The November time change is a classic “good news, bad news” situation. The bad news: The sun begins setting way too early. The good news: An extra hour to read!
We wanted to bring you some extra good news by packing this month’s must-read list with all our fall favorites, including a destined-to-be Chicago classic, exciting works in translation, and a number of emotional tour-de-forces. No matter what you’re looking for, we hope you find a book you can nestle in with as the weather continues to drop!
The Plan of Chicago
By Barry Pearce
Cornerstone Press
I was first introduced to Barry Pearce’s work through his Nelson Algren Award-winning “Chez Whatever,” a short story that I often found myself thinking about even years later. Luckily for all of us, this insightful story and more are included in his new collection, The Plan of Chicago. Pearce proves to be studied in the Chicago literary tradition and assumes his place alongside greats like Theodore Dreiser, Nelson Algren, and Stuart Dybek. These stories perfectly capture the beauty and struggle of working class life, the intimacy of silence amid the clatter of the city, and the intricate stitchwork of Chicago’s many communities. The Plan of Chicago is an important addition to the canon of Chicago literature.
Palaver
By Bryan Washington
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Bryan Washington never fails to deliver throughout his already prolific career, as evidenced by Palaver already taking its rightful place among the nominees for the National Book Award for Fiction. What I love about Washington is the way he brings to life seemingly straightforward setups. Palaver, for example, explores the fraught reunion between a mother and a son in Tokyo. Washington’s prose is unsparing and razor sharp, diligently showing readers only the moments that matter amid the mundanity of life.
Honeymoon Stage
By Margaux Eliot
Little a
We all deserve a little bit of 2000s nostalgia these days, so what better way to indulge than with Honeymoon Stage. In this whimsically delightful debut from Margaux Eliot (who you may also know as Chicago’s very own Julia Fine), Cassidy Baum must reckon with her past on a reality TV show she once worked on when her former child star fiancé decides to turn their wedding into a spin-off show. Honeymoon Stage perfectly captures the absurd world of television and delivers all the laughs, gossip, and romance you could ever want.
Beasts of the Sea
By Iida Turpeinen
Translated by David Hackston
Little Brown and Company
Spanning three centuries and linked by a long-extinct being of the northern oceans, Beast of the Sea is a sweeping and intimate tale about a fateful encounter between man and nature. Beginning in 1741 when a scout discovers a gentle giant in the ocean and taking readers all the way to 1952 where a restorer must refurbish an antique skeleton, Iida Turpeinen’s award-winning work explores the consequence of humanity’s drive for discovery on the natural world. This mythic masterpiece is sure to stick with you.
Cursed Daughters
By Oyinkan Braithwaite
Doubleday
From the author of My Sister, the Serial Killer comes a new literary thriller that explores the bonds and boundaries of familial love. In Cursed Daughters, a young woman must shake off a family curse that says that “No man will call your house his home,” as well as the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin. Oyinkan Braithwaite delivers both a compulsively readable and deep story about love, grief, and the impossibilities of fate.
Flat Earth
By Anika Jade Levy
Catapult
After flailing grad student Avery takes a job at a right-wing dating app, her writing for work and school begin to merge into an uncontainable, metafictional text. But when she is visited by her best friend, herself a budding documentarian and seemingly successful creative star on the rise, Avery’s desire for fulfillment threatens to send her into a deeper spiral. Anika Jade Levy’s debut Flat Earth is a biting, satirical look at commodification and friendship prods at the emptiness of modern life and the connections we hope will create meaning.
(Th)Ings and (Th)Oughts
By Alla Gorbunova
Translated by Elina Alter
Deep Vellum Publishing
Alla Gorbunova’s (Th)ings and (Th)oughts is a magical collection of linked short stories that offer a surrealistic veneer with a strikingly realistic heart. In one story, a functionary realizes that the only way to survive in contemporary Russia is to go insane, while in another a teacher contemplates leaving her husband after learning that he doesn’t have a soul. From cars falling from the sky to skeletons turning up in abandoned lots, Gorbunova’s collection of powerful fables are a window into post-Soviet Russia and what it means to be sane in an increasingly insane world.
The Sofa
By Sam Munson
Two Dollar Radio
Like the most haunting nightmares, The Sofa starts with a simple premise: Mr. Montessori and his family return home from a trip to discover that their sofa is different—from dark and contemporary to antique, green and yellow, and smelling faintly of damp. Eerie, creepy, and Kafkaesque, Sam Munson’s latest novel is an unforgettable psychological horror that achieves the rare feat of comforting and unsettling you in equal measures.
What Debt Demands: Family, Betrayal, and Precarity in a Broken System
By Kristin Collier
Grand Central Publishing
In this essential memoir, Kristin Collier writes about her struggles with debt, the brokenness of the student loan system, and the ways in which debt shapes our lives. Collier writes incisive and openly about a subject that touches so many lives, in turn creating a searing account of the ways our modern system of credit and debt binds us to the state.
Some Bright Nowhere
By Ann Packer
Harper
We’re excited that Ann Packer is back with her first novel in over a decade! Some Bright Nowhere follows Eliot, loving husband of four decades and caretaker to his dying wife Claire, who receives her dying wish that sends him reeling. Packer’s novel is an emotional live-wire, an engrossing story about love, dedication, and the unexpected revelations that arise as the end of life approaches.
Lazarus Species
By Devon Walker-Figueroa
Milkweed Editions
Classical poetic forms meet postmodernism and more in Lazarus Species. Devon Walker-Figueroa’s poetry is packed with lyrical play, making every line a joy to parse. This collection explores the intricacies of individual and collective survival, taking readers on an era-spanning and interstellar journey that both challenges and delights. Lazarus Species is full of illuminating contradictions—a perfect mirror to humanity.
Indignity: A Life Reimagined
By Lea Ypi
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
When author Lea Ypi discovers a photo of her grandmother honeymooning in the Alps in 1941 posted by a stranger on social media after years of believing that all records of her youth were destroyed in the early days of communism in Albania, she embarks on a journey to learn more about her. Indignity traces her family’s past and the ways it intersected pivotal moments in history, from a global financial crisis to the horrors of war and the rise of communism in the Balkans. But what makes Indignity particularly interesting is the way in which Ypi also grapples with the question of who her grandmother was throughout her search, adding a metafictional layer atop this fascinating historical epic.
