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Stephenie Harrison

FictionComing of Age

Gold Diggers

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Shakespeare cautioned that all that glitters is not gold. This lesson runs deep in Sanjena Sathian’s debut novel, Gold Diggers, and many characters learn it the hard way. Happily for readers, Shakespeare’s warning does not apply to the novel itself, a dazzling and delightful work of fiction by an exciting new literary talent.

Teenager Neil Narayan has spent most of his life feeling distinctly average and like he doesn’t quite fit in. Growing up in Georgia to immigrant parents, he is overshadowed by his magnetic and determined older sister, who, annoyingly, seems to have reconciled being both Indian and American. Despite the lofty ambitions that his family and community have for him, Neil struggles to find a drive for anything other than the girl next door, Anita Dayal.

All this changes, however, when Neil stumbles upon the secret that Anita and her mother have been keeping: an ancient alchemical potion that incorporates stolen gold, transferring the ambition and winning traits of the gold’s original owners onto the drinker. Although this potion seems to be the answer to Neil’s prayers, it soon awakens a powerful thirst within him that will not be easily slaked, no matter the consequences for himself or others.

Sathian has produced a beguiling elixir with Gold Diggers, skillfully stirring myth into a playful yet powerful modern-day examination of the American dream and the second-generation citizens who pursue it. A fabulist amalgam of The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye, it’s an engrossing cautionary tale as well as a shrewd appraisal of what we consider success—and the moral sacrifices we make to achieve it.

Imaginative and intoxicating, Gold Diggers richly rewards its readers.

Shakespeare cautioned that all that glitters is not gold. This lesson runs deep in Sanjena Sathian’s debut novel.
FictionPopular Fiction

The Lost Manuscript

Review by Stephenie Harrison

If you’re the type of reader who self-soothes by losing yourself in a book and are in need of a potent comfort read, French author Cathy Bonidan’s English-language debut novel is just what the doctor ordered. Exceedingly charming and guaranteed to bring a smile to your face, The Lost Manuscript is a multilayered testament to the life-changing properties of a single book when it reaches the right reader.

Such is the case when Anne-Lise Briard stumbles upon a forgotten manuscript while on vacation in northwest France. After devouring the story, she is inspired to forward the manuscript to an address scribbled on one of its pages, hoping that she might gain some insight into the provenance of the manuscript. Never in her wildest dreams could she have anticipated that her letter would reach the manuscript’s author himself, who confesses that the last time he saw this manuscript was 30 years ago while on a flight to Montreal and that it had been only half-finished at the time. Intrigued, Anne-Lise doggedly traces the path of the manuscript to uncover its mysterious second author, a pursuit that encourages new relationships (and in some cases, romances) to flourish as she contacts the numerous individuals whose lives have been shaped by the manuscript over the years.

The Lost Manuscript is first and foremost a love letter to literature and readers. Eternally hopeful, this buoyant epistolary novel is refreshingly devoid of cynicism and instead celebrates the ways in which books can enrich our lives and foster connection. Bonidan’s parceling of a genuinely intriguing mystery and gentle romance into bite-size, elegantly written chapters makes for a swift and captivating read that, despite its sweetness and endearing quaintness, is not without substance.

The spiritual successor to the epistolary classic 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, The Lost Manuscript is a soul-satisfying book that is sure to be loved.

If you’re the type of reader who self-soothes by losing yourself in a book and are in need of a potent comfort read, French author Cathy Bonidan’s English-language debut novel is just what the doctor ordered.
FictionComing of Age

Before the Ruins

Review by Stephenie Harrison

When it comes to a mystery, is there any better setting than the English countryside? Something about the milieu continues to inspire stories of cunning crimes that readers just can’t get enough of. In the case of Before the Ruins, Victoria Gosling’s devilish debut, an abandoned English manor house sets the stage for a cracking mystery involving a missing friend, a long-lost diamond necklace and the secrets that tie the two together across decades.

