Zabalbeascoa debuts with an arresting if diffuse tale of antifascist fighters and their enemies during the Spanish Civil War. In 1937, Félix, Isidro, and Gabriel, recent enlistees in the government’s struggle for democracy, have their first brush with bloodshed in their native Basque country when they discover two corpses on the side of the road. Other members of their unit include Ander, a fellow Basque whose moral fiber is tested when they detain a German pilot fighting for the other side: “We can’t become them,” Isidro exclaims, preventing Ander from executing the prisoner. There’s also Manuel, who joined Franco’s fascist forces as a means to break free from the orphanage where he was raised. Many more perspectives are represented in the short chapters, as Zabalbeascoa attempts to weave a narrative tapestry of the ways people were affected by the war. The structure tends to feel disjointed, but it’s packed with standout scenes, such as one involving a woman who leaves her abusive husband tied up in the woods for the fascists to discover. It’s a memorable portrait of a country in upheaval. Agent: Tim Wojcik, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

Sotolongo debuts with a potent collection centered on characters of Cuban heritage and their desires for connection and self-transformation. In the title story, a lonely single woman responds to a mail-order ad for a clone of herself. By the time the clone arrives, she’s started dating a man, and the clone’s presence complicates her budding romance. “Sad Bird” follows a young woman whose relationship with her girlfriend is on the rocks. To soothe her pain, she begins a ritual of burying the birds that fatally slam into her windows, and develops a friendship with her neighbor, an older man, who helps her dig the graves. “The Moth” pulls off a pitch-perfect riff on Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” in which Mari, a disillusioned Miami library aide, turns into a beautiful moth and soars back to her hometown of Havana. Sotolongo counters the oddball and fantastical conceits with plainspoken prose, as when she conveys the frustration felt by Mari before her transformation (“All through work it was the same: the disgust, the self-loathing, and... such longing”). Theses stories mix the strange and the mundane to intoxicating effect. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

Aber, who won the Whiting Award for her poetry collection, Hard Damage, makes her fiction debut with a stunning coming-of-age story set amid Berlin’s underground art and music scene. Nila, the daughter of Afghan refugees, was born shortly after Germany’s reunification in the city’s “ghetto-heart.” A self-described “small rat,” she grows into a wild child, ashamed of her parents’ poor grasp of the language and of her impoverished immigrant neighborhood, where cobwebs and swastika graffiti adorn the elevators of her building. She invents fictional identities at her all-girls Catholic boarding school, alternately claiming to be Greek, Colombian, or Israeli, and discovers a love for Kafka and photography. At 19, she keeps up her “pathological habit” of lying about her identity with a goup of dance club kids, with whom she takes acid, amphetamines, and ecstasy. She also develops a toxic relationship with Marlowe Woods, 36, a fixture on the techno music scene whose bright early career as a novelist has stalled. Aber casts Nila’s struggle to find herself against a turbulent backdrop of racial tensions, including the murder of Afghan brothers in their bakery, attacks on women in hijabs, and Germans’ xenophobic fear of people with a “southern look.” In the process, Aber offers readers both a piercing look into Nila’s psyche and an acute sense of place. It’s a remarkable achievement. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

A family deals with a mysterious act of fratricide in Koval’s harrowing debut. In the small ski town of Lodgepole, Colo., Nora Sheehan, 13, is charged with the murder of her 14-year-old brother, Nico, who was recently diagnosed with Huntington’s disease, and who died from gunshot wounds. The police believe he was killed with their father, David’s gun. David, a park ranger, is often away, leaving parenting duties to his wife, Angie, whose favoring of Nico was no secret. After Nora’s arrest, David persuades a local attorney to get her son, New York lawyer Julian Dumont, on the case, as he specializes in juvenile criminal defense. It turns out Angie and Julian were high school sweethearts, and a parallel narrative follows an earlier tragedy, when Angie’s seven-year-old sister, Diana, died in a skiing accident while in the teen couple’s care. Nora’s motive remains murky as the case progresses, prompting the Sheehans to wonder whether she killed Nico out of mercy or spite after both sides eliminate the possibility that the gun went off by accident. Along the way, secrets kept by Angie and Julian about the aftermath of Diana’s death come to light. Koval maintains the pacing of a thriller while going deep on themes of guilt, forgiveness, and the toll of keeping secrets. Readers won’t be able to look away. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

The protagonists of these gritty stories from Nobel Prize winner Le Clézio (Wandering Star) contend with injustice and poverty. “The Wrong Side,” the collection’s character-driven opener, details the coming-of-age of Maureez Samson, a young Mozambican girl who is abused by her stepmother after her fisherman father is lost at sea. She runs away and makes her way to a convent, where she hones the singing abilities that eventually bring her fame. In “A Luminous Path,” an Indigenous brother and sister flee from slavery in Peru for the U.S., where they’re captured by border agents. “La Pichancha” follows a group of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the U.S., depicting their dangerous border crossings (one sneaks through the sewer system) and their ill-fated attempts to evade capture (another, chased by police, “runs through the quiet neighborhoods where people are inside, eyes riveted to their TV screens,” only to be caught and returned to his homeland). Throughout, the characters’ memories of their struggles and sacrifice converge with their persistent dreams of a new life, adding to the stories’ emotional impact. It’s a memorable collection from a master of the form. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this vivacious drama from Josaphat (Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow), a Haitian-born woman weighs her plans for medical school against her growing involvement with the Black Panther Party in 1968 Oakland. As a premed student, Nettie Boileau volunteers at a hospital where she cares for people with sickle cell anemia, all of whom are Black. Her father was killed in Haiti while protesting the regime, and Nettie feels drawn to the Black Panthers after she’s introduced to the group by her best friend, Clia. After joining, Nettie falls in love with Melvin, a high-ranking party member, but is torn by a longing to fulfill her family’s wishes that she become a doctor, as well as by her desire for Clia. Josaphat fills the pages with vivid depictions of historical figures such as Stokely Carmichael, whose speech during a rally to free Huey Newton solidifies Nettie’s resolve to join the party, and explores the stark reality of what it was like for the Black Panthers to live under the constant threat of infiltration and violence from law enforcement. This dynamic and layered novel offers much to admire. Agent: Charlotte Gusay, Charlotte Gusay Literary. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

