The books we love coming out this week include new titles by Rae Armantrout, Azar Nafisi, and Sindya Bhanoo.
Finalists
Armantrout (Conjure) returns with a lovely exercise in surprise. These sparse but searing poems leap from one mode to another, what Armantrout describes in “How to Disappear” as “swinging restlessly/ between the appearance of spontaneity/ and the appearance of serious thought.” In tracing the mind’s twisting and turning movements, her imagination is on full display, as when she imagines “St. Peter/ as a special concierge/ or a supercomputer/ listening.” Armantrout does not shy away from critiquing systems of abuse that bolster American life, especially capitalism: “By naming its vape flavor/ ‘Unicorn Poop,’/ Drip Star/ parodies marketing,/ thus appealing/ to children.” However, the collection resists imparting easy lessons, above all else celebrating the mind, its horrors and respites, its wanderings, and its potential to connect seemingly incongruous things out of “eternity’s hodgepodge.” She posits: “Since mind/ is the gape/ of surprise/ propped open,/ we can stop/ and think.” This striking, playful collection, which encourages readers to recognize their own capacity to astound themselves, celebrates the unexpected in times of crisis.
Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times
“We need the truth that fiction offers us,” writes Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) in this stunning look at the power of reading. Written from November 2019 through June 2020 as a series of letters to her late father, Nafisi’s reflections grapple with literature’s ability to counter oppression—as she writes, “Fiction subverts the absolutist mindset by defending the right of every individual to exercise their independence of mind and of heart.” Her close readings come in five sections: the first considers how Plato, Ray Bradbury, and Salman Rushdie all revealed the discomfort involved in seeking truth. Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison, meanwhile, created powerful heroines who reclaimed their own stories, while empathy and complexity suffuse Nafisi’s discussion of war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via the works of David Grossman, Elliot Ackerman, and Elias Khouri. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is invoked in a discussion about the roles that “ordinary, often decent, people play in bringing about a totalitarian state,” and James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates offer lessons for coping with rage at racial injustice. Nafisi’s prose is razor-sharp, and her analysis lands on a hopeful note: “I really believe that books might not save us from death, but they help us live.” This excellent collection provokes and inspires at every turn.
Seeking Fortune Elsewhere
Journalist Bhanoo’s stunning debut collection spotlights women who navigate comfortable but often stifling cultural traditions while pursuing new-world promises. In the O. Henry Prize–winning “Malliga Homes,” a recent widow’s daughter insists her mother move into a retirement facility in Tamil Nadu. The narrator’s daughter, Kamala, left India years earlier for college in Atlanta, and Kamala’s increasingly infrequent visits sadden and anger the narrator. In a perfectly apt metaphor for families caught between staying and going, the narrator pauses at dusk to admire a set of oleander shrubs: “Some of the flowers are stuck on one side while others, by sheer luck, fall to the other.” In “No. 16 Model House Road,” wife Latha and husband Muthu live in a house in Bangalore that Muthu’s deceased aunt had left to him. A developer wants to demolish the house for a high rise, and Muthu wants to sell it in order to travel, but Latha sees the house as “a memory box of her life.” Defying tradition, she stands firm in her opposition to Muthu with a “winning feeling” when, in signing a contract to remodel the house, her hand is “steady and sure.” In these and other stories, Bhanoo finds novel ways for her protagonists to cope with adversity. Growing apart from the past, rather than crushing their spirit and individuality, brings them freedom and hope for the future. This introduces a great new talent.
Heretic
McIlvanney’s outstanding sequel to 2019’s The Quaker makes the mean streets of Glasgow palpable in the service of a memorable whodunit plot. In 1975, Det. Insp. Duncan McCormack returns home to Glasgow, after a six-year stint as a member of London’s Flying Squad, to head a unit of the new Serious Crime Squad. His first task is to locate Walter Maitland, an elusive criminal who’s been prowling the labyrinth of the city’s underworld. Then he lands another hot potato—a man found on a rubbish heap with his head bashed in turns out to be Gavin Elliot, a former Tory MP and slumlord, who was once accused of rape. A bombing that claims six lives, including Maitland’s brother, and possibly linked to Elliot’s killing, ups the ante. McCormack must keep his homosexuality a secret as he contends with the brass who haven’t forgotten that during the Quaker investigation he brought down the head of CID for the City of Glasgow Police and did so “with what many people... considered an unseemly glee.” Tartan noir fans will hope to see a lot more of this complex, flawed lead.
Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War
Journalist Lowenstein (The End of Wall Street) argues in this masterful history that the financing of the Civil War was as crucial to the shaping of American history as the Emancipation Proclamation and the defeat of the Confederacy. Adjusted for inflation, President Lincoln’s requested $400 million budget for the Union Army in 1861 was more than the U.S. government had spent on the country’s three previous wars combined, Lowenstein notes. In order to help pay for the war, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase initiated America’s first federal use of “fiat” money (currency not backed by gold), a new system of national (rather than state) banks, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (the precursor of today’s IRS), and the progressive income tax. Lowenstein’s lucid, character-driven narrative delves into these and other developments, explaining how crucial economic reforms were to winning the war, and how Republican legislation during Lincoln’s presidency greatly increased federal power and fulfilled his vision of how a strong national government could better the lives of ordinary Americans. As Lowenstein notes, in addition to waging the war, Congress also passed legislation for a transcontinental railroad, established departments of education and agriculture, and enacted the 1862 Homestead Act to promote the development of lands west of the Mississippi River. Full of fascinating historical tidbits and clear explanations of complex financial and political matters, this is a must-read for American history buffs.
The Patient’s Secret
Inspired by real events, this exceptional psychological thriller from White (Beneath Devil’s Bridge) centers on therapist Lily Bradley and her psychology professor husband, Tom, who live with their two children in Story Cove, British Columbia. When Tom finds the body of a female jogger on the beach, a broken string of beads in her hand, Sgt. Rue Duval, the lead police investigator on the Jogger Killer case, believes the woman could be the serial killer’s latest victim. Rue identifies the deceased as a single mother whose 16-year-old son, Joe, recently started a relationship with the Bradleys’ 12-year-old daughter, Phoebe. Tom and Lily suspect each other of hiding secrets related to the murder and mutually agree to protect their secrets, determined to preserve their family. Meanwhile, the number of suspects grows as the police search for a match to the broken strand of beads. White does a superb job keeping the reader guessing as she peels back the layers of a seemingly perfect family to reveal the shocking truth. Suspense fans will want to see more from this talented author.
Like a Sister
Agatha winner Garrett (the Detective by Day series) delves into the vagaries of families, fame, and wealth in this insightful, briskly plotted novel. Columbia graduate student Lena Scott, who’s working on her master’s in nonprofit management, has been estranged for years from her younger half-sister, Desiree Pierce, a former reality TV star turned Instagram darling. When Desiree’s body is found in a Bronx playground the morning after her 25th birthday party, the authorities attribute her death to an overdose. Despite their differences, Lena, who knows Desiree was terrified of needles, begins her own investigation. In her search for answers, Lena gets back in touch with her famous hip-hop producer father (whose financial support she refused), forcing her to reevaluate her childhood and the choices she’s made. Lena regrets having been alienated from Desiree and is jealous of the friends who became Desiree’s substitute sisters. Garrett explores racism and sexism with aplomb, as shown by the sarcasm Lena displays when others underestimate her because she’s a young Black woman. This talented author has upped her game with this one.
The Greatest Invention: A History of the World in Nine Mysterious Scripts
Ferrara (Cypro-Minoan Inscriptions), professor of Aegean civilization at the University of Bologna, takes an entertaining and complex look at how written language has evolved. As she notes, readers may have “a vague, Proustian memory... from your days in elementary or middle school, something about Mesopotamia and how cuneiform was the first and only time writing was invented, the source from which all other scripts descended.” In fact, she suggests, writing, which she calls the “greatest invention in the world,” without which “we would be only voice, suspended in a continual present,” was invented at least three other times, in China, Egypt, and Central America. Her sweeping survey covers quipu, a method of documentation using thousands of strings and knots used by the Incans to “govern an empire” for two centuries in the 15th and 16th centuries; inscriptions carved into the bottom parts of turtle shells in ancient China; and the invention of the tablet in Mesopotamia. Ferrara’s survey is intricate and detailed, bolstered by photos and drawings of the various writing forms. The result is an intellectual feast that will enthrall admirers of Nicholas Basbanes’s On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History.
