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Whatever your plans were this month, chances are they've changed a bit. If you're lucky, this means you're spending a lot more time at home, with extra hours to fill since you can't go outside — or, you know, sleep straight through the night. There's no better way to fill those extra hours than by reading one of these newly released books, which serve the dual purpose of letting you escape from our present reality and supporting the book industry, which — like pretty much every other sector of our economy — is being hit hard right now by the coronavirus pandemic. Just remember, no matter what else is going on in the world, at least there's good stuff to read.
The romantic legacy of the Old West, particularly as it pertains to the Gold Rush, persists even today, despite the fact that it's clear that legacy is made of legend, not facts. It's this legend that Zhang confronts in her imaginative, vital debut novel, which centers around Lucy and Sam, a brother and sister who find themselves out West after their parents immigrated from China, in the hopes of striking rich. From the beginning, those dreams are dashed, as their father winds up mining for coal instead of gold, and the siblings set out on a journey of their own, where they will confront the lies that they — and we — have been told about the American dream, and figure out how to reconcile their places within a land of so many cruel contradictions. Zhang's searing words pierce the heart of America's founding mythology, laying bare its lies, and offering up a new, much-needed vision of this country and its people.
— K.I.
From the Peabody award-winning host of NPR's beloved science podcast Invisibilia, comes a one-of-a-kind debut. Miller tells the story of an obscure 19th century scientist who made it his mission to catalog as many of the world's fish as he could — and whose collection of specimens was shattered in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Part biography, part memoir, and part meditation on resilience, this book is wholly unique and a true delight. — L.C.
Bieker's debut novel is a deliciously twisted California gothic tale that takes place in the fictional Central Valley town of Peaches, and focused on Lacey May, a 14-year-old girl whose mother has abandoned her in the hands of an extremist religious cult, the kind where acolytes are baptized with Coca Cola, since rain has become something much prayed for, but rarely seen. Godshot reveals the way that patriarchal religious oppression thrives during times of economic and environmental instability, and feeds itself off the bodies of its young — particularly its young women. Throughout, Bieker's writing is compelling and propulsive, illuminating the darkest corners of the sunniest state. — K.I.
Robert Kolker, author of the magnificent Lost Girls, takes on the fascinating (and terrifying) story of the Galvin family and their 12 children — as half of them are consumed by schizophrenia, one by one. In 1965, schizophrenia and its accompanying violence and delusions, was a largely misunderstood psychiatric illness treated with shock therapy, institutionalization, and catatonia by tranquilizers. As Kolker tells the Galvins story, he also explores the genetic roots of the disease in this devastating, illuminating, and compulsively readable book. — L.C.
Gould's second novel — following, Friendship, her acutely rendered portrayal of two best friends whose lives are turning out to be something other than they'd imagined — grapples with topics ranging from motherhood to grief to creative ambition to, yes, friendship, to the search for an answer to the question: "How can a life have two most important things?" Perfect Tunes follows Laura from her first days in turn-of-the-21st-century New York City, where she's a young woman living with her best friend, Callie, and making money as a cocktail waitress and music as a passion. In short order, Laura begins hooking up with Dylan, another up-and-coming musician, mourns him after he dies in a drug-related drowning, realizes she's pregnant, has and raises a daughter, Marie, and wholly reimagines the life she thought she'd have, in the grand tradition of mothers everywhere. Gould's writing is warm, funny, and familiar, though there are moments that are so devastatingly observed that reading them sent sharp prickles of recognition up my skin (for anyone who's ever had uncomfortable yet unforgettable sex up in a too-high loft bed, this is for you!). Perfect Tunes feels like a love letter to all the women who have come to terms with the fact that the great adventure of their lives is not some static thing, but rather is something they'll have to work on and toward, in ways they'd never imagined. — K.I.
It might not be typical to praise a book by calling it a mess, but then there's little that's typical about Whitney's provocative, emotional, infinitely faceted mess of a reckoning with their identity, their body, their mother, their grandmother — their everything. And besides, as Whitney themself writes, "Really, I can't explain myself without making a mess." The resulting explanation is Heaven, a fearless, probing journey into womanhood, transness, and a search to reconcile all the disparate parts that make up a person into one cohesive whole. It's also a reminder that messiness is at the heart of all beautiful things, since it gestures to the haphazard nature of connections and love and simply being alive. We can try and control and contain the mess, but, in the end, it's hard to know what is even ours to control, better maybe to revel in the messy exuberance of it all.
— K.I.
Monica Hesse, author of American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land, and columnist for the Washington Post, follows up her YA mystery Girl in a Blue Coat, with another YA novel, They Went Left. The book tackles an underrepresented aspect of World War II literature — the displaced persons camps that many survivors of the Holocaust found themselves enduring once the war had ended. Eighteen-year-old Zofia Lederman lost nearly her entire family to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Only she and her brother Zabek are left alive, but separated amidst the rubble and chaos of post-war Europe. Zofia's harrowing journey to find Zabek and the fellow survivors she meets along the way will stay with the reader — particularly the echoes of the present evoked in a narrative of the past. — L.C.
This charming, romantic, earnest novel follows the magnetic Quinn as she navigates a breakup with her first girlfriend and a rebound relationship with a popular girl whom Quinn had long mistaken for being straight. Along the way, there's college applications, sports teams, gossip, friend groups, parties, parents… basically, all the stuff that goes into every classic teen plot ever — just extremely queer. Author Katie Heaney told Refinery29's Gabrielle Korn that if she had seen someone who looked like Quinn represented in literature in high school, it would have changed everything. —L.C.
A gripping portrait of four young women in South Korea navigating a world of strict social hierarchies, extreme plastic surgery, and K-Pop fan mania. If I Had Your Face is set in the specific milieu of K-Pop fandom, but its focus on the tangled and complicated nature of female friendship is universally familiar and fascinating. —L.C.
A lyrical and meditative memoir on the damage we inflict in the pursuit of perfection, the pain of losing our dreams, and the power of letting go of both.
O'Connell Whittet was devastated when a misstep in rehearsal caused a career-ending injury as a ballerina. As she was forced to reconsider her future, she also began to reconsider what she had taken for granted in her past. The book explores the silent suffering of the ballerina, and finds it emblematic of the violence that women quietly shoulder every day, in a story that is ultimately redemptive and up-lifting. —L.C.
Victoria James was just 21 when she became the country's youngest sommelier at a Michelin-starred restaurant. In her memoir she explores the highs and lows of the restaurant industry. James has written a love letter to good food, good wine, and, most of all, good people. — L.C.
Aija Mayrock, best known as an activist, spoken word performer and author of The Survival Guide to Bullying, has written a timely book of poetry. She
explores truth, silence, wounds, healing, and the resilience all women share. — L.C.
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Leah Carroll, Khareem Sudlow
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