In Adam White’s debut novel, Mid Coast, there is a character who at some point began to go against the situation in her small town and decided to do something about it. “She went to the library and started looking up all kinds of books, including romance novels, spy novels, biography, memoirs, history books, cookbooks, etc.” It’s my kind of character, I I thought when I reached that passage, and if it’s also a character of your kind, you think you’ll meet “Mid Coast” (“Ozark” is the main and “Great Gatsby” in your reading. This week’s list can do worse than adding).
Other novels we recommend include the jazz-era mystery by Catherine Shelman, the story of the African lighthouse keeper nominated by Karen Jennings Booker, the story of Jennifer Weiner about the Cape Cod wedding, and the story of the New Jersey family. There is Katy Lunde’s debut work “The Shore”. In preparation for the death of his sick father. Non-fiction includes her pioneering surgeon’s biography, Fire Island’s cultural history, two books on American political division, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s memoirs on her middle-aged devotion in Italian. Recommended. Happy reading.
Gregory cowls
Books Senior Editor
@GregoryCowles
Face Maker: A visionary surgeon’s battle to repair a World War I injured soldier, By Lindsey Fitz Harris. (Farrah, Strauss & Gillow, $ 30.) Fitz Harris talks about the life and work of pioneering reconstruction surgeon Harold Gillies, an expert in repairing people who survived the mechanized slaughter of World War I but left their faces injured. .. At least as introduced here, Gillies was innovative, buoyant, constantly hopeful and encouraged bedside manners that were as impressive as his technical skills. As a story of medical progress and extraordinary achievements, critic Jennifer Sarai writes that “The Facemaker” is “gritty yet exciting.”
Last call at Nightingale, By Catherine Shelman. (Minotaur, $ 27.99.) In the debut of this enthusiastic mystery series set in Manhattan in 1924, a young lady named Vivian spends the night in Speakeasy soaked in champagne, and a man is found dead outside, causing a murder. I decided to investigate. “The following is a true journey through Demimond, inhabited by the lazy and dangerous rich and the desperate and hungry poor, all with the motivation and means to kill,” Sara Weinmann said in her latest crime column. I am writing in. She said, “Vivian is a great character, she is lucky and witty, and she is determined to look back on another life for herself.”
island, By Karen Jennings. (Hogarth, $ 25.) In the first novel by a South African writer published in the United States, a secluded old lighthouse keeper living on an island somewhere south of the continent encounters a living refugee washed ashore. He doesn’t notice or wants to come back. The novel is “beautifully and discreetly made,” Lydia Millet wrote in her review. “In Samuel’s adult ceremony and subsequent flashbacks to the fierce prisoners, Jennings renders a rough, stripped portrait of the desolate family dynamics and social conditions that made him himself.”
Mid Coast, By Adam White. (Hogarth, $ 27.) Set in a foggy town in Damariscotta, Maine, White’s brilliant debut novel traces the lobster family from a humble beginning to the pinnacle of a criminal empire in a small town. It is also a jarring juxtaposition of poverty and wealth, shedding light on the types of people and attitudes that the central coast of Maine produces. The book “shows the urge to know what we don’t know and put the chaos of collapse and violence in some sort of order,” Lee Cole wrote in his review. “The’Mid Coast’is a small town in Maine and it, full of keen observations about not only landscapes, but also dialects and class differences, and all the small and important peculiarities that make the place a reality with fiction. A family trying to transcend. “
Translations of yourself and others, By Jhumpa Lahiri. (Princeton University, $ 21.95.) At the age of 45, the acclaimed Indian-American writer Rahiri decided to start writing in Italian. A memoir of this experience, told with his passion and insight, addresses questions that are both technical and philosophical. “Her pursuit of Italian is much bigger than her synonyms, dictionaries and nouns,” Benjamin Moser wrote in a review. “Studying this foreign language is or could be liberation,” says Rahiri: “I write in Italian to feel free.”
Summer place, By Jennifer Weiner. (Atria, $ 28.99.) For a wedding in Cape Cod, family secrets can surface and undermine not only the wedding but also generations of trust. Weiner’s latest novel, a meditation about mother and daughter, also explores class struggles, identity issues, and real estate dramas. In a mixed review, Michelle Lewis praises the indignation novelist patriarch of her family and shows Weiner’s willingness to avoid the sentimental view of motherhood and favor more complex ambivalence. She read on the beach, “Lewis wrote.
Liberalism and its dissatisfaction, By Francis Fukuyama. (Farrah, Strauss & Gillow, $ 26.) Famous political philosophers raise serious questions about how liberal democracy has worked in the United States and around the world for the past few generations, and are new both individually and in the community to ensure the survival of liberalism. Seeking centrist politics. “Fukuyama writes with crystalline rationality,” Joe Klein wrote in a review that also took into account Yascha Mounk’s “Great Experiments” (below). “Both authors suggest that some form of national service may be a way to restrain the wounds of the state …. But Fukuyama despises what he calls the” laundry list “of the policy proposal. However, rather gracefully, he settles on the denial of conviction for moderation. “
Great experiment: Why various democracies collapse and how they can withstand By Yascha Mounk. (Penguins Press, $ 28.) Monk is concerned about the expansion of politics based on inequality and identity, but he advocates optimism, diversity and inclusion. “Monk convincingly claims that progress has been made,” Joe Klein wrote in his review. “Undoubtedly, overcoming the plight of monopoly and racial hostility, political impasse, and media sneering will be a challenge. But helplessness is essential for liberal enemies. Proponents “will have to keep checking the pessimists in the midst of themselves,” Monk wrote.
Fire Island: A century of life in American paradise, By Jack Parlet. (Hannover Square, $ 27.99.) The brief and personal history of Parlet, a legendary gay outskirts off the South Shore of Long Island, brings everyone from Walt Whitman to Andy Warhol, but evolves into a sepia movement in nostalgia. There is nothing to do. Wayne Kestenbaum reviews it and calls the book “a well-studied chronicle of queer life over the centuries.” “
Shore, By Katie Lunde. (Scribner, $ 26.99.) With Runde’s heartfelt, bittersweet and entertaining debut, the New Jersey family supports the death of their beloved father, who has an aggressive form of brain tumor. The subject is difficult, but there are many moments of flirtation. “This is Katie Lunde’s first novel, she writes with a fluid sensibility in detail and mood, and faces difficult questions head-on,” Judy Brandel wrote in her review. “It’s absorptive, clear, and true. Anyone who loses someone in inches will recognize the struggle to overcome despair and affirm the stubborn patience of love.”
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