In a brief afterword to his new novel, Bret Anthony Johnston claims, “‘We Burn Daylight’ is not about David Koresh.” But the fact that his plot is setIn a brief afterword to his new novel, Bret Anthony Johnston claims, “‘We Burn Daylight’ is not about David Koresh.” But the fact that his plot is set around a millenarian compound besieged by federal agents in Waco is no less coincidental than Donald Trump’s decision to rally there last year. Although people have different motives for circling this mass grave, they all seek to warm their hands in that inferno.
Johnston, though, comes bearing an additional, even older tragedy. “We Burn Daylight” reimagines the conflict between the government and the Branch Davidians as a modern-day echo of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” His star-crossed lovers are a pair of teenagers whose ardor is doomed by an animosity far beyond their control. Roy is a lonely 14-year-old boy, the younger son of the McLennan County sheriff. Jaye is the angry daughter of a devoted member of the religious group holed up in Waco. In the Bard’s words, “Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.”
Johnston, a native of Texas, captures this area with an appreciation for the rhythms and courtesies of rural life — neighbors who know who drinks too much and who keeps their fences mended. Church is the center of everyone’s week.
The novel comes to us in chapters narrated, alternately, by Roy and Jaye. She’s essentially a captive, acting out any way she can to irritate her mother and repel the cult’s leader. Roy, a high school freshman, occupies a strangely....
I’ll never forget the moment in Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Underground Railroad” when subterranean train tracks first appear stretching off into a I’ll never forget the moment in Colson Whitehead’s novel “The Underground Railroad” when subterranean train tracks first appear stretching off into a dark tunnel. That 19th-century metaphor pounded into iron in the forge of Whitehead’s mind powers one of the best novels of the 21st century.
Mateo Askaripour attempts a similar maneuver in his new novel, “This Great Hemisphere.” Inspired by the central conceit of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” Askaripour imagines a future world in which the people of a repressed racial minority are literally see-through.
After a brief, tantalizing prologue set in modern-day New York, Askaripour plunges us into a richly imagined dystopia set in the year 2529. Having emerged from a series of planet-wrecking catastrophes, human society and human biology have been radically reconstituted. In this strict apartheid system, members of the Dominant Population — DPs — exercise total control over all aspects of life by wielding advanced technology and highly prejudicial interpretations of the Bible.
Meanwhile, a physically transparent race of people known as Invisibles subsists as best they can in the forest. Many of them paint their skin “in whatever colors conformed to their mood, the latest trends, or the longing to be something they were not.” A few wear clothes in a misguided effort to curry respectability, but some Invisibles move about naked as mere ripples in the light. They identify each other by their “scentprints” and their “rumoyas,” a kind of “cell spirit” unique. . . . .
Death has not appreciably slowed Michael Crichton’s publication schedule. Since he passed away in 2008, several of his manuscripts caught in the amberDeath has not appreciably slowed Michael Crichton’s publication schedule. Since he passed away in 2008, several of his manuscripts caught in the amber of time have been zapped to life and set free to stomp around the world alongside “The Andromeda Strain,” “Jurassic Park,” “Congo” and his many other best-selling novels.
Still, one story that Crichton had worked on for 20 years remained dormant on his hard drive. In a recent statement, Crichton’s wife, Sherri, described discovering the unfinished draft: “When I came to the abrupt end, it was the ultimate cliffhanger — though, for the first time, not one that Michael had meticulously planned.”
This fragment might never have seen the rising sun, but when enough money is involved, life finds a way. So now, trailing thunderous clouds of publicity, the summer’s ultimate literary mashup arrives June 3: “Eruption,” a Crichton manuscript completed by James Patterson. As author partnerships go, this is Godzilla’s head grafted onto King Kong’s body. Of course, Hollywood is already buzzing around it, and why not? Together, these two authors — or their brands — have sold an estimated 675 million copies, one for every year since the Neoproterozoic era.
“Eruption” opens with a prologue set in Hawaii at the Hilo Botanical Gardens. Rachel, a park biologist, “just couldn’t believe her eyes”: Three banyan trees have died and turned black. “Rachel had never seen or read about anything like this. . . . This was something else. Something dark, maybe even dangerous.” An old friend tells her, “Don’t panic,” but “she was scared.”
This is an opening sure to leave amateur gardeners on the edge of their Adirondack chairs. The rest of us will have to take it on faith that even greater horrors than a few withered trees lie ahead.