When they were children, Andy and Peter were as thick as thieves, but their friendship has only tenuously survived their rocky transition to adulthood. So it is quite unexpected when Andy receives a frantic call from Peter’s mother informing Andy that he has disappeared without a trace. Andy reluctantly agrees to help, and her hunt for Peter leads her to suspect that his disappearance is tied to a game they played as teenagers with two other friends, Emma and Marcus. Andy has tried very hard to move on from her past, but it now seems that in order to find and reconcile with Peter, she must turn to their shared history for answers.

Through Andy’s eyes, we revisit the summer when, galvanized by the story of a priceless necklace that’s gone missing, the four friends played a recurring game of hide-and-seek with a replica of the diamonds around the grounds of a local English estate. Each was convinced that it would only be a matter of time before they stumbled across the real jewels. And perhaps they might have, had not the arrival of a charming stranger and subsequent shocking accident ended the game once and for all—and destroyed their friendships in its wake.

Though the main narrative is propelled by the mysteries of Peter and the diamonds, the true soul of Before the Ruins is found in its contemplation of existential themes such as grief, guilt, desire, friendship and loss. There are plenty of bombshells to titillate and thrill over the course of the story, but many of the most rewarding discoveries come not from the grand reveals in the final act but from moments when Andy gains depth and dimension through revelations of her most closely guarded secrets and memories.

Richly atmospheric and exquisitely written, Before the Ruins is wistful and haunting, hopeful and beautiful. Confidently contributing to the tradition of British mysteries, Gosling has delivered a tale that will satisfy fans of Tana French and Paula Hawkins.

An abandoned English manor house sets the stage for a cracking mystery involving a missing friend, a long-lost diamond necklace and the secrets that tie the two together across decades.
FictionComing of Age

Earthlings

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Japanese author Sayaka Murata first made waves with American readers with her 2018 English-language debut, Convenience Store Woman, a startlingly bizarre meditation on Japanese culture and the pressure to conform above all else. Murata’s latest novel, Earthlings, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori, continues to explore life on the fringes in Japan through an even darker and weirder lens, one that will take most readers on a wild ride far beyond the outermost limit of their comfort zones.

Superficially, Earthlings is the coming-of-age story of a young girl named Natsuki and her cousin, Yuu, who process and explain their sense of alienation from their families by internalizing the belief that they are both actually from another planet. The subsequent fallout of this mindset is a series of increasingly disturbing and shocking events that heighten the duo’s inability to fit into conventional and conservative Japanese society and their overall disassociation from the world. To say any more would spoil the book, as so much of the story’s grotesque joy depends on the surprise at just how perverse things can get. It is a book that must be experienced firsthand, but it is also a book for which a single trigger warning would not be adequate, as it enthusiastically challenges most of our most deeply held societal taboos.

Whereas Murata’s goal with Convenience Store Woman may have been to gently unsettle her readers, it’s clear that Earthlings’ mission is to actively disturb. By disrupting her readers’ complacency, Murata allows us to better empathize with the misfits she champions. As her characters’ unease and discomfort becomes our own, we gain greater awareness of how it feels to be an outsider looking in.

The journey is often rather harrowing and bewildering and will appeal to few readers. But for adventurous readers who revel in a book that defies expectations and dares to be outlandishly different, Earthlings is a mind- and soul-expanding countercultural battle cry that is utterly one of a kind.

Sayaka Murata’s latest novel, Earthlings, continues to explore life on the fringes in Japan through an even darker and weirder lens, one that will take most readers on a wild ride far beyond the outermost limit of their comfort zones.
FictionThriller

These Violent Delights

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Few novelists make an impression as quickly and effectively as Micah Nemerever does in his stirring debut, an explosively erotic and erudite thriller. Kicking off with an electrifying prologue, These Violent Delights is infused with a thick sense of dread and urgency that does not let up until the final page. 

The novel centers on two social outcasts, Paul and Julian, who first connect in their freshman ethics class in 1970s Pittsburgh. Painfully shy and awkward, Paul gravitates toward Julian’s effortless charisma and good looks like a moth to a flame. Much to the consternation of their families, the boys’ friendship soon morphs into something far more intimate and dangerously co-dependent, as each amplifies the other’s worst ideologies, insecurities and impulses. As their relationship becomes increasingly destructive, Paul begins to search for an act of fealty that will irrevocably bond him to Julian, but neither is prepared for the devastation their act of devotion will yield.

