Ngamije (The Eternal Audience of One) serves up an occasionally dazzling but ultimately diffuse collection about the woes of a 20-something novelist. It’s framed as a “literary mixtape” and arranged by alternating A-side and B-side stories (the former comprise a linked narrative while the latter each stand alone). The unnamed novelist reflects in “Crunchy Green Apples” on how he grew apart from his mother as he entered into a “tribe called cool.” “The Sage of the Six Paths (Or, The Life and Times of the Five Os)” covers his teen years, as he gets into trouble with his fast-moving and mischievous friend group before finding “another way of being” through literature. In “The Hope, the Prayer, and the Anthem (Or, The Fall So Far),” he considers his elusive dreams for “a modern house,” “a wife,” and an “acclaimed novel.” B-Side tales include “Wicked,” narrated by a woman who feels a “selfish hope” that her married lover won’t leave her. Ngamije turns heads with his clever and energetic wordplay (the novelist’s promiscuous milieu is prone to “souped-up STI Golfs revving from gonorrhea to HIV in sex seconds flat”), but the structure is a bit confusing, leaving readers who remember mix tapes to wonder why the A-side and B-side tracks are alternated, and the conceit feels more gimmicky than essential. Ngamije has done better. Agent: Cecile Barendsma, CBL Agency. (Dec.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

Black (Don’t Cry for Me) offers a moving chronicle of a grieving queer Black man reflecting on growing up in Chicago. Having endured his mother’s death years earlier and now, in the 2000s, the loss of his father, from whom he was estranged, Isaac finds himself at 35 unfocused and coping poorly. A therapist encourages him to write down his life story as a means to move forward. Retracing his youth in the 1980s, when he cowered from his abusive and homophobic father and dealt with his mother’s alcoholism, Isaac makes peace with his regrets and rejects the shame he internalized over his sexuality. He then turns to his college years, when he experimented with dating men, and considers how after graduation, while reeling from the Rodney King beating and the AIDS epidemic, a degree couldn’t save him from the pain of racism and the danger of being queer. The writing is lyrical (Isaac adored the “syrupy cadence” of his mother’s voice), and the character portrait takes on greater dimension as Isaac struggles with forgiving his late father. The author’s fans will love this tale of hard-won self-acceptance. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this electrifying collection of three stories and a novella from Peters (Detransition Baby), trans characters explore desire, identity, and love. “Infect your Friends and Loved Ones,” the postapocalyptic opener, follows patient zero in Seattle during a pandemic that halts humans’ production of sex hormones. The narrator, once a loner in the area’s trans community, considers who she can trust. In “The Chaser,” an evocative coming-of-age tale, a boarding school junior forms a secret relationship with his femme roommate, Robbie. Peters expertly builds tension as the narrator questions his sexuality, rationalizing that he’s not gay because he’s not turned on by any of the more masculine guys in the dorm. The funny yet heart-wrenching title novella, set sometime during the primacy of steam engines and written in the style of a tall tale, may be Peters’s best work yet. When the boss at an illegal logging camp announces a dance, which anyone can attend as a woman, Babe, the strongest and ugliest lumberjack, taps into a long-suppressed yearning: “I had many times wondered in earnest about being courted as a woman.” In the unsettling closer, “The Masker,” Krys attends a trans feminine gathering in Las Vegas. When one guest arrives in a full body silicone woman suit, Krys contemplates who counts as trans and what she is willing to sacrifice for her transition. Peters explores her characters’ conundrums with striking honesty, revealing how they’re bound by indecision and insecurities from finding happiness, and she exhibits spectacular flexibility with language and form. It’s a marvel. Agent: Kent Wolf, Neon Literary. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

A trans man returns to his hometown and encounters his teen self in this tender adult debut from YA author Underhill (This Day Changes Everything). On the cusp of turning 30 and just laid off from his New York City startup job, Darby Madden travels to rural Oak Falls, Ill., to help his mom move out of his childhood home. When Darby visits the bookstore where he worked as a teenager, he discovers it hasn’t changed and is surprised that the bookseller on duty looks just like he did before his transition. Before he sorts out whether entering the bookstore caused him to travel through time, and if he really did see his previous self, Darby bumps into Michael Weaver, the best friend who cut him off after Darby transferred to a boarding school during their senior year. As Darby tries to figure out what went wrong between them, a kiss from Michael throws him even further out of sorts. The story has the feel of a YA novel with adult characters—Darby worries he’s “still not cool enough” for New York City after 12 years there, the plot is shaped by lingering high school drama—but Underhill lands the speculative elements with precision. Grown-up fans of YA fiction will appreciate this bittersweet tale. Agent: Patricia Nelson, Marsal Lyon Literary. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Miller’s poignant debut, an elderly woman takes in a homeless boy and the pair get into mischief. Ruth spies the unnamed eight-year-old narrator outside her retirement home, eating sunflower seeds from her bird feeder because he’s starving. She invites him inside for cookies, and they bond while watching baseball on TV. She secretly allows him to stay, defying the building’s restrictions on overnight guests and insisting he hide whenever someone comes to the door. They also have a rule against talking about the past; it’s too painful, Ruth explains. In addition to watching baseball, they pull pranks on Ms. Millie, a neighbor Ruth dislikes, such as ordering pizza for her under the name Innedova Bath. When Ms. Millie catches the narrator living there and threatens to report Ruth, the pair takes drastic measures to silence her. More trouble follows, and when Ruth suffers a head injury, their roles reverse as the narrator attempts to care for her while holding onto his new home. Miller convincingly portrays the characters’ uncommon friendship as their initial caution fades and they go to great lengths to stay together. Miller’s curveball coming-of-age tale lands in the strike zone. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bridgerton meets The Sting in this effervescent offering from Hay (The Housekeepers). In 1898, London con artist Quinn Le Blanc, known as the Queen of Fives, sets her sights on Max, the wealthy Duke of Kendal, whom she plans to marry and fleece out of his fortune. Pretending to be an heiress, she finagles an invitation to a party at Buckingham Palace, where she catches Max’s eye while pretending to stop a fake royal assassination plot. According to the Rulebook that governs confidence schemes, Quinn has exactly five days to spring her trap. Standing in her way are Max’s sister and their formidable stepmother, both of whom have reasons for not wanting to see the marriage take place. As Quinn and Max get to know each other, she realizes she’s not the only one well-versed in the art of deception. Hay has conceived of a wholly original take on Victorian London and populated it with a gallery of colorful underworld types. The plotting will have readers on the edges of their seats as one twist after another sets the stage for a series of jaw-dropping revelations. This literary confection is a delectable treat. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