Sure enough, nine years later, when the action picks up again, 36-year-old John “Mac” MacGregor hears a deep rumbling and feels the beach shaking. As director of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, Mac understands what that means. “He’d always known this day would come.” Steam is already wafting up from the top of Mauna Loa, the planet’s biggest active volcano, a colossus that rises almost six miles off the ocean floor. “The eruption was only....
Dan Brown is back with another thriller so moronic you can feel your IQ points flaking away like dandruff.
“Origin” marks the fifth outing for Harvard Dan Brown is back with another thriller so moronic you can feel your IQ points flaking away like dandruff.
“Origin” marks the fifth outing for Harvard professor Robert Langdon, the symbologist who uncovered stunning secrets and shocking conspiracies in “The Da Vinci Code” and Brown’s other phenomenally best-selling novels. All the worn-out elements of those earlier books are dragged out once again for Brown to hyperventilate over like some grifter trying to fence fake antiques.
This time around, the requisite earth-shattering secret is a discovery made by Edmond Kirsch, a computer genius with a flair for dramatic presentations and infinite delays. Kirsch has called the world’s intelligentsia to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, where he plans to reveal his findings to the world because. . . .
Dan Brown is back with another thriller so moronic you can feel your IQ points flaking away like dandruff.
“Origin” marks the fifth outing for Harvard professor Robert Langdon, the symbologist who uncovered stunning secrets and shocking conspiracies in “The Da Vinci Code” and Brown’s other phenomenally best-selling novels. All the worn-out elements of those earlier books are dragged out once again for Brown to hyperventilate over like some grifter trying to fence fake antiques.
This time around, the requisite earth-shattering secret is a discovery made by Edmond Kirsch, a computer genius with a flair for dramatic presentations and infinite delays. Kirsch has called the world’s intelligentsia to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, where he plans to reveal his findings to the world because. . . .
T.S. Eliot claimed, “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.” That whimper is the sound of me being buried under novels about iT.S. Eliot claimed, “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.” That whimper is the sound of me being buried under novels about it.
This week I’m recovering from one apocalyptic novel, reviewing a new one, reading a forthcoming one and wearily eyeing two more. Clearly, we’ve arrived at the future in which everyone writes about the collapse of civilization for 15 minutes. If the world is really about to end, I wish it would hurry up.
The strange thing about doomsday, though, is its infinite adaptability. Note, for instance, how graciously the eschatology of previous millennia swelled to accommodate fears of nuclear annihilation in the 20th century. And now climate change, seasoned with a soupçon of political tyranny, promises to cook all our anxieties in a final vat of despondency. The result is a literary doom loop that keeps spinning faster. Over the last few years, I’ve read so many dystopian novels that I had to look up the plural spelling of “apocalypse.”
It’s comforting to imagine that the persistence of this bleak genre is a perverse kind of optimism: Despero, ergo sum! After all, we’ve survived long enough for Sandra Newman to publish a retelling of “1984” called “Julia.” When I first read George Orwell’s terrifying book in the 1970s, I worried we’d never make it to 1984, let alone to the 21st century.
But now that Leif Enger has written an apocalyptic novel, the world may actually be coming to an end. Enger, you’ll remember, launched his career in early September 2001 with a mega-bestseller called “Peace Like a River” — an inspiring adventure about a family that regularly experiences miracles. As the twin towers smoldered, coldblooded critics recoiled at his novel’s unabashed spirituality, but I thought it was divine.
Almost 25 years later, Enger’s idealism is contending with a world even grimmer than the Armageddon envisioned at the end of a Trump-branded Bible. His new novel, titled “I Cheerfully Refuse” (a bit too on the nose), describes a future swamped by climate change, economic disparity and political decay. Sixteen wealthy families — so out of touch that they’re referred to as “astronauts” — own all the “mineral rights and satellite clusters and news factories and prisons and most clean water and such shipping as remained.” How comfortingly familiar!
But other trendlines from our time have reached their inevitable conclusion in the wasteland Enger describes: Pandemics have thinned the population. Indentured servitude is back in vogue and the government provides “compliance therapeutics” to keep workers docile and obedient. Nitrous oxide has become a common form of self-medication, and that’s the least of it: A drug called Willow, “a rising star in the market of despair,” is ingested by individuals, entire families and sometimes whole neighborhoods to commit suicide.
Naturally, these calamities have been ushered in by a deep suspicion of learning, particularly of literature. Fundamentalists have closed.....
Eleven years ago this month, Claire Messud published a brilliant, incendiary novel called “The Woman Upstairs.” The narrYou can still smell the smoke.
