Let me start with quite the understatement: This November is a stressful, stressful, stressful month. Here at the Chicago Review of Books, we hope your month is marked by two things: action and care. For our American readers, that means getting out to vote and showing your love to yourself and your community.
Now to the topic of books: We hope that the books below will bring you hours of escape and delight. Lose yourself in these captivating stories and studies of our Earth’s marvels.
From all of us on the team, read on!
What We Tried to Bury Grows Here
By Julian Zabalbeascoa
Two Dollar Radio
What We Tried to Bury Grows Here is a masterfully-crafted historical epic about the Spanish Civil War. Set in late 1936, Isidro Elejalde leaves his Basque village to join the fight to preserve his country, where his life begins to intersect with a young mother Mariana who is working to implore the world to support democracy. Julian Zabalbeascoa crafts a chorus of voices caught in the bloody conflict; the result is a true wonder of research and prose.
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
By Haruki Murakami
Knopf Publishing Group
The literary event of November may just be the latest release from the iconic Haruki Murakami. When a boy’s partner disappears, his resulting search to find her takes him into middle age and on a journey that slips between the real and the other—a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town. The City and Its Uncertain Walls lulls readers into a dreamy, porous world that is both enticing and peculiar, capped off by Murakami’s surgeon-like approach to sentences that leave you contemplating your own existence.
An Earthquake is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth
By Anna Moschovakis
Soft Skull
After a seismic event leaves the world shattered, an unnamed narrator at the end of a mediocre acting career struggles to regain the ability to walk on ground that is in constant motion. When her roommate Tala disappears, the narrator finds herself caught between a desire to find stability and the urge to find and kill her missing friend. Anna Moschovakis’s An Earthquake is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth is unsettling both in its plot and its writing; it’s a dark, comic, and unflinching look at our drive to survive in a crumbling world.
Rosenfeld
By Maya Kessler
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Listen up fans of Luster and Vladimir, because you’ll want to mark the release date for Maya Kessler’s new novel. Beginning with an electrifying encounter in a bathroom stall between filmmaker Noa Simmons and CEO Teddy Rosenfeld, their ravenous and volatile romance threatens to upend both of their lives and lay bare the secrets they both hold. Rosenfeld is all intensity and desire, making for a reading experience that will have you turning the pages as fast as you can to see where it will take you next.
Lazarus Man
By Richard Price
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
From the writer of The Wire and The Color of Money comes Lazarus Man, a blistering exploration of city life in America. When a five-story tenement collapses in an instant in East Harlem—leaving multiple people dead or missing—the resulting destruction and government ineptitude threatens to leave the neighborhood in turmoil. From here, Lazarus Man follows a cast of characters whose lives have been permanently impacted by the disaster. Richard Price is a writer who knows how to bring the extremities of life into full view, shining a light on the beauty and pain that each character feels as the community teeters between grief, persistence, and dissolution.
The Miraculous from the Material: Understanding the Wonders of Nature
By Alan Lightman
Pantheon
The Miraculous from the Material has such an audacious premise that you can’t help but to be utterly compelled: A study of nature’s greatest phenomena that connect us to the true wonders of the cosmos. Acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman explores some of the most stunning materials in our universe, including atoms, rainbows, snowflakes, spider webs, the rings of Saturn, and much more. Have you ever found yourself wondering why rainbows make an arc or how hummingbirds fly? Then Lightman has created the book for you. The Miraculous from the Material astounds at every turn because it is science at its purest, most curious form, and is sure to bring out the child in every reader.
Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel
By Edwin Frank
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
For lovers of the history of literature, there is no better book to pick up this fall than Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel. New York Review Books Editorial Director Edwin Frank meticulously details the story of the twentieth-century novel and the ways in which the greatest authors of that time attempted to write works that were as startling and unforeseen as the world they lived in. In a time in which books and book culture are under threat, Frank’s literary history proves to be more than just a trip through our greatest works; it’s an urgent call for daring in our reading and writing.
The Burrow
By Melanie Cheng
Tin House Books
This captivating and heart-wrenching family saga follows parents Jin and Amy Lee, who buy their daughter Lucie a rabbit in hopes of restoring a bit of joy to their home in the Australian suburbs. But when Amy Lee breaks their fragile sense of peace, they must confront their tragedy and ask whether opening their hearts to the rabbit will help them heal or only invite further sorrow. Melanie Cheng perfectly captures the anxious hope that comes with a last-ditch effort for healing as well as the impending dread that what is broken may not be fixed.
Versailles
By Kathryn Davis
Graywolf Press
Versailles tells the story of Marie Antoinette—an expansive spirit locked in a pretty body and an impossible moment in history. This witty and wise novel follows Antoinette from her first trip to France to meet her fiancé through her days hemmed in by the absurdity of French aristocracy. Kathryn Davis brings a careful hand and a clear eye to this complicated subject to create a portrait of a life that has been shaken free from history’s daunting mythology.
The Old Neighborhood
By Bill Hillmann
Tortoise Books
Tortoise Books has been on a roll when it comes to breathing new life into Chicago classics. In this portrait of Chicago’s Far North Side, Bill Hillmann tells the story of Joey, the youngest child in a mixed-race family, as he navigates the racial tensions and petty crime in his neighborhood. The Old Neighborhood perfectly captures a moment in time in Chicago that we often only can catch glimpses of today in old bars and pool halls—grimy, a bit off-kilter, but undeniably alluring in its authenticity.
Then, Again
By Jaclyn Youhana Garver
Lake Union Publishing
Asha’s husband isn’t dead, but he’s been gone just the same since the day his aneurysm trapped him in a coma. When she finds comfort in the support of an old lover Jason, she must confront her loss and memories during a moment of deep turmoil. In Then, Again, Jaclyn Youhana Garver builds a fascinating character study of a woman caught between love, loss, and the possibility for a second chance.
April Storm
By Leila Meacham
Harper
This page-turning thriller follows Kathryn Walker, whose idyllic life is threatened when her troubled old friend April reappears with claims that someone is trying to take her husband and her life. For readers looking to lose themselves in an unforgettable and gripping story, April Storm is here for you.
