edited by Hirsh Sawhney Akashic Books ($15.95) by Rav Grewal-Kök Delhi should provide a rich setting for noir fiction. It’s one of the world’s largest cities, the capital of a nation marked by a spectacular gulf between its rich (or merely middle class) and its multitudes of poor citizens. It’s not hard to draw contrasts. […]
Helen Oyeyemi Nan A. Talese ($25) by Spencer Dew One of the slightly less haunted characters in Helen Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching, attempting to defend the work of Edgar Allen Poe, claims that Poe’s genius lies in “The whole casual horror thing. Like someone standing next to you and screaming their head off and you […]
Brian Evenson art by Zak Sally Coffee House Press ($14.95) by Katie Haegele What is it that makes a story scary? Explanations tend to make it fall apart, but you sure know it when you see it. Similarly, it’s hard to articulate what makes a joke funny. In person it can be as tiny as […]
Jack O’Connell Algonquin Books ($13.95) by Vincent Czyz Jack O'Connell’s multi-layered novel The Resurrectionist is billed as everything from detective fiction to fantasy—primarily because it defies easy categorization. While “speculative noir” might be a little nearer the mark, a handy label is beside the point: O’Connell doesn’t just blur genres with this quasi-gothic tale set in America’s […]
Richard Powers Farrar, Straus & Giroux ($25) by Allan Vorda What most people want in life, more than love or money or power, is happiness. So imagine a somewhat depressive teacher encountering a young woman who exudes happiness—a happiness so contagious it infects everyone she meets. This is the premise of Richard Powers’s novel Generosity: An […]
China Miéville Del Rey ($26) by Will Wlizlo Imagine walking down a city street. Next, imagine that when you walk past someone who doesn’t look like you, or dress like you, or who speaks a shrill other language, you completely ignore them. In fact, you’re expected to ignore these foreign passersby. You ignore countless aromatic […]
Kristiina Ehin translated by Ilmar Lehtpere Oleander Press (£5.95) by Rebecca Farivar Reading Estonian author Kristiina Ehin’s new collection of short stories, A Priceless Nest, it’s not surprising to learn that she is foremost a poet. The stories are short, but intense, using the compression of poetry to delve into new worlds. In many ways the […]
Colm Tóibín Scribner ($25) by Suzann Clemens Laced with Irish idioms and universal themes, Colm Tóibín’s sixth novel Brooklyn opens in the author’s hometown of Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, Ireland. Eilis Lacey, a bookkeeping student living with her widowed mother and older sister, struggles in this postwar coastal town where class structure, economic hardship, and the imposing intimacy […]
Damion Searls Dalkey Archive Press ($12.95) by Brooks Sterritt What We Were Doing and Where We Were Going, Damion Searls’s first book of fiction, is remarkable for its humor, its erudition, and for what it does with existing literary texts. The short stories in this collection feel utterly new, yet revisit and refresh classics of […]
Lorrie Moore Knopf ($25) by Kevin Lynch In the climactic scene of A Gate at the Stairs, Tassie Keltjin tries to get back to her parent’s farm home by taking a treacherous night drive on her Suzuki motor scooter. Author Lorrie Moore’s mental Suzuki attempts the same thing by driving backwards to pre-Iraq-invasion America, the folly […]