Eleven years ago this month, Claire Messud published a brilliant, incendiary novel called “The Woman Upstairs.” The narrator, Nora, is that most alarming and repellent character: a bitter woman. Single, childless and middle-aged, she won’t smile to look pretty. She won’t effuse to make us feel better. Her fury is boundless. When she says, “I’ll set the world on fire,” she doesn’t mean with a song in her heart.
When the book came out, an interviewer for Publishers Weekly asked Messud, “I wouldn’t want to be friends with Nora, would you?”
With withering, Nora-like irritation, Messud shot back: “For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in ‘The Corrections’? Any of the characters in ‘Infinite Jest’? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.”
Predictably, the book world exploded with arguments about how likable a protagonist must be. It was an epic debate: “Madame Bovary c’est moi!” vs. “Madame Bovary ce n’est pas moi!” Readers of popular fiction were scolded for their narrow tastes, their childish refusal to fraternize with unappealing characters.
This month, as I read Karen Jennings’s new novel, “Crooked Seeds,” that old literary quarrel repeated on me like tainted meat. I’m not necessarily looking for friends in fiction, but it’s been years since I read a book that strained the Likability Principle so viscerally. Jennings’s previous novel, “An Island,” was longlisted for the Booker Prize, but I fear the more I tell you about “Crooked Seeds,” the less likely you’ll be to pick it up — unless you’re wearing gloves and a mask.
If Paul Lynch’s “Prophet Song” were a horror novel, it wouldn’t feel nearly as terrifying. But his story about the modern-day ascent of fascism is so If Paul Lynch’s “Prophet Song” were a horror novel, it wouldn’t feel nearly as terrifying. But his story about the modern-day ascent of fascism is so contaminated with plausibility that it’s impossible not to feel poisoned by swelling panic. I woke up three mornings in a row from nightmares Lynch had sown in the soil of my jittery brain.
“Prophet Song,” which won Britain’s Booker Prize on Sunday, describes how the fibers of political decay get caught in the lungs: the wracking cough of tyranny precedes the illness, the horrible death. But rather than survey the whole body of governmental putrefaction, Lynch focuses on the travails of one woman struggling to protect her family in Dublin.
Eilish Stack is a respected microbiologist, a mother and the wife of a union leader. After a long day of work, she craves only a spot of peace and renewal. But if you remember the first line of “1984” — “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” — you’ll hear the opening of “Prophet Song” as a sepulchral echo: “The night has come and she has not heard the knocking.”
That knocking in the nighttime, the implacable salutation of the KGB and security agents the world over, is the first in an uninterrupted series of perversions of. . . .
As the clocks strike 13 once again, it’s time to venture back to Oceania and experience that dystopia with fresh eyes — or other eyes. That’s exactly As the clocks strike 13 once again, it’s time to venture back to Oceania and experience that dystopia with fresh eyes — or other eyes. That’s exactly what Sandra Newman does in her subversive new novel, “Julia.”
With the approval of the Orwell estate, it’s a retelling of “1984” from the perspective of Winston Smith’s lover. The effect of that single shift is uncanny: The world Julia describes is entirely familiar but subtly altered from the one Winston experiences.
In addition to filling out the tragedy of Julia’s adolescence, Newman introduces several ingenious twists that let the plot proceed largely as expected but with curiously different implications.
Except for one extraordinary scene, everything Newman does takes place within the confines of that grim original story. Somehow, she has stuck her tweezers into Orwell’s bottle and rebuilt the ship pointing the other way.
Many of the characters, the Ministries of Truth and Love, the ever-shrinking dictionary, the constantly rewritten histories, the Two Minutes Hate, the endless war with Eurasia (or is it Eastasia?) and all your favorite horrors from “1984” are here.
But while “Julia” depends on Orwell for its architecture, the novel’s ironic tone is Newman’s own. By switching the perspective from Winston, she has effectively expanded the story’s palette.
The realm Newman describes is no more free nor tolerant than the one Orwell made famous, but it’s given considerably more room to. . . .
Robert Frost gave us so little choice when he wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice.”
What about plague, flood, zombies, killeRobert Frost gave us so little choice when he wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice.”
What about plague, flood, zombies, killer robots, ocean acidification, nuclear accident and alien invasion? Fortunately, in these latter days before climate collapse, our apocalyptic literature comes in a grim smorgasbord of flavors.
