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Recently, I was texting with the editor of my most recent book about how there seem to be cycles in in literature, some kind of zeitgeist or collective unconscious, like how for a minute there were so many retellings of Frankenstein (like this, and this, and this, and this).
Speculative fiction has been having a moment for a while, and in many works—including the ones on this list—there is also a deep current of loss and isolation. And ghosts. What’s interesting to me, just as how the Frankenstein retellings came from really different writers, is the way the through lines in books from this season cross generations, genres, and perspectives. The story collections from Patricia Henley and Tayyba Kanwal, whose debuts have nearly three decades of distance between them, have a lot more in common than the jacket copy would suggest. Similarly, ire’ne lara silva and Wesley Brown capture a kind of familial longing, though Brown’s realism is literary (in the genre sense) and silva’s is magical.
My editor said he’s starting to see a lot of Icarus metaphors, but what I’m seeing is writers using narrative to try and articulate our contemporary moment, even if their work is set in the 14th Century, like Lauren C. Johnson. None of these books fly too close to the sun, but all take that same soaring ambition.
Tin House: Clutch by Emily Nemens
A group of five college friends take a trip to Palm Springs, the first time they’ve all been together in years. Careers, children, marriages, and aging parents make connecting in person difficult, even though they always keep up with each other in the group chat. Yet, as elder millennials, the fourth decade of their lives is about to become a flash point: Changes are coming for each of the women. Their renewed closeness creates a scaffolding they all hold on to, but it also reminds them of the times they were less supportive, wrapped up in their own concerns. Clutch is a novel that explores the complexity and nuance of long female friendships, and Nemens writes this dynamic with perfect pitch. The only reason to put this engrossing novel down is to text your bestie.
Regal House: A Woman in Pink by Megan A. Schikora
After being entwined in a decade-and-a-half long relationship, the nameless woman in Schikora’s novel and Dutch, the charismatic leading man in her idea of a love story, ultimately part. Though they were never fully honest with each other as a couple, hiding the pieces of their past lives dealing with substance abuse and disordered eating, the protagonist of the novel cannot let Dutch go. Even when he marries, she pines for him and what they could have been, to the point that she considers Dutch’s wife the “other woman.” The protagonist tracks her relationship with Dutch along with another love story, that of June Carter and Johnny Cash. A Woman in Pink chronicles the relatable if heartbreaking reality that love is not always enough to make a partnership work, and takes a hard look at what healing actually means.
Cornerstone Press: Apple & Palm by Patricia Henley
In the town of Whistle Pig, people are living their lives. Characters recur in Patricia Henley’s latest. For example, Jill Zebrak, who in one story regularly retrieves her elderly father from the local casino and mildly tolerates his lover who is closer in age to her than him, appears in another story where she takes in two young girls after their parents die in a murder-suicide. Yet Henley’s collection is not bleak: There is a vibrant artist colony in Whistle Pig, amorous octogenarians, and a true sense of community. What Henley does best is describe how small-town life has both a frustrating insularity and inescapable points of connection. Apple & Palm looks at the ways we live and the choices we make not only for our own survival, but also for the survival of the people who surround us.
Black Lawrence Press: Talking with Boys by Tayyba Kanwal
A domestic worker trapped in a Dubai household of extraordinary wealth schemes for her and the other workers to get out; a Houston family’s babysitter lands a spot on a reality show about nannies, and they attempt to use this to catapult their own children to fame; in Lahore, a privileged woman seeks her own economic agency, only to be rebuked by her husband, all while a gifted bracelet from her son—meant to convey his prosperity—circles her wrist like a handcuff. In Pakistan, and in the Pakistani diaspora, Kanwal’s characters are pushing against customs and expectations, or angling for power and dominance. The stories are written with attention to an emotional center. It’s not always clear who the villain is, and that’s the point in these heartfelt and beautifully textured stories.
Dzanc Books: The Shipikisha Club by Mubanga Kalimamukwento
In this multi-generational novel, the higher price that women pay, from action to silence, is cracked open. Sali, the only child of an evangelical family, stands trial for the murder of her husband. Fourteen years earlier, she was living in her family’s home and was pregnant by a married man. After his accidental death, she is wedded to a local police officer who swears to raise the child as his own. Yet, while Sali and her husband go on to have two more children, they struggle with money and marital fidelity. The murder trial makes the Zambian national headlines, and Sali’s 15-year-old daughter Ntashé has to reconcile what the newspapers print and what she hears in the courts against what she knows of her mother. Sali’s own mother must do the same. Gripping.
University of New Mexico Press: something out there in the distance by Grant Faulkner and Gail Butensky
In this hybrid work, photographs of Joshua trees, Ferris wheels, and old motels are companions to the story of Dawn and Johnny, who are on a road trip across the American West. Dawn, a photographer, has cancer. Johnny, the driver, navigates highways and red dirt roads, and drives onto a golf course to flip a donut. The effect is that of chronology by postcard, narrative through mile-markers. The book captures the desolate beauty of both the desert plains and mountains, punctuated by tiny, dying towns. something out there in the distance is a slim volume containing a deep emotional weight.
Arte Público Press: the light of your body by ire’ne lara silva
After a brush with death, Antonio encounters his first love, a man who has passed over and is caring in the afterlife for Antonio’s child who did not survive to infancy; Emma Elisa grows marigolds all season to host an elaborate Día de los Muertos party, where her community builds altars and considers the past; a spirit of death inhabits a tattooed body, falls in love with a hospice nurse, and runs a taco truck with vegan options. In these loosely linked stories, the veil between the dead and the living is a mere shimmer. The collection speaks to erotic desire, brings myth into reality, confronts generational trauma, and addresses colonialism all in stunning, gorgeous prose. The beauty in how silva writes speaks to our complicated histories and yearning bodies.
