In Kathleen Alcott’s Emergency (W.W. Norton; 208 pages), the tales of seven women whose lives come undone create haunting depictions of desire and harm. Alcott’s first story collection following three novels, Emergency is permeated by a sense of disaster lingering in the wings and about to unfold. Her protagonists are typically clever and have ascended by their tenacity to the middle or upper-middle classes. Yet even in these stations they are endlessly reminded of the boundaries that do not get erased by their bank account balances. Several of them leave their homes, but often become trapped in their escapes. Sometimes […]

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The name “Comet” evokes the fiery and dramatic path of a celestial body, the kind that might portend the end of the world, or at least make for good cinema. But a comet is also a solitary thing, moving silently through the solar system. In Patrick deWitt’s new novel, The Librarianist (Ecco Press; 352 pages), Bob Comet is the curiously quiet carrier of this name. Bob is a protagonist out of step with time and life. On deciding to become a librarian, his mentor tells him that “librarianism doesn’t hold up in our society’s real time … the language-based life […]

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Autofiction is usually accompanied with disclaimers and explanations, shame and caveats. Caroline O’Donoghue’s new novel The Rachel Incident (Knopf; 304 pages), too, is bookended with disclaimers. It opens with, “It was never my plan to write about any of this” and closes with the protagonist saying, “It’s not my story.” Though it is unclear how much memoir this confessional novel actually holds, this conceit of autofiction is marvelously executed—the details of memory feel preciously excavated, the plot clicks in place in that inevitable way of real life. Even at its most alarming—the protagonist extorts an older couple to fund her […]

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With her fifth novel, Yellowface (William Morrow; 323 pages), R.F. Kuang promised a departure from the speculative genre work of her fantasy Poppy Wars trilogy and science fiction Babel (2022), winner of the 2022 Nebula Award for Best Novel. Yellowface is a biting satire about the publishing industry, informed by Kuang’s own experience as a Chinese American writer who regularly tops bestseller lists. It follows the publication of protagonist June Hayward’s second novel, a historical drama titled The Last Front about Chinese laborers who fought for the Allied Forces in World War I. Kuang writes for a wide audience, and […]

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There are many routes to be introduced to British novelist Deborah Levy’s August Blue (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 208 pages). It is a book about being shadowed by a “double,” so one thinks of Dostoevsky and Henry James’ short story “The Jolly Corner.” It is a book about a child prodigy’s intense and complicated relationship with her mentor, so one is reminded of movies like Whiplash and Black Swan. It is an Odyssean story of exile and return home. It is also a sort of “governess story”: as Elizabeth Hardwick writes in The Brontes, “Most governesses in fiction are strangely […]

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