And now we have an apocalyptic novel that is all about flavors. “Land of Milk and Honey,” by C Pam Zhang, is the haunting story of an ambitious chef desperate to keep cooking even as 98 percent of the commercial crops fail and the world’s store of food dwindles to gruel.
The narrator, unnamed, is in her 20s when a mysterious smog arises from Iowa and blocks out the sun around the world. “Biodiversity fell. Wildlife and livestock perished for lack of feed,” she remembers. “What it amounted to was skies that were gray and kitchens that were gray. You could taste it: gray. No olives, no quails, no grapes of the tart green kind … no saffron, no buffalo, no polished short-grain rice.” On and on rolls this inventory of culinary devastation, a vast catalogue that invokes delicacies only by noting their absence. For a chef, such bare cupboards portend a tasteless existence sustained only by mung-protein flour.
Zhang is such a cool writer that salmon steaks could stay fresh in her prose for weeks. But there’s something absurd about this narrator’s single-minded obsession with haute cuisine during what sounds like Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” As the restaurant where she works in England runs out of supplies, she makes a bold choice: “I quit that job to pursue recklessly, immorally, desperately, the only one that gave me hope of lettuce.”
The corrosive lies start right in the title of Brando Skyhorse’s new novel: “My Name Is Iris.”
“I was born Inés,” the narrator confesses, but a 7th-graThe corrosive lies start right in the title of Brando Skyhorse’s new novel: “My Name Is Iris.”
“I was born Inés,” the narrator confesses, but a 7th-grade teacher kept stumbling over her name and finally gave her a new one.
“Now even my parents call me Iris, proud of the fact that someone in America was thoughtful enough to give me an American name.”
That’s not the most painful line in this ominous social satire, but it’s a good start.
On the rapidly expanding shelf of dystopian novels, “My Name Is Iris” offers a sharp vision of how racism gets imbibed by its victims like a sweet poison. In Skyhorse’s telling, America’s melting-pot myth is a narcotic that promises inclusion but induces self-harm.
That theme is clearly adjacent to Skyhorse’s 2014 memoir, “Take This Man.” As a child, Skyhorse’s Mexican mother convinced him they were Native Americans. By the time he became a teenager, he realized that wasn’t true. Years of reflection about who he really is followed.
With “My Name Is Iris,” Skyhorse takes the classic immigrant success story and ferments it in MAGA hysteria. His heroine has been raised in the United States by Mexican-born parents determined to give her every advantage of their adopted land. Iris is constantly admonished to work hard, follow the rules and never speak. . . .
“This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot predicted, “not with a bang but a whimper.”
Nope, says epic world-ender Justin Cronin.
In 2010, Cronin publ“This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot predicted, “not with a bang but a whimper.”
Nope, says epic world-ender Justin Cronin.
In 2010, Cronin published “The Passage,” one of the most frightening apocalyptic novels of the modern age. If there was any whimpering in that bang-up job, it was the smothered chorus of millions of people being eaten by vampires.
Now, Cronin is looming over us again with another apocalyptic novel, this one more batty than vampiric. “The Ferryman” grabs bits of stardust from several sci-fi classics. The trippy effect is like watching “Inception” on an airplane while the passenger next to you watches “The Matrix” without earphones. Indeed, to get through this chaotic story, you’ll need the red pill and the blue pill and some Adderall.
The eerie first half — by far the better — is set on Prospera, an island paradise hidden from the rest of the world by an impenetrable electromagnetic barrier. “Prosperans,” as the glorious inhabitants are called, enjoy a civilization “free of all want and distraction.” They devote their attractive selves entirely to “creative expression and the pursuit of personal excellence.”
Like good Republicans, Prosperans imagine that everything about their system of static privilege is “entirely beneficent.” But members of the vast “support staff” harbor a somewhat different impression. Crammed onto a dreary adjacent island known as the Annex, these men and women of supposedly “lesser biological and social endowments” are expected to perform their various duties without complaint. And mostly, they do. If a few stress fractures are starting to zigzag across the surface of that social arrangement, the powers that be remain convinced....
Videos of police violence inflicted on African Americans still shock the conscience of the nation, but an even vaster horror plays out unseen every daVideos of police violence inflicted on African Americans still shock the conscience of the nation, but an even vaster horror plays out unseen every day in prisons across the country. Although our incarceration rate leads the world, we’re inured to the irony that the land of the free is also the empire of the jailed.
Make no mistake: Black lives matter to the prison industry.