Krouse (Tell Me Everything) delivers an affecting if occasionally schematic collection in which characters find help out of various states of despair. In the title story, a teenage boy intervenes during an armed robbery in a convenience store after the thieves take a woman hostage, sacrificing himself so she can stay with her 10-year-old daughter. The robbers shoot him, and before he dies, he utters the name Olivia, prompting the woman and her daughter to search for Olivia and tell her about his heroism. “Eat My Moose” follows two terminally ill veterans, Bonnie and Colum, who illicitly assist others with similar health conditions in death by suicide. The satisfying work offers Bonnie and Colum reprieve from the pain of their cancers, up until the story’s poignant conclusion. As the collection’s title suggests, strangers often bring salvation, though the situations aren’t always mortal. In “The Piano,” a middle-aged woman is offered a chance to play again after giving up the instrument decades earlier, when her parents deemed it impractical. Krouse sets up the recurring motif a bit too neatly at times, but in the volume’s best entries she makes the thrill of new beginnings palpable (“the relentlessness of the current, a stranger’s hand, and that strong pull back to life”). This is worth a look. Agent: Mary Evans, Mary Evans, Inc. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

Duffy (The Night Interns) impresses with a stunning story of political intrigue in 1994 Northern Ireland. Francie, an elder IRA middleman, is respected for his grasp of the goings-on around his town, making him the ideal handler for a chaotic group of teenage boys tasked with murder. Authorized to kill a British policeman, they complete the mission and show up at the local pub, gloating. Francie quiets them, then gets called to visit his boss, Nailer, a farmer on the edge of town. Nailer wants to discuss the Widow Donnelly, who’s become a nuisance after staging a hunger strike following the disappearance of her son, a suspected informant. What follows is a slow unraveling of the motivations and aims of IRA soldiers, their families, local politicians, and other supporters of the Republican cause, with surprising revelations and dire consequences for those involved. Duffy’s expert plotting is topped only by his atmospheric prose, which is often freighted with a sense of foreboding (“a wild near gale of a night but no rain surprisingly and the air itself was as warm as fumes”). This dazzles. Agent: Faith O’Grady, Lisa Richards Agency. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

Secrets and unplanned pregnancies shape the lives of two generations of women in Airey’s bold and intricate debut. Cora Brady, 16, is orphaned when her father, Michael, dies in the 9/11 attacks. She spends weeks in a daze in New York City until she receives a letter from her aunt Róisín, the younger sister of her late mother, Máire, offering to take care of her in rural Donegal, Ireland. There, Cora learns she’s pregnant. The narrative then flashes back to Róisín and Máire’s teen years in 1970s Ireland, where Máire works as an artist for an ecofeminist group in their village. The group connects Máire with an opportunity to study at NYU, but her first semester is derailed after she visits her roommate Franny’s family in Minnesota, where Franny’s father rapes and impregnates her. Back in Ireland, Máire’s boyfriend, Michael, begins sleeping with Róisín. When he learns what’s happened to Máire, he moves to New York to be with her, unaware that Róisín is now pregnant with his child. A final section in 2018 follows Cora’s daughter, Lyca, as she pieces together her family’s messy history, including what happened to Máire, while Cora travels the world advocating for reproductive rights. Airey crafts a sharp psychological sketch of each woman as they contend with their parallel crises, adding nuance and depth without shying away from making a strong statement for reproductive rights. Readers will be eager to see what Airey does next. Agent: Hillary Jacobson, CAA. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink

Sittenfeld (Romantic Comedy) zooms in on urban Midwesterners dealing with middle-aged disillusions in this witty story collection. The protagonists, who skew liberal and are often blind to their upper-middle-class privilege, bumble into sticky situations. In “A for Alone,” set in 2017, floundering artist Irene conducts a project involving a series of lunch dates with men, after which she asks them to fill out a questionnaire about the “Mike Pence rule,” a reference to Pence’s refusal to spend time alone with a woman other than his wife. “The Hug,” which takes place in the summer of 2020, starts with the flimsiest of premises: Daphne, a St. Louis accountant, tells her husband she plans to hug her ex-boyfriend when he visits them during a road trip from Montana. But with Covid raging, a hug is not just a hug; Daphne plans to isolate from her family for six days afterward. As the couple discuss the plan, they’re forced to examine their assumptions about intimacy and faithfulness. In “Lost But Not Forgotten,” Sittenfeld revisits Lee Fiora, the protagonist of her 2005 novel Prep, as Lee attends her high school class’s 30-year reunion. In one sparkling comedy of manners after another, the author documents with a clear and affectionate eye how tiny prejudices and blind spots lead her protagonists astray. These stories entertain and unsettle in equal measure. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 10/04/2024 | Details & Permalink