Channeling masters of suspense like Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock, Nemerever ratchets up the narrative tension at a deliberately agonizing pace as he unspools the story of Paul and Julian’s ill-fated relationship, all leading up to the night teased in the novel’s opening pages. The two young men frequently engage in deeply cerebral conversations ranging from philosophy and psychology to entomology, and the narrative lends itself well to close reading, as often the most critical developments between the two men stem from the subtext of these weighty talks. 

Though the escalating relationship between Paul and Julian is mesmerizing in its own right, Nemerever’s novel so effectively evokes a state of unease that many readers will keep turning pages in desperate pursuit of the tension-breaking relief that can only come from seeing the story to its conclusion. Aptly titled, These Violent Delights is exhilarating, but not without pain and peril.

Few novelists make an impression as quickly and effectively as Micah Nemerever does in his stirring debut, an explosively erotic and erudite thriller.
FictionPopular Fiction

What You Wish For

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Katherine Center, reigning queen of comfort reads, returns with an exuberant new novel that will have readers rejoicing. What You Wish For is a bona fide explosion of happiness packaged in book form.

Ensconced in the free-spirited island town of Galveston, Texas, Samantha Casey is living the life of her dreams. Working as a school librarian, Sam is like a second daughter to the Kempner School’s founders, Max and Babette, and she feels like she’s finally found the family she’s always craved. However, when Max tragically dies, Sam’s personal and professional life is thrown into complete upheaval. 

Then Max’s replacement is announced, and Sam can’t decide what’s worse: that her unrequited crush, Duncan Carpenter, is back in her life and is now her boss, or that this new Duncan is nothing like the man she remembers. Gone is the sweet, goofy man with an infectious joie de vivre. Duncan 2.0 is an authoritarian killjoy who is obsessed with safety and intent on transforming Kempner into a glorified prison.

Sam decides to fight for her school and her students, launching a “joy offensive” on Duncan to help him remember who he used to be. If she happens to lose her heart to him all over again in the process—well, that’s a risk she’ll have to take.

A compassionate story of grief and resilience, What You Wish For is also a vital reminder that joy is not just something that happens to us but also something we have the power to choose. As Max always told Sam, we must “never miss a chance to celebrate,” even when things get tough. Ultimately, that is what Center has created for her readers: a quirky confection that celebrates life in all its imperfect glory and delivers a much-needed dose of optimism.

Katherine Center, reigning queen of comfort reads, returns with an exuberant new novel that will have readers rejoicing. What You Wish For is a bona fide explosion of happiness packaged in book form.

FictionFamily Saga

The Color of Air

Review by Stephenie Harrison

In Gail Tsukiyama’s eighth novel, a small Japanese community on Hawaii’s Big Island is thrown into chaos in 1935 when the town’s golden boy, Daniel Abe, returns home after several years away on the mainland. His homecoming coincides with the eruption of Mauna Loa, a portentous omen, as the locals have long viewed its seismic activity as the manifestation of the mercurial moods of Pele, the goddess of volcanoes and fire and the creator of the Hawaiian Islands.

As Daniel works to resettle into his former home and make peace with a tragedy that occurred while working as a doctor in Chicago, dormant secrets and sins of the past come bubbling up. Tensions rise further when he and the villagers learn that the lava flow from Mauna Loa is headed directly for them.

With The Color of Air, Tsukiyama revisits themes that have been constant over the course of her 20-year career, tenderly exploring the complicated web of family and the resilient nature of the human spirit, while also shedding light on an important period of Asian history, this time the indentured servitude of Asian people on the sugar plantations that were once Hawaii’s lifeblood. As always, Tsukiyama’s storytelling is deeply compassionate, undoubtedly buoyed by her personal ties to the material (her father was Japanese American by way of Hawaii), which lends a quiet and sincere intimacy to the proceedings.

There is plenty of interpersonal drama in this twisting tale of love and loss, but the novel’s true joy and beauty come from the intensely atmospheric writing. Tsukiyama’s prose is lush and sensual, fully immersing the reader in this pocket of paradise and bringing the island’s spirits to life. She elevates Hawaii from a simple setting to a character as dynamic and vital as its human inhabitants.

