Entertainment
6 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Our recommendations this week tilt toward works of fiction, with a new story collection from the incomparable Joy Williams (it’s about Azrael, the angel who escorts dead souls to their final destinations) and novels by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Akwaeke Emezi and Julia Phillips. In nonfiction, we recommend a wide-angle history of Black resistance and a cultural history of the Federal Theater Project, a Depression-era government arts program that fell prey to the politics of the day. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
LONG ISLAND COMPROMISE
Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Based on a true story, this novel by the author of “Fleishman Is in Trouble” follows a dysfunctional suburban family decades after the father, a prominent businessman, is kidnapped from his driveway. Now his children are in their 30s and 40s, and laying out the ways they are screwed up by latent trauma, their father’s repression and the wealth that insulates them.
Credit…“When Brodesser-Akner dives, she does so without making a splash, seamlessly entering … her characters’ pathological inability to know themselves.”
From Sloane Crosley’s review
Random House | $30
WE REFUSE:
A Forceful History of Black Resistance
Kellie Carter Jackson
In her compelling and often counterintuitive new book, Carter Jackson, a professor of Africana studies, argues that the usual chronicles of Black resistance are both narrow and watered down. She traces the global influence of the Haitian Revolution, reveals the diverse attitudes of American civil rights activists and warns against the dangers of misremembering the past.
Credit…“A broader and more nuanced picture of resistance. … Effective in unearthing the stories of little-known, everyday rebellions, especially from the lives of Black women. These histories have been at best under-told, if not lost altogether.”
From Linda Villarosa’s review
Seal Press | $30
THE PLAYBOOK:
A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War
James Shapiro
Shapiro, a leading Shakespeare scholar, offers this timely history of the Federal Theater Project, a short-lived but ambitious Depression-era program that gave work to writers and actors, until opponents tarred its efforts as un-American.
Credit…“Piquant and resonant … about how messy and compromised the situation can get for artists when Congress is signing the checks, how cynical the politics can be.”
From Laura Collins-Hughes’s review
Penguin Press | $30
LITTLE ROT
Akwaeke Emezi
Emezi’s latest is about a casual evening gone spectacularly awry, following two exes who, in an effort to recover after their breakup, spend a Friday night with friends, only to be sucked into Nigeria’s dark, terrible underworld.
Credit…“What gives ‘Little Rot’ its vitality are its overlapping love stories, its characters’ longing, their acts of devotion and tenderness in defiance of a world in which a soft heart is a liability.”
From Chelsea Leu’s review
Riverhead Books | $29
CONCERNING THE FUTURE OF SOULS:
99 Stories of Azrael
Joy Williams
In her latest story collection, Williams (the daughter of a Congregational minister) distills much learning — on philosophy, history and religion — into 99 brief tales about Azrael, the angel of death, and his complicated relationship with the Devil. Both characters seem a bit weary, but the author’s wit and brilliance remain undiminished.
Credit…“Running almost silently below the loneliness and the silky comedy in these stories is the sense, down on earth, of acidifying oceans, species loss and space junk crashing Muskily down from the cosmos. … The portents have grown dire.”
From Dwight Garner’s review
Tin House | $22.95
BEAR
Julia Phillips
Two sisters barely getting by on a Puget Sound island respond very differently to the appearance of a mysterious grizzly in this slow-burning novel, loosely based on a Grimms’ fairy tale.
Credit…“Moody and affecting. … ‘Bear’ ends with a bang, and with the intriguing notion that sisterhood (or sisters?) may be as unknowable and unpredictable as anything else in nature.”
From Jess Walter’s review
Hogarth | $28
