Entertainment
6 New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Our recommended books this week tilt heavily toward European culture and history, with a new history of the Vikings, a group biography of the Tudor queens’ ladies-in-waiting, a collection of letters from the Romanian-born French poet Paul Celan and a biography of the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. We also recommend a fascinating true-crime memoir (written by the criminal in question) and, in fiction, Rebecca Kauffman’s warmhearted new novel about a complicated family. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
LETTERS TO GISÈLE
Paul Celan
One of Europe’s most important postwar poets, Celan remains as intriguing as he is perplexing more than 50 years after his death. The autobiographical underpinnings of his work were beyond the reach of general readers until the 1990s, when the thousands of pages of Celan’s letters began to appear. The scholar Bertrand Badiou compiled the poet’s correspondence with his wife, the French graphic artist Gisèle Lestrange-Celan, and that collection is now available for the first time in English, translated by Jason Kavett.
“An invaluable window onto the years from 1951 to 1970, when all but one of Celan’s books were written. … Frequently offers keys to obscure passages in his work.”
From Adrian Nathan West’s review
NYRB Poets | Paperback, $28
GOETHE:
His Faustian Life
A.N. Wilson
Wilson’s biography of the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) approaches its subject through his masterpiece and life’s work, the verse drama “Faust” — widely considered perhaps the single greatest work of German literature, stuffed to its limits with philosophical and earthy meditations on human existence.
“Wilson doesn’t try to sell his readers on new discoveries about Goethe’s life — a just-found cache of letters to his tailor, that sort of thing. This is good news. … Communicates his passion for Goethe by urging the writer’s works upon us, as if reading them were a moral duty.”
From Dwight Garner’s review
Bloomsbury Continuum | $35
I’LL COME TO YOU
Rebecca Kauffman
Through a series of vignettes, Kauffman’s fifth novel centers on a woman determined to spend Christmas with her extended family, including her future grandchild and ex-husband, and swivels to take in the perspectives of each family member in turn.
“The joy in this book is something to admire deeply. … Shows us there is room in a novel — as in the heart — for everyone.”
From Claire Luchette’s review
Counterpoint | $26
EMBERS OF THE HANDS:
Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
Eleanor Barraclough
People love the blood-soaked sagas that chronicle the deeds of Viking raiders. But Barraclough, a British historian and broadcaster, looks beyond those soap-opera stories to uncover lesser-known details of Old Norse civilization beginning in A.D. 750 or so.
“Dense with fact but animated by garrulous humor. … Barraclough does a nice job of imagining what went on inside these homes and their residents without pressing too hard.”
From Timothy Farrington’s review
Norton | $29
YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE ME:
A Life of Lies, Second Tries, and Things I Should Only Tell My Therapist
Kari Ferrell
Fifteen years ago, Ferrell gained a dubious fame after The New York Observer identified her as the “hipster grifter” who had prowled the Brooklyn bar scene scamming unsuspecting men even as she was wanted in Utah on felony fraud charges. Now older, wiser and released from jail, Ferrell emerges in this captivating, sharp and very funny memoir to detail her path from internet notoriety to self-knowledge.
“Her untold story is a great American tale. And as she unspools it, she builds an indictment of the country’s central myths: the scams of race, of class, of justice. … Leads us to examine forces beyond herself.”
From Amanda Hess’s review
St. Martin’s | $29
THE WAITING GAME:
The Untold Story of the Women Who Served the Tudor Queens: A History
Nicola Clark
In her lively and vivid group biography of the women who served Henry VIII’s queens, Clarke, a British author and historian, finds a compelling side entrance into the Tudor industrial complex, showing that behind all the grandeur the royal court was human-size and small.
“Clark brings these ladies — traditionally the window dressing of Tudor literature — forward and casts them as the heroes of their own dramas. … Her subjects are anything but ordinary.”
From Eva Wolchover’s review
Pegasus | $32.99