This issue has those big new releases you’ve been waiting for. Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say follows Artie Dam, a secretly unhappy man living a charmed life. In Douglas Stuart’s John of John, John-Calum (Cal) Macleod, a closeted art school graduate, reluctantly returns to his family’s rural, conservative home.
We also cover Harriet Clark’s captivating debut The Hill, loosely based on the author’s own experiences growing up while visiting a parent in prison. A Beyond the Book article looks at the role of Clark’s mother, a member of the guerrilla organization the Weather Underground, in the 1981 Brink’s truck robbery in Nanuet, New York. (One of our featured First Impressions picks, Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young by Zayd Ayers Dohrn—an upcoming Ask the Author interviewee—provides a nonfictional glimpse of a childhood with parents who were leaders of the Weather Underground.)
Other exciting fiction includes Mothers and Other Strangers by Corey Ann Haydu, a deep examination of motherhood and friendship, George Saunders’ latest novel Vigil, in which an oil tycoon on his deathbed is tended to by a ghost, Portia Elan’s Homebound, an unusual story featuring characters across time that is also a surprising piece of multimedia art, and Jeffrey Zuckerman’s translation of Ananda Devi’s All Flesh, a stunningly brutal tale of adolescence that casts a critical eye on societal fatphobia and social media culture. Our related reading list explores more significant Mauritian fiction available in English.
And Lindy West’s memoir Adult Braces offers readers the chance to tag along on a hilarious, life-changing cross-country roadtrip.
Plus, find additional reviews and articles, previews of May books, the latest book club discussions, and more.
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— The BookBrowse Team
