In YA author McLemore’s uneven adult debut (after Flawless Girls), a successful influencer becomes embroiled in scandal when her husband is murdered and her home set afire, most likely to conceal the evidence. The question of who murdered August Iverson drives much of the narrative, which is told from multiple perspectives, including those of momfluencer May, her fans, her five daughters, and a mysterious man known throughout most of the novel as Luke Sweatshirt. May, for her part, is focused on remaining connected to her audience (“The first rule of weathering a scandal was to carry on, business as usual,” McLemore writes), and as she continues to post, the Iversons reveal themselves to be just as sinister as they are glamorous, especially after the disappearance of May’s second daughter, March. McLemore thoroughly skewers influencer culture, revealing the resentments and tensions simmering beneath a picture-perfect veneer. Unfortunately, the characters are a bit too cartoonishly drawn, and despite a juicy premise, the pace is far too plodding. There’s not enough here to hold the reader’s interest. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel, Goderich,& Bourrett. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Greenwood debuts with an acerbic near-future tale of tech and the desire for connection. Eddy, the company cofounded by Chris Curtis, has reshaped the world with its handheld communication devices and emulations of real people, designed to bring comfort to users. Now, in the wake of his business partner’s death, Chris has become unmoored, spending his days on Sky Yacht, the company’s dirigible headquarters. After the yacht’s security system flags suspicious messages sent by his new intern Zoraida Simpson, he becomes fixated on her. He surreptitiously reads Zoraida’s messages and learns of how she relies on an emulation of her younger self for advice. Eventually, he gleans her true intentions and makes a series of impulsive decisions, which steer the novel toward its crisis point. Greenwood captures Chris’s mental state with wry humor (“It was... gratifying to make such use of my unsung facility for justifying my own inertia”) and offers surprisingly moving insights on the characters’ relationships with technology (when ordering emulations, Chris’s customers gravitate toward the “beloved people who have since for whatever reason ceased to love you”). This appealing satire has plenty of bite. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Thien (Do Not Say We Have Nothing) delivers a stimulating if diffuse novel about migration and storytelling. It takes place in a magical realm called The Sea, where time and space seem to have collapsed. Lina, 7, and her father arrive here as refugees from their home city of Foshan in what was once China, and encounter fellow displaced people from around the world. As they wait for the rest of their family to join them, Lina and her father reread the three books they fled with—children’s biographies of poet Du Fu, philosopher Baruch Spinoza, and historian Hannah Arendt. At 10, Lina meets their neighbors Jupiter, Bento, and Blucher, who know an uncanny amount about Du, Spinoza, and Arendt, and hail from those three thinkers’ respective times and places. Thien alternates Lina’s story with lengthy biographical passages devoted to the three historical figures. In the present, Lina, her father, and their new friends pass their days discussing history and philosophy, sharing stories, and searching for meaning (“What we call now has no solidity,” claims the Arendt-like Blucher, prompting Lina’s father to respond, “Maybe imagination is a way to find that place”). Thien hints intriguingly at deeper themes of grief and interconnection, but they’re left underdeveloped. There’s much here to admire, but it doesn’t quite hang together. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

The 33 pieces in this entertaining collection from Keret (Fly Already) lay bare the absurdities, anxieties, and ironies of contemporary existence. In the Cinderella story “Soulo,” a neuroscientist who cofounded the Faculty of Loneliness Studies of the Berlin Free University designs a robotic companion who fits her every need. The bickering childless couple in “Chinese Singles Day” buy a bargain-priced dining set complete with a free baby seat, which forces them to discuss whether they plan to have children. The fatalistic “Genesis, Chapter 0” chronicles a man’s existential frustrations, beginning with the boredom he feels after recovering from chronic pain following an accident and continuing through his difficult marriage (their couple’s therapist views their relationship as “an incurable disease”) and his worries about his son’s military service. War’s terror and absurdity permeate several of the entries, such as the breathtaking “Cherry Garcia Memories with M&Ms on Top,” which begins with the line, “Sometimes I wonder how many of the people I know have ever killed someone,” before describing a nightmarish face-off between two opposing soldiers whose rifles have jammed. Taken together, these vignettes form a vibrant tapestry of surprising depth. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Halász’s intelligent debut novel chronicles a fractured marriage in contemporary Budapest. Vera, an animator, flees her verbally and physically abusive husband, Péter, and relocates to her father’s house with her two young daughters. She and Péter had tried couples therapy in an effort to make the marriage work for the sake of the children, but as she reflects on Péter’s abuse and her resultant insomnia, she considers a divorce. Complicating matters further is her fixation on her ex-lover from high school, Iván, who seems to share her affection, but who is also now married. Vera also feels regret over her stalled artistic career, which she abandoned after becoming a mother. At the urging of her best friend, Andi, she reconnects with Márk, an old classmate of Andi’s who has recently divorced. They begin sleeping together, and Márk introduces Vera to cocaine. Halász hits some false notes late in the novel, as it turns toward Vera’s surreal spiritual visions, but for the most part, she vividly portrays Vera’s world through a seamless blend of impressionistic narration and dialogue. Readers will find much to admire in this striking portrait of a woman’s search for fulfillment. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

