This looks like another smash hit from the reliable Shteyngart, renowned author of Super Sad True Love Story and Our Country Friends and onetime writer for HBO’s Succession. It introduces us to another unorthodox American family, this one a combination of Russian, Jewish, Korean and WASP-y New England. The titular young Vera, half Jewish, half Korean, is our eyes and ears, which gives the novel a likeably naive air. Vera is desperate for her Russian-heritage father and struggling blueblood stepmother to stay together. She dreams about meeting her real mother who will surely give her the answers she’s looking for an indecipherable, tumultuous world. This is classic zeitgeist Shteyngart, full of chutzpah and daring, identifying the most intriguing questions about the changing cachet in a modern, imploding America.
Who was the real Christopher Marlowe, described here as “Shakespeare’s greatest rival”? This is an attempt by Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Greenblatt to get into the complicated head of the great playwright and the wild, dangerous times he lived in. It is in the evocation of Elizabethan England that Greenblatt most excels: he perfectly conjures the mood of a repressive, xenophobic nation in which artists must stay within formal conventions, and popular entertainment is vulgar, consisting of public hangings and animal fighting. The young Marlowe is a lover of Latin poetry, which presents for him a portal into another kind of thinking, transgressive in its forays into imagination and scepticism. That Marlowe paved the way for Shakespeare is unarguable, so convincing is this story of a visionary who changed Elizabethan theatre.
Ruth has grown up in the ‘snowglobe’ of Christian communism – no private property, no television, and little tolerance of childish curiosity. Every day Ruth wears the same costume and goes about her ritualistic day with other identical families in the community, who share in the set meals and group singing. We follow her through her life from childhood to marriage and motherhood, as she attempts to make sense of her unchosen path and its many mysteries, the possibilities of freedom glinting occasionally. This novel asks big questions about what kind of impositions we live according to, and what is the most likely path to happiness.
This posthumously published (Segal died last year aged 96) tale uncovering the experience of a black addict in 50s New York is nicely nuanced. Ilka Weissnix is a Jewish-Austrian refugee who meets urbane black American Carter Bayoux in a railroad bar. He is much older than her and clearly an alcoholic, but she finds his charisma overwhelming. Carter shows her the truth of his existence, its loneliness and family estrangement, and while she falls in love, he chops and changes his mind about whether they should even see each other. This is a serious novel of depth that Segal called “my favourite child” due to its semi-autobiographical nature.
This atmospheric thriller begins with a man, Oghi, waking up after a terrible car crash to find himself paralysed and under the control of his angry mother-in-law. Yes, it sounds like a combination of Misery and a Bernard Manning joke, but this is particularly disconcerting in its execution, as Oghi discovers his wife died in the crash and his mother-in-law wants him to pay for the death of her only child. Like Misery, the mood is claustrophobic and increasingly unnerving as Oghi spends his days locked in a single room, trapped in his frozen body. Then his mother-in-law started digging in the garden and a whole new kind of horror presents itself. Suspenseful, eerie and surprisingly profound.
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For everyone who loved Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk, this is the true tale of two young boys, Jean and Johnny, who found friendship through learning bird song. The transformative power of the natural world is not a new idea, but this book gives its inspiring story real emotional resonance. It all begins in northern France, where the two boys meet and find they have a talent for mimicking bird song. They start entering competitions and go on to become legendary on the circuit performing together. The writers believe that expressing the beauty of bird song will bring listeners closer to an understanding of our feathered friends and it’s hard to argue after reading this.
This story of young Lalloo’s tough upbringing in the brickyards of Lahore begins with the brutal murder of the seven-year-old’s brother, which sees Lalloo separated from his family. As he gets older, he becomes determined to find a way to get his parents out of the brickyard and he saves every rupee he can to help pay the debts which have trapped them there. He also falls in love but realises that the freedom he seeks for himself and his beloved may come at a very high price. Like the flashing fireflies in the dark, hope is hard fought for and comes in glints. This is a heartrending tale of family, tenacity, and love.
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When a famous conceptual artist’s installation disappears, the aftershocks affect those involved in the project so dramatically their lives are changed forever. Already being compared to Calvino and Borges, this is a whirlwind novel set in the glamorous and sometimes criminal world of visual art. It toys with questions of value and reality in a world full of illusion and fakery. Rose says he wanted to consider metaphysical questions such as ‘what is real?’, ‘How can we know that?’, ‘When is now?’ and thought the commercial art world would be a good place to start. This is intelligent, playful, intriguing stuff which is also reminiscent of DeLillo and Auster.
The premise is irresistible – an unnamed narrator, years after she moved a continent away from her unbearable friends in New York, finds herself agreeing to a dinner party in their company again, hosted by two art curators. A mutual friend has died and the party is ostensibly in his honour. But our narrator still despises the bourgeois group she used to admire and the vacuous conversation she once sought to emulate. Her seething resentment even extends to herself, “an absolute idiot” for agreeing to show up. This is a scathing, very funny and ruthless takedown of pretentious boho millennials.
Last year’s reissue of Inspector Imanishi Investigates, an elegant, intricate detective story set in 1960 Japan – as much about a nation emerging from the ashes of World War II as solving a murder – brought Matsumoto back into a western audience focus. A Quiet Place, now reissued, follows Tsuneo Asai, an unassuming mid-ranking government bureaucrat, whose wife dies of a sudden heart attack while he’s on a business trip. His gentle digging unravels doubts about all he thought he knew and sends him internally spiralling. Matsumoto is compared to Agatha Christie. In reality, he’s closer to Simenon. There is the simple, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other plotting and the unshowiness of a great Maigret tale. There is never any big reveal, just a magnet-like ability to tie you into every page. Essential and moreish.
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