock novel belts out the lives of a fictional band in such vivid tones that you may imagine you once heard the group play David Mitchell’s groovy new rock novel belts out the lives of a fictional band in such vivid tones that you may imagine you once heard the group play in the late ’60s. Set in London when “new labels are springing up like mushrooms,” “Utopia Avenue” is a story of creative synthesis, one of those astonishing moments when a few disparate individuals suddenly fall into harmony and change the sound of an era. Mitchell — cult writer, critical darling, popular novelist — knows much about the unpredictable currents of fame, and he brings that empathy and his own extraordinarily dynamic style to this tale of four musicians.
One of the many delights of “Utopia Avenue” is seeing the cosmic dust of genius swirling in chaos before the stars are formed. On a dark day in 1967 when the novel opens, Dean Moss, a bass player, gets evicted from his apartment and fired from his cafe job. Across town, a folk musician nicknamed Elf has been dumped by her. . . .
For the past two weeks, I’ve been haunted by a lesbian ghost story, and I hope its ectoplasm hangs around for a long time.
“Plain Bad Heroines” is a shFor the past two weeks, I’ve been haunted by a lesbian ghost story, and I hope its ectoplasm hangs around for a long time.
“Plain Bad Heroines” is a shapeshifting novel by Emily M. Danforth. A hot amalgamation of gothic horror and Hollywood satire, it’s draped with death but bursting with life.
The book opens by calling forth the restless spirit of Mary MacLane. Though now largely forgotten, MacLane electrified America in 1902 when, at the age of 19, she published a shocking memoir originally titled “I Await the Devil’s Coming.” (Until further notice, all double entendres intended.) In this luxuriant confession — what she called her “record of three months of Nothingness” — MacLane announced herself as a kind of female Walt Whitman, bouncing between egotism and eroticism. “I know I am a genius more than any genius that has lived,” she proclaimed, giving voice to frustrated teenagers everywhere. “My strong and sensitive nerves are reeking and swimming in sensuality like drunken little Bacchantes, gay and garlanded in mad revelling.” Looking across the world’s literature, MacLane saw few figures like herself. “I wish,” she wrote, “some one would write a book about a plain, bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy with her.”
More than a century later, “I Await the Devil’s Coming” is still a gobsmacking book. At the time, it was an instant bestseller and, of course, instantly condemned by the usual powers that be. One can only imagine how young women must have thrilled to read MacLane’s outrageous descriptions of sexual longing.
And that’s exactly where “Plain Bad Heroines” begins. “It’s a terrible story,” Danforth writes with . . . .
In 2004, Susanna Clarke’s debut, “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,” burst from a cloud of pixie dust. An 800-page work of historical fantasy about two mIn 2004, Susanna Clarke’s debut, “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,” burst from a cloud of pixie dust. An 800-page work of historical fantasy about two magicians in 19th-century England, the novel was quickly dubbed “Harry Potter for adults” and could have vanished in the dark woods of Hogwarts knockoffs. But Clarke’s literary ancestor is not really J.K. Rowling, it’s Charles Dickens, and even readers who resisted fantasy fell under her spell. My copy of “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell” still shimmers — I’m no longer surprised to discover it’s teleported to different parts of the house.
We believers have waited a long time for a second novel from Clarke, and so it’s especially exciting to see that none of her enchantment has worn off — it’s evolved. Reading her lithe new book, “Piranesi,” feels like finding a copy of Steven Millhauser’s “Martin Dressler” in the back of C.S. Lewis’s wardrobe.
The highly circumscribed action takes place in a palace filled with an infinite labyrinth of halls and vestibules. The walls of all the rooms are decorated with statues covering every available space: There’s a woman carrying a beehive, a smiling faun, a squatting gorilla, a boy playing cymbals, an elephant carrying a castle, two kings playing chess — on and on, a vast inventory of sculptures, each representing an object, concept or feeling like a whole lexicon carved in marble.
The hypnotic quality of “Piranesi” stems largely from how majestically Clarke conjures up.....
The latest writer to take up Frankenstein’s scalpel is British novelist Jeanette Winterson. Her “Frankissstein,” longlisted for this year’s Booker PriThe latest writer to take up Frankenstein’s scalpel is British novelist Jeanette Winterson. Her “Frankissstein,” longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize, is a brainy, batty story — an unholy amalgamation of scholarship and comedy. She manages to pay homage to Shelley’s insight and passion while demonstrating her own extraordinary creativity.
The novel opens in Lake Geneva in 1816, the site of literary history’s most famous parlor game. Lord Byron has rented a villa and is entertaining his friends. Cooped up indoors by bad weather, Byron proposes that they each write a supernatural story to share with the group. Students of gothic literature know that both John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” and Shelley’s “Frankenstein” emerged from that cerebral gathering, but in Winterson’s lithe recreation, nothing is . . . .
Gourmand serial killer Hannibal Lecter may be off the menu, but now his creator, Thomas Harris, has added a new dish of terror. “Cari Mora” is Harris’Gourmand serial killer Hannibal Lecter may be off the menu, but now his creator, Thomas Harris, has added a new dish of terror. “Cari Mora” is Harris’s first novel since “Hannibal Rising” appeared 13 years ago. Fans of his earlier best-selling books — and the movies and TV shows wrung from them — will taste familiar ingredients in “Cari Mora,” along with a touch of Stieg Larsson’s “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and even a dash of Carl Hiaasen’s Florida zaniness. But the whole thing would definitely go better with some fava beans.
The story is mostly a snooze: not so much “The Silence of the Lambs” as The Counting of the Sheep. It opens in Biscayne Bay at a mansion once owned by the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. After passing through the hands of playboys, filmmakers and speculators, this fabled house now sits unused, filled with monster mannequins, slasher-movie props, an electric chair from Sing Sing and something called “sex furniture,” which I must ask about the next time I go to Ikea.
Only one person has the nerve to work as a caretaker of this old house of horrors: a beautiful immigrant named Cari Mora. At the age of 11, Cari was. . . .
Stand aside, Beowulf. There’s a new epic hero slashing his way into our hearts, and we may never get all the blood off our hands.
Marlon James is a JamStand aside, Beowulf. There’s a new epic hero slashing his way into our hearts, and we may never get all the blood off our hands.
Marlon James is a Jamaican-born writer who won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for “A Brief History of Seven Killings,” his blazing novel about the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. Now, James is clear-cutting space for a whole new kingdom. “Black Leopard, Red Wolf,” the first spectacular volume of a planned trilogy, rises up from the mists of time, glistening like viscera. James has spun an African fantasy as vibrant, complex and haunting as any Western mythology, and nobody who survives reading this book will ever forget it. That thunder you hear is the jealous rage of Olympian gods.
“We tell stories to live,” says Tracker, the indefatigable narrator, who tells a lot of stories but doesn’t let many people live. When the novel opens, Tracker is rotting in a dungeon where he recently stabbed, crushed and blinded his five cellmates. They had it coming — or most of them did — and in any case, it’s a perfect introduction to. . . .
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