Like updates on climate change or reports on plastic in the ocean, stories about how many people we’ve shunted behind bars can feel easier to ignore than respond to. Indeed, over the last half century, fueled by a conspiracy of fear and political cynicism, America’s prison complex has swelled to such grotesque dimensions that it defies comprehension.
But if we’re still capable of being roused from this ethical stupor, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a writer with sufficient energy to do it. In 2018, his first book, “Friday Black,” offered an unnerving collection of dystopian stories that satirized the interplay of racism and consumerism. The title story imagined the worst possible Black Friday sale in a shopping mall. “Zimmer Land,” one of several unforgettable pieces, described an amusement park where White people can experience the thrill of shooting Black people they think are threatening them.
But despite how brilliant and gut-wrenching “Friday Black” is, I wondered at the time if those tales were essentially one-time-only specials. Could Adjei-Brenyah push a story past its weird “what if” premise to sustain such a singular blend of wit and fury in a longer format?
His new novel, “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” answers that question with a searing affirmation. It’s a devastating indictment of our penal system and our attendant enthusiasm for violence. Like Orwell’s “1984” and Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Adjei-Brenyah’s book presents a dystopian vision so upsetting and illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of doing. . . .
“Birnam Wood” opens with “a spate of shallow earthquakes” in a remote part of New Zealand, but by the end those tremors will reverberate across the pl“Birnam Wood” opens with “a spate of shallow earthquakes” in a remote part of New Zealand, but by the end those tremors will reverberate across the planet. The title, aside from being a prophetic allusion to “Macbeth,” is the name of an obscure environmental group. The members of Birnam Wood are guerrilla gardeners, who raise vegetables on public land and unattended private property, sometimes with permission, sometimes without. While they might think of themselves as fearless revolutionaries, their antics rarely extend much beyond stealing a hoe from a wealthy neighbor’s garden shed.
Nevertheless, Mira, the de facto leader of this supposedly leaderless collective, dreams of “nothing less than radical, widespread, and lasting social change, which would be entirely achievable, she was convinced, if only people could be made to see how much fertile land was going begging, all around them, every day.” In the words of Mao, “Let a hundred flowers bloom,” but make sure they’re peas, tomatoes and cucumbers.
As the novel opens, Mira spies a potentially rich new target. A landslide has buried a stretch of highway, almost completely cutting off the town of Thorndike and canceling development of a 375-acre plot abutting a national park. What better place for Mira’s merry band of subversive farmers to till the soil in relative secrecy! If they get arrested, even better: The publicity will amplify their cause.
The only problem is that this land has already caught the attention of Robert Lemoine, an American billionaire. He plans to construct a luxurious bunker here where he can, when the moment arrives, wait out the apocalypse. . . .
What a delight, in this fraught moment, to be given a magical new novel by Salman Rushdie. Though “Victory City” was completed before the knife attackWhat a delight, in this fraught moment, to be given a magical new novel by Salman Rushdie. Though “Victory City” was completed before the knife attack at Chautauqua , it’s impossible not to read parts of this grand fantasy as an allegory of the author’s struggles against sectarian hatred and ignorance. Indeed, given the physical and emotional sacrifices he’s made, some coincidences between this story and his own life are almost too poignant to bear.
When Sibylle Berg’s new novel appeared in Germany, it was titled “GRM” with an obscene English subtitle that refers to both an esoteric programming laWhen Sibylle Berg’s new novel appeared in Germany, it was titled “GRM” with an obscene English subtitle that refers to both an esoteric programming language and the story’s effect on your brain.
For release in the United States, the book has been retitled “Grime,” and its subtitle is gone. But traces of that early 1990s computer code remain laced through the text. And the story is still primed to mess with your brain.
Winner of the 2019 Swiss Book Prize, this is a novel so caustic it should be printed with hydrochloric acid. Berg, a Swiss writer and social activist, sprays her fury across the whole landscape of technological and economic manias that are rendering the 21st century intolerable. And Tim Mohr has done a remarkable job of translating Berg’s hilarious, hectoring, hyperbolic prose, which isn’t so much propulsive as relentless.
If you’re weary of comfortable satire that only confirms your ironic disdain for modern life, “Grime” may be the novel for you. The brave new world that Berg describes offers a critique of neoliberalism that’s downright sadistic. It’s like watching a very bloody, unfair cage fight with Ayn Rand: Atlas Slugged. Naturally, Europeans adored “Grime” and kept it on the bestseller list for months; in the United States, this ordeal is sure to...
James Patterson’s new thriller, “Blowback,” asks us to imagine what would happen if a narcissistic psychopath were elected to the White House.