British writer Garner makes an impressive debut with this story of a gay 17-year-old aspiring writer grappling with his desire for love in an abusive relationship. Isaac lives in London with his mother and her boyfriend, Leon, having been abandoned by his father. Anxious to find a partner, he starts seeing guys he meets on apps and loses his virginity to one of them. He then meets Harrison, 28, at a party, and quickly becomes infatuated with the older man, feeling as if he’s a “ship sinking” and Harrison is “the ocean.” As Isaac worries his feelings for Harrison aren’t reciprocated, he develops an eating disorder (“As if his misery was something he could starve, shrink and kill off like a bug”). The situation worsens during a trip together to Germany, where they get into a fight and Harrison hits Isaac. Eventually, Isaac realizes that “wanting to be with [Harrison] didn’t also mean feeling completely shit about myself.” Garner offers an astute depiction of Isaac’s desperation to see the affair through, as it “felt like a novel he’d loved so much he hadn’t wanted it to end,” and he rounds out the agonizing narrative with satisfying subplots about Isaac’s discovery of Leon’s affair and decision to enter a short story competition. Readers will be riveted by this intense character study. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 10/25/2024 | Details & Permalink

A middle-aged woman comes to terms with the magic harnessed by her great-aunt in this spirited gothic debut novel from Jaramillo (The Doctor’s Wife, a story collection). As a wife, mother, and high-powered lawyer, Marta is distracted by the need to care for her late grandmother’s 93-year-old sister, Nena, who now lives alone but was institutionalized as a teenager, after she claimed to have time-traveled to an 18th-century convent. In a parallel narrative, the reader learns Nena’s claim was true, and that she was summoned by witches disguised as nuns. The witches teach Nena how to harness the spirit of La Vista, a powerful force derived from nature. After she falls in love with Emiliano, the brother of one of the sisters, she uses the power to heal him from smallpox. Then Emiliano gets her pregnant, and after giving birth to a girl, the sisters send her back to her old life without the baby. Marta’s story is less developed, and the conclusion feels rushed, but Jaramillo evocatively portrays the ways in which she and Nena gain strength from the land and their family. It’s an inspired effort. Agent: Kent Wolf, Neon Literary. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/18/2024 | Details & Permalink

Translator Fu debuts with an eerie and rewarding story of a queer Chinese American grappling with his sense of self. Meadow Liu, 29, meets Japanese artist Selma at a gallery in New York City and the two develop a strong friendship based on “intensity of feeling.” Having grown up in Tennessee, he’s excited to explore the city’s gay scene and stirred by Selma’s bold fashion sense. When she leaves town for a residency in Shanghai, he stays in her apartment, where he finds a copy of The Masquerade, a 1940 novel by Liu Tian about a masquerade ball. The strange coincidence (Liu Tian is Meadow’s Chinese birth name) proves to be a harbinger for the book’s uncanny effect on him—after he reads a description of a magic mirror, he looks in Selma’s mirror and sees younger and older versions of himself. Later, he wakes up from dreams of a masquerade ball with the unshakable feeling that he was there. After he learns that Selma has gone missing in Shanghai, his sense of reality further deteriorates. Fu’s vivid collage of imagery and metafictional elements intriguingly conveys Meadow’s state of mind, and the ways in which masks can help a person find oneself. This funhouse of a novel is worth seeking out. Agent: Heather Carr, Friedrich Agency. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/18/2024 | Details & Permalink

Murdoch, lead singer and lyricist for the band Belle & Sebastian, follows up his memoir, The Celestial Café, with a turgid debut novel tracing an indie rocker’s coming-of-age. Stephen, a young Glaswegian scenester recently released from a lengthy hospital stay for chronic fatigue syndrome, is mostly confined to his one-room apartment, and picks up the nickname “the World’s Coldest Boy” for dressing in layers. Jobless and unlucky in love, he listens to post-punk records, finds Jesus, befriends the equally troubled Carrie, pines after her fetching younger sister, and declares himself “but a shadow of a boy.” Well, this is but a shadow of a book, and its narrator, a “free-floating vagabond of the state,” doesn’t have a lot to offer beyond prayers and playlists, though when Stephen and his roommate Richard decamp to San Francisco, there’s at least a change of scene and some fun philosophical jabbing with local musicians. Ultimately, Stephen finds himself through songwriting and begins putting a band together to cut a demo, but even the most faithful Belle & Sebastian fans will have trouble getting there. This is a dud. Agent: Jud Laghi, Jud Laghi Agency. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/18/2024 | Details & Permalink