An intoxicating blend of historical events and fiction, The Color of Air is a richly rewarding reading experience perfect for fans of Lisa See or Isabel Allende, or anyone looking for a magical love story that transcends time.

An intoxicating blend of historical events and fiction, The Color of Air is a richly rewarding reading experience perfect for fans of Lisa See or Isabel Allende, or anyone looking for a magical love story that transcends time.

FictionComing of Age

The Knockout Queen

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Rufi Thorpe has made a name for herself as a heavyweight in the literary world with her incisive, morally complex coming-of-age stories. Her debut novel, The Girls From Corona del Mar, was long-listed for several major literary prizes in 2014, and her follow-up, Dear Fang, With Love, was published to wide acclaim two years later. Now Thorpe comes back swinging with her best novel yet, a darkly comedic and tragic tale of a friendship between two outsiders.

Set in sunny Southern California, The Knockout Queen is narrated by Michael, a closeted gay teen sent to live with his aunt after his mother is sentenced to prison for stabbing Michael’s father following one of the father’s violent outbursts. With long hair, a nose piercing and a penchant for eyeliner, Michael doesn’t fit neatly into the glossy world of his suburban North Shore neighborhood. Then again, neither does his next-door neighbor, Bunny, infamous for her dead mother and her extremely tall height.

Thrown together by proximity and a shared sense of alienation, Michael and Bunny forge a fierce friendship and navigate their early high school years as an inseparable duo. Bonded by a mutual love of drag queens and a keen understanding of what it means to be rejected and relegated to the fringes, the two are ferociously protective of each other, and their love for one another is unconditional—or so Michael thinks, until a shocking act of violence triggers a devastating sequence of events that tests the limits of their friendship and changes the trajectory of their lives.

From the very start, the story is infused with an unsettling sense of menace, which Thorpe skillfully wields to pierce through the veneer of her shiny California setting to honestly examine weighty topics such as friendship, sexuality, identity and belonging. Michael tends to see things in black and white, but the canvas of Thorpe’s novel is textured with shades of gray, its world morally ambiguous.

With charismatic characters and a surprising and devastating storyline, The Knockout Queen is a moody and mordantly funny contemplation of the rigors of growing up that will leave readers reeling.

Rufi Thorpe comes back swinging with her best novel yet, a darkly comedic and tragic tale of a friendship between two outsiders.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Real Life

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Dispensing with Midwestern niceties and Southern platitudes, Brandon Taylor announces his arrival to readers with Real Life, a devastating wallop of a debut novel.

Impressive in its economy, the novel spans the course of a single weekend in the life of Wallace, a black graduate student who has moved from Alabama to a Midwestern university town. While navigating his simmering feelings of alienation and his inability to reconcile past wounds, Wallace reaches a boiling point amid conflicts and confrontations with colleagues and friends, as well as an unsettling sexual relationship with a former frenemy. As Wallace’s carefully constructed barriers begin to crumble, he spirals into hyper-intellectual ruminations on topics such as grief, privilege, racism, trauma, queer sexuality, violence, academia and the messy ways in which they all mix.

These heavy, uncomfortable topics make for a heavy, uncomfortable reading experience, one that shares more than a few similarities with Hanya Yanagihara’s juggernaut, A Little Life, both in terms of subject matter and tone. But while A Little Life could be unnecessarily grim and upsetting, the discomfort of Real Life has a point: to unsettle, to provoke and, hopefully, to cause white readers to reassess their own privilege and biases.

The discomfort of 'Real Life' has a point: to unsettle, to provoke and, hopefully, to cause white readers to reassess their own privilege and biases.

As Wallace reflects on a rather disastrous dinner party, “This is why he keeps the truth to himself, because other people don’t know what to do with your shit, with the reality of other people’s feelings. They don’t know what to do when they’ve heard something that does not align with their own perception of things. There is a pause. And a silence.” Taylor isn’t serving up pablum here but cold hard truths, and the reader's job is to witness.

