Candy House, by Jennifer Egan
You don’t have to read Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work.”A visit from the Goon team” to take the first step into this highly anticipated sequel. But for lovers of the early nostalgic New Yorkers of the 2010 book, the intellectual beauty and laser sharpness of the modern take, “Candy House” is like coming home – though is lost. This time, Egan’s characters are the creators and prisoners of a universe in which, through the wonders of technology, people can access their entire memory bank and use Use content as social media currency. The result is a glitzy, repulsive house of fun that feels more familiar than sci-fi, all expressed with Egan’s signature creative confidence and – perhaps the most impressive of all. all – heart. “Candy House” is its moment, with all that implied.
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Paying 19, by Claire-Louise Bennett
Bennett, a British writer living in Ireland, first appeared with his debut novel in 2015, “Pond.” Her second book contains all the language arts and dark wit of the first, but it’s even more entertaining. “Checkout 19,” ostensibly the story of a language-loving young woman in a working-class town outside London, has an unusual setting: the human mind—a wonderful, surprising thing. Natural, weird and very funny. All the words one might use to describe this book – experimental, autobiographical, surreal – fail to convey the sheer joy of “Checkout 19”. You will be stunned, delighted, reminded of how enjoyable reading can be, eager to share it with everyone in your life. It is a love letter to the books, and also an argument for them.
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Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
Kingsolver’s powerful new novel, a close retelling of Charles Dickens’ “David Copperfield” set in contemporary Appalachia, gallops through issues including childhood poverty, drug addiction and deprivation capture in the countryside even as its larger focus remains on the question of how an artist’s consciousness is formed. Like Dickens, problem solving is blatantly political and works on a grand scale, enlivening her pages with a wealth of charm and the presence of seemingly everything terrifying ever crept upon the earth.
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The furrows, by Namwali Serpell
After losing her brother when she was 12 years old, one of ‘s storytellers snakeHer second novel repeatedly encounters men like him as she overcomes longstanding trauma into adulthood. She has a close relationship with one of them, who is also haunted by his past. This layered book explores the nature of grief, how it can lengthen or compress time, reshape memories, and make us dream of other realities. “I don’t want to tell you what happened,” the narrator says. “I want to tell you what that feels like.”
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Faith, by Hernan Diaz
Diaz uncovers the secrets of early 20th-century American fortune, detailing the dizzying rise of a New York tycoon and his wife’s mysterious talents. Each of the novel’s four installments, told from different perspectives, diverts the narrative (and elevates readers’ expectations) while paying homage to literary giants from Henry James to Jorge Luis Borges. Whose version of events can we trust? Diaz focuses on the stories behind the stories to uncover the dark workings behind capitalism, as well as the unknown figures behind the so-called Greats of History. It was an exhilarating pursuit.
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A Vast World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, by Ed Yong
Yong has certainly given himself a difficult task with this book – to take humans outside of their “sensory bubble” and examine how non-human animals experience the world. But the enormous difficulty in making sense of the senses we don’t have is a reminder that each of us can only buy a fraction of reality. Yong is a great storyteller, and there are many surprising facts about animals that help this book reach its poignant conclusion: The breadth of this vast world will make us realize ourselves. how small it really is.
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Real Life: A Memoir by Hua Hsu
In this quietly harrowing memoir, Hsu recalls starting at Berkeley in the mid-1990s as a cautious musical snob, picky about his own tastes and judging the tastes of others. cruelly. Then he meets Ken, a Japanese-American boy. Their friendship was intense, but short-lived. Less than three years later, Ken is killed in a car robbery. Hsu traces their relationship – a relationship that seems unlikely at first but eventually becomes a permanent part of his life, a trellis through which both young men can grow and mature.
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Strangers to Ourselves: Unstable minds and the stories that make us up, by Rachel Aviv
In this rich and nuanced book, Aviv writes about people in extreme mental distress, starting with her own experience when she was told she had anorexia at the age of 6. That personal history brings her special attention to how stories can both unravel as well as distort what a person is going through. This is not an antipsychotic book – Aviv is too knowledgeable about the specifics of any given situation to succumb to anything too far-reaching. What she does is keep space for empathy and uncertainty, exploring countless stories instead of rushing to explain them.
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Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation, by Linda Villarosa
Through case history as well as independent reporting, Villarosa’s remarkable third book elegantly traces the effects of the legacy of slavery – and the anti-Black doctrine that emerges to justify it. philosophically justified it – for Black’s health: reproductive, environmental, spiritual, etc. It begins with a long personal history of her awakening to structural inequalities. In this, the journalist retells various stories about race and medicine – the high mortality rate of Black mothers; an increase in heart disease and hypertension; The often-repeated maxim that Blacks refuse psychotherapy – evidence not of Black inferiority, but of racism in the health care system.
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We don’t know ourselves, by Fintan O’Toole
O’Toole, a prolific critic and essayist, calls this inventive story “a personal history of modern Ireland” — an ambitious project, but one he accomplished with elan. Charting six decades of Irish history in opposition to his own life, O’Toole both deftly illustrates a country in strong currents, and includes a sly, self-deprecating biography that conveys His sociology of humor and pathology. Yes, you’ll be educated — about growing secularism, Celtic tigers, human rights — but you’ll also be passionately, animatedly entertained by a talented racist who at the height of his power.
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