This brilliant interlocking diptych from Énard (Compass) begins with a soldier emerging from a battlefield into a nightmarish future. What has become of the world is a mystery, as is the identity of this haunted survivor. The answers may lie in a conference celebrating the work of the late mathematician and concentration camp survivor Paul Heudeber, held aboard a cruise ship on the inauspicious date of September 11, 2001. In attendance are theorists and intellectuals, each with their own agenda and ax to grind. Chief among them is Heudeber’s daughter, Irina, who’s there to present a paper on the irrational numbers of Persian mystic Nasir al-Dun Tusi. Irina has an ulterior motive: to pry the secret of her father’s life and suicide from his widow, Maja. What ensues is a fervent collage of letters, arguments, and confessions that spans from Buchenwald and the GDR to the fall of the Soviet Union and the Twin Towers. When Énard returns to the lone soldier, he’s seen scaling an unforgiving rock face on the other side of which he discovers another survivor amid the ruins. With an unflinching depiction of civilization’s decline and its dystopic aftermath, Énard builds a great work of art from “the remains, the traces, and the great mourning of the future.” It’s a masterpiece. (May)

Reviewed on 03/28/2025 | Details & Permalink

Carr (The Rule of the Land, a travelogue) serves up an enticing panorama of a small Irish fishing village transformed by the discovery of an infant abandoned in a barrel on the beach. Fisherman Ambrose Bonnar and his wife, Christine, take in the baby and raise him alongside their toddler, Declan. They name the boy Brendan and he becomes the talk of the townsfolk, who refer to him as “the boy from the sea” and are pleased when the Bonnars formally adopt him, even as the move causes a rift between Christine and her sister, who resents being left alone to care for their aging father. When the kids enter school, however, Declan distances himself from Brendan and ignores him. By the time Brendan is a preteen, he takes to going on long aimless walks around the village, during which he encounters residents who tell him their troubles and he gives them his blessings. The perspective continuously shifts from one character to another, and readers will wish for a bit more depth, especially when it comes to the one-dimensional Declan. Still, Carr manages to paint a colorful portrait of the townsfolk via their curiosity about Brendan’s origins and their belief that he can help them. Readers will be hooked. Agent: Irene Baldoni, Georgina Capel Assoc. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

Mattia (The Fifth Wound) dazzles with this genre-spanning collection of stories about queer and trans characters navigating desire and love. Raphael, the protagonist of “Valentine’s Day,” submits to a series of hookups on Grindr while pining for the man he loves. In “Wild and Blue,” Peach and Sandy go on the run after stealing an experimental drug from a pharmaceutical company. As the drug strips Sandy of his memories, Peach, who is trans, worries her lover’s altered mind will dismantle his ability to see her as a woman. Mattia draws on Greek and Roman mythology with “Celebrity Skin,” about two trans women who become lovers during their quest to reach a cult that performs the mystical and gender-affirming Aphroditos ritual. In “Cradle Me, Lucifer,” the narrator details her bond with her pet python, Milky, who was given to her by an ex. As she chronicles her beautiful and heartbreaking relationship with the snake, her own life and those of the people around her come into focus. Ripe with poetic metaphor, Mattia’s narratives blend reality, magical realism, and autofiction to create a fever dream of yearning. Readers will be enthralled. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

The charming debut from Evans takes the form of letters and emails exchanged by a divorced and retired woman with her friends, family, foes, and literary idols. It begins in 2012 as Sybil Van Antwerp, 73, politely declines an invitation to visit her brother, Felix, in France, then fancifully invites the author Ann Patchett to use her Maryland home as a writer’s retreat. Sybil spent her career clerking for a judge, and after reading of his death in the newspaper, she begins receiving strange and threatening letters from an aggrieved former defendant, who calls her a “cold metal bitch.” Evans juxtaposes these screeds with Sybil’s intimate fan mail to Joan Didion, who writes her back in 2013, expressing empathy as a fellow member of “the club of parents who have buried children” (Sybil lost a son at eight). Sybil, who was adopted, grows curious about her ancestry after her older son gives her a DNA test for Christmas, and she brushes off concerns about her declining eyesight from her daughter, Fiona, who lives in Australia. As the years go on, Sybil’s relationships brim with tension waiting to be released, and the detailed connections between each character are brilliantly mapped through the correspondence. It adds up to an appealing family drama. Agent: Hilary McMahon, Westwood Creative Artists. (May)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink

The phenomenal English-language debut from Daanje weaves an affecting love story through a tangle of memories and dreams. Four years after WWI, amnesiac veteran Noon Merckem lives in a Ghent asylum, where he’s visited by women looking for their husbands who went missing in action. Noon was found with no identity papers and wearing a combination of Flemish, French, and German uniforms. He knows nothing of his past, and he’s haunted by nightmares of the trenches. One woman, Mrs. Julienne Coppens, identifies him from a scar on his forehead and insists he is her missing husband, Amand. Noon is released to her care, and they return to Kortrijk, where they try to rebuild their lives together. As Julienne slowly unveils details of their past, their love blossoms, but her shame and guilt over things she did while he was away threaten to overwhelm their newfound peace, as do his increasingly violent nightmares and growing distrust of the memories Julienne fills his head with. His blackouts, during which he believes he’s another man with an entirely different backstory, also become more frequent and prolonged. The complex and layered narrative is as moving as it is unsettling, and it will keep readers wondering about the truth long after the final page. It’s a remarkable achievement. (May)

Reviewed on 03/21/2025 | Details & Permalink