Real Life will undoubtedly unsettle some readers, but it will do the opposite for others, offering relief and validation at finally having their own experiences and truths recognized and reflected in a novel, and artfully so. Taylor’s language is breathtaking in its precision and poetry, and he has a real talent for writing beautifully about ugly, brutal things. The result is a book that can only be described as the perfect union of the two—brutiful—and should be considered essential reading for all.

Dispensing with Midwestern niceties and Southern platitudes, Brandon Taylor announces his arrival to readers with Real Life, a devastating wallop of a debut novel.

FictionFamily Saga

Celestial Bodies

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Jokha Alharthi makes her American debut with Celestial Bodies, the first book by an Omani woman to be translated into English and the first novel originally written in Arabic to win the coveted Man Booker International Prize.

Although it’s framed as a novel that tracks the lives of three sisters, each navigating love and marriage within Oman’s rapidly evolving society, Celestial Bodies is far from a Middle Eastern Pride & Prejudice. Complex and challenging, Alharthi’s novel is less interested in chasing happily ever afters than in exploring Oman’s history of slavery, its cultural and class dynamics and the power of its women within a shifting but resolute patriarchy.

Celestial Bodies is comprised of nonlinear vignettes that highlight a dizzying number of members from a sprawling Omani family over the course of multiple generations. (The family tree at the book’s beginning is critical.) Each character is often given only a few pages—just enough to reveal some tantalizing or illuminating tidbit—before we are whisked on to someone else. Readers will have to work to assemble a cohesive portrait from the beautifully rendered puzzle pieces that Alharthi has scattered before them, but their efforts will be rewarded with a deeply immersive and enlightening reading experience.

The fragmented narrative and lack of obvious plot will not be for everyone, but the novel’s structure emphasizes the immutable passage of time and the changes that have transformed Oman over the last century. These changes are as unsettling for some of the characters as they are for the reader.

We read some books in order to peek into cultures and lives other than our own; others we read to better understand ourselves. Fascinating in its depiction of Oman and its intricacies, yet generous and sweeping in its humanity, Celestial Bodies offers its readers the rare opportunity to do both.

Jokha Alharthi makes her American debut with Celestial Bodies, the first book by an Omani woman to be translated into English and the first novel originally written in Arabic to win the coveted Man Booker International Prize.

FictionPopular Fiction

The Braid

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Already a national bestseller in the author’s native France, The Braid marks director and screenwriter Laetitia Colombani’s North American debut. Tender yet provocative, it’s a captivating and compassionate exploration of the lives and situations of three very different women separated by social class, work, culture and geography.

In India, Smita makes her living cleaning out her neighbors’ toilets by hand, while determined that her daughter will not share the same fate. In Sicily, Giulia must take over her family’s wig workshop and fight to innovate it for the 21st century after a tragedy befalls her father. Finally, there is Sarah, a high-powered lawyer and single mother whose cancer diagnosis has her fighting not only for her life but for her position at her firm. Much like the hairstyle from which the novel takes its title, each woman’s story is told separately and is seemingly unconnected to the other two, loosely paralleling one another until the very end, when their interconnectedness becomes apparent and all strands of the story flow into one.

One of the greatest challenges for novels with multiple narratives is that it’s rare for all storylines and characters to be equally compelling. The Braid suffers no such issue; each heroine shines when she is the focus, each plight feels urgent, vital and interesting. Colombani’s cinematic background serves her well as the plot moves swiftly through succinct and surprising vignettes. Readers will race to see how (or if) each woman will overcome the considerable obstacles she faces and how their lives will ultimately intertwine. Colombani’s writing is earnest and unobtrusive, and her words are largely in service of keeping the story humming along, with the occasional poetic flourish. There is none of the awkwardness that can sometimes stymie literature in translation.

A soul-expanding novel of hope and resiliency, The Braid is a celebration of womanhood, connection and the power of perseverance. It would make an excellent choice for book clubs or readers looking for a short but powerful read.

A soul-expanding novel of hope and resiliency, The Braid is a celebration of womanhood, connection and the power of perseverance.

FictionLiterary Fiction

A Door in the Earth

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Former New York Times reporter Amy Waldman left an indelible imprint on readers with her debut, The Submission, which examined the fallout of 9/11 at Ground Zero. Eight years later, Waldman returns with an even more ambitious novel, A Door in the Earth, which proves to be as politically provocative and challenging as its predecessor.