Rescue Press: Lonesome Ballroom by Madeline McDonnell
Betty is a young woman with a famous feminist mother best known for executing a re-imagining of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and that shadow hangs over Betty just as an elaborate fresco. As Betty experiences the messy part of early adulthood when friendships and relationships change, her childhood begins to feel more distant. In conversation with a server at Lonesome Ballroom, at happy hours with her grandmother, or wading through the discourse of her marriage, Betty cannot quite find her footing. She’s smart, she’s educated, but she also doesn’t have a clear sense of herself. McDonnell’s Lonesome Ballroom expertly wrestles with questions of third-wave feminism and familial inheritance, all while perfectly capturing the anxieties of the turn of the 21st century. A wild—and for women of a particular generation, highly relatable—ride.
McSweeney’s: Looking for Frank Wills by Wesley Brown
The Watergate scandal of 1972 is embedded in the American consciousness, but less remembered is Frank Wills, then a young man who had worked his way up to a security guard at the Watergate complex. On June 17th, he noticed that locks to one of the office suites had been tampered with and called the police, ultimately bringing down the Nixon presidency. In this short novel, Wesley Brown blends the true story of Wills with the fictionalized account of Wayne Beasley, a Black Korean war vet who runs a family barbershop in Savannah and recounts his memories of Wills as a child, a young adult, and then a man at the center of major historical event. The novel emerges as a conversation between generations that asks questions about race, politics, war, and family. Looking for Frank Wills is a powerful retelling of Wills’s story.
7.13 Books: Sunset at Lion Rock by Matthew Wong Foreman
Born to a Chinese mother and a British father, Eric is out of place at school in Hong Kong and called a “ghost” for his light-complexioned face. Eric is caught between different realities: should he speak English or Cantonese? How does he negotiate his separated parents’ different perspectives against his own experiences? How does he figure out who is against who he wants to be? Wong Foreman takes all of these questions and alchemizes them into an exploratory narrative that centers Eric and excavates family dynamics. There’s an epistolary element that brings the voices in closer, but the center is Eric and his struggles. A novel that’s as broad as it is heartfelt.
Biblioasis: Every Time We Say Goodbye by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simić
In the aftermath of a romantic breakup, a writer and journalist departs the apartment he shared with his partner, making all of the arrangements within ten days. On a train to Berlin, the narrator of Sajko’s novel reflects on his (and her) culpability for their parting while also ruminating on memories of his family, like his alcoholic father who died alone and his mother who made a harrowing escape from his father’s violence. A compressed book, every sentence sings with emotional resonance and is imbued with the protagonist’s regret. Every Time We Say Goodbye is a master class in both economy of language and expansiveness of feeling.
SFWP: The West Façade by Lauren C. Johnson
It’s 1348 in Paris, on the west façade of Notre Dame, and the statue of Sainte Geneviève has been gifted an orange by a woman who climbs the wall to reach her. Though the forms that adorn and guard the cathedral look still to passerby, they’re conscious beings who can loose themselves from their niches for one night each moon cycle and explore the city, its people, and its pleasures. Geneviève wants more than one night monthly, and despite the cautioning she is given, isn’t so interested in the rules after she’s tasted the orange. The West Façade draws on everything from Eve’s eating of the apple to Cinderella needing to return before midnight to questions about what consciousness and sentience means—all the more a salient line of inquiry in the age of AI. Johnson takes the art of another era and contemporizes it to a compelling, original effect.
Guernica Editions: Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive by Alison Gadsby
In this linked collection of speculative fiction, an accountant who is learning to swim is interrogated by her humanoid companion; a woman is unanchored in time and cannot remember giving birth to her daughter or even who she is; and in the title story, a couple argues incessantly and from such deep unhappiness the woman dreams hopefully of contracting a fatal tumor. Gadsby’s stories have simmering resentment, the cruelty of children, and the terror of never belonging as characters right alongside her unhappy people, threaded together with recurring themes. The effect is a glittering collection with high emotional tension.
Tin House: The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts by Kim Fu
The adulthood experience of purchasing a first home becomes something much more pronounced for Eleanor Fan. As she grew up, her mother, Lele, helped her with everything—even into adulthood—but after Lele’s death, Eleanor is left without her guidance and ultimately buys a property that’s less of a home and more of a sodden cage. As the Pacific Northwest rain continues to fall, Eleanor must reckon with both the absence of her mother’s strong force in her life, and the appearance of a new force: ghosts who speak to her. Fu’s novel shows the impact of isolation on a young woman consumed by grief, as the story unfolds with increasing intensity. A literary page-turner.
Palimpsest Press: The Unravelling of Ou by Hollay Ghadery
The perspective in The Unravelling of Ou belies the seriousness of the book: The narrative is told from the viewpoint of a sock-puppet named Ecology Paul. Of course, Ecology Paul must be puppeted by someone, and that’s Minoo, who is struggling with feelings of isolation. The sock-puppet speaks less to whimsy and more to how desperately people need to be seen and listened to, and how deeply feelings of shame are buried. Yet while the sock puppet is a source of comfort to Minoo, her adult daughter is not having it, and Minoo must work through her own feelings in order to save the relationship. Ghadery takes a silly premise and transforms it into a captivating, layered story. A feat of imagination and execution.