AmericanJames Patterson’s new thriller, “Blowback,” asks us to imagine what would happen if a narcissistic psychopath were elected to the White House.
Americans could be forgiven for thinking they already have a pretty good idea of what that would be like.
But if “Blowback” is feedback on Donald Trump’s raging years in office, it’s only a glancing shot.
That figures. After all, Patterson has long maintained an indulgent détente with his friend and fellow Floridian. Unlike Stephen King, who regularly unleashes the hounds of hell upon Trump, Patterson has largely restricted himself to sighs of disappointment. Even in his two immensely popular presidential thrillers written with Bill Clinton, Patterson has avoided any harsh criticism of the Very Stable Genius.
That attitude of restraint paid off when Trump awarded Patterson a National Humanities Medal, the only one conferred on a novelist during Trump’s time in office. At a White House ceremony in 2019, the president told Patterson, “You’ve sold a lot more books than me, and I guess you’ve sold a lot more books than anyone but maybe one: the Bible.” It was a weird moment that inadvertently called attention to the fact that Trump, Patterson and God rely on other people to help write their books. . . .
Last year’s most unlikely bestseller was “Matrix,” a novel by Lauren Groff about an obscure medieval poet named Marie de France and a 12th-century nunLast year’s most unlikely bestseller was “Matrix,” a novel by Lauren Groff about an obscure medieval poet named Marie de France and a 12th-century nunnery. Maybe two years of covid seclusion had primed us for a story of monastic adventure, and certainly Groff’s rich style helped the book sing to many readers. But in addition to her enormous fan base — which includes Barack Obama — the novel succeeded because it eschewed fusty Christian theology and projected modern feminist ideals onto its ancient canvas.
Now comes Emma Donoghue, another popular and critically acclaimed novelist, with “Haven,” a monastic story of her own. But Donoghue has ratcheted up the stakes by taking on a trifecta of bestseller killers: First, she moves the clock back even further, to around 600 A.D. Second, she portrays a culture inhabited only by men. And third, her characters live and move and have their being in an atmosphere fully imbued with their primitive Christian faith.
In short, very few readers have been praying for a novel like this. But “Haven” creates an eerie, meditative atmosphere that should resonate with anyone willing to think deeply about the blessings and costs of devoting one’s life to a transcendent cause.
The novel opens with a kind of preface set at Cluain Mhic Nóis, a relatively new monastery with about three dozen monks in the center of Ireland. Not 200 years have passed since St. Patrick converted the island to Christianity, but. . . .
Miami is booming. According to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, the cost of apartments is rising faster in and around the Magic City than anMiami is booming. According to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, the cost of apartments is rising faster in and around the Magic City than anywhere else in the United States.
“In some desirable neighborhoods,” the Journal reports, “landlords are doubling the rent after a lease expires because they know transplants from the Northeast and West Coast are willing to pay that much more.”
Before loading your moving van, read “The Displacements,” by Bruce Holsinger. Yes, it’s just a novel, but Holsinger has built an apocalyptic plot on ground more secure than the foundations of many Miami homes. After all, considering the risks of hurricanes and floods driven by climate change, Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan economic think tank, called Miami “the most vulnerable major coastal city in the world.”
Of course, we’re tragically adept at discounting scientific projections about storm surges and deaths per 100,000, particularly if those surges cause the deaths of people we never meet. But Holsinger brings the cost of climate change home — home to McMansions in Coral Gables, Fla. The folks in this wealthy community imagine that tornadoes hit only trailer homes and that if the weather turns nasty for a spell, they can always decamp to their cottages in Michigan. . . .
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. . . .
Lidia Yuknavitch’s extraordinary new novel is the weirdest, most mind-blowing book about America I’ve ever inhaled. Part history, part prophecy, all fLidia Yuknavitch’s extraordinary new novel is the weirdest, most mind-blowing book about America I’ve ever inhaled. Part history, part prophecy, all fever dream, “Thrust” offers a radical critique of the foundational ideals that conceal our persistent national crimes. As we march from Juneteenth to July 4, this is a story to scrub the patinated surface of our civic pride.
There’s a tidal movement to “Thrust,” whose chapters ebb and flow across 200 years in and around the New York Harbor. At the opening, we catch a vision of immigrants working on a colossal new monument designed in France and shipped in pieces to the United States. With allusions to Walt Whitman, Yuknavitch gives voice to the multitude. “We were woodworkers, iron workers, roofers and plasterers and brick masons,” the narrator intones. “We were. . . .
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