Drawing on her years based in Afghanistan, Waldman takes readers deep into the heart of the country, transporting us to a remote and largely unremarkable village, ringed by mountains far from the ongoing military conflicts that make headlines overseas. Guiding us is Parveen Shamsa, an earnest medical anthropologist who has recently graduated from Berkley. Inspired by a fictional bestselling memoir by Dr. Gideon Crane, which shed light on the abysmal state of women’s health in Afghanistan, Parveen has left the comforts of home in California to volunteer at the women’s clinic established by Dr. Crane and to reconnect with her own Afghan heritage. 

Unfortunately, the reality of life in the village as well as increasing doubts about the veracity of Crane’s book slowly disabuse Parveen of her youthful naivety, pulling back the veil of her innocence and privilege. When American troops turn their attention to the village, also owing to Crane’s memoir, and begin to pave a road to improve access, this seemingly benign action triggers devastating results for both Parveen and the villagers.

A Door in the Earth is a deeply chilling, multifaceted examination of not just the situation in Afghanistan but also the more pernicious and complex consequences of awakening the sleeping giant that is America and receiving its attentions—whether benevolent or not. Waldman plays out Newton’s third law of motion on the human scale, demonstrating that for every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction. As Parveen learns a little too late, “there is no such thing as an innocuous interaction: there were always repercussions, always collateral damage, for others.”

Former New York Times reporter Amy Waldman left an indelible imprint on readers with her debut, The Submission, which examined the fallout of 9/11 at Ground Zero. Eight years later, Waldman returns with an even more ambitious novel, A Door in the Earth, which proves to be as politically provocative and challenging as its predecessor. […]
FictionFamily Drama

Things You Save in a Fire

Review by Stephenie Harrison

Some people work to live, but Cassie Hanwell lives to work. Her job as a firefighter—and an extremely good one at that—gives her a sense of purpose that nothing else ever has. With grit and unwavering determination, Cassie has worked her way up the ranks of the Austin, Texas, fire department, earning the respect and admiration of her male colleagues. She’s even the first woman to win the department’s prestigious Valor Award. But on the evening of the award ceremony, an impulsive decision, triggered by an encounter with a blast from her past, may jeopardize everything for which Cassie has worked so hard. With her career on the line, Cassie agrees to transfer to an old-school fire department on the outskirts of Boston, where she’ll have to prove herself to her new squad, who have made it clear that there’s no room for a “lady” in their fire station. 

The only person who doesn’t ignore her or treat her with outright hostility is a fellow newcomer, known as the Rookie, who proves to be a different kind of problem—because Cassie decided a long time ago that she would never fall in love, no matter how considerate or attractive or good a cook he might be. There’s no way her career can survive another scandal, but as she spends more time with the Rookie—and begins reconnecting with her estranged mother—Cassie can’t help but wonder if she should let her past go up in flames and make room for something new.

Katherine Center’s latest novel is an emotionally resonant and deeply satisfying love story that features a resilient and courageous heroine with legitimate traumas and obstacles to overcome. Center is a pro at creating characters that readers will root for every step of the way. While Cassie’s happy ending is never truly in doubt, she puts in the work to get there, and it feels well-earned and richly rewarding. 

Hopeful and heartwarming, Things You Save in a Fire is a moving testament to the power of forgiveness and love’s ability to heal, even in the face of life’s worst tragedies.

Some people work to live, but Cassie Hanwell lives to work. Her job as a firefighter—and an extremely good one at that—gives her a sense of purpose that nothing else ever has. With grit and unwavering determination, Cassie has worked her way up the ranks of the Austin, Texas, fire department, earning the respect and admiration of her male colleagues. She’s even the first woman to win the department’s prestigious Valor Award. But on the evening of the award ceremony, an impulsive decision, triggered by an encounter with a blast from her past, may jeopardize everything for which Cassie has worked so hard. With her career on the line, Cassie agrees to transfer to an old-school fire department on the outskirts of Boston, where she’ll have to prove herself to her new squad, who have made it clear that there’s no room for a “lady” in their fire station. 

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