General Fiction
1983.
By Tom Cox.
Oct. 2024. 288p. Unbound, $22.95 (9781800183438).
Cox is a writer who seems to follow wherever his whims and interests take him, from fiction (Villager, 2022) to sports writing, and his latest is a wonderful amalgamation of memory and whimsy. Eight-year-old Benji is an incredibly imaginative child in a village just outside Nottinghamshire, living with his two artistically inclined parents in an unusual neighborhood. One neighbor, Colin, makes robots, which contrasts starkly with the belligerent racism of another resident. Benji believes he may be an alien and that extraterrestrials are among his neighbors (which, wonderfully enough, turns out to be true, even when Benji doesn’t believe so any more). In a series of vignettes involving a wide cast of characters over the span of a year, Benji’s teachers are shown to be everyday heroes, and in his acknowledgments at the end, Cox indicates the huge impact his elementary school had on his artistic approach. In what is partly a regional novel about the beginnings of postindustrial life in Thatcher’s Britain, Cox joyfully explores broader themes of education and neighborliness in a unique, deeply engaging style. —Alexander Moran
All the Other Me.
By Jody Holford.
Nov. 2024. 291p. Blackstone, paper, $15.99 (9798212638197).
Isabelle Duprees, successful, wealthy, ceiling-breaking businesswoman, is returning to her Manhattan apartment after receiving a major award when she sees her sister, Elaina, in front of her building. Isabelle, long estranged from her family (justifiably, so she feels) is not happy to see her. Though she generously supports them financially, she wants nothing to do with her mother and sister. During the arguments that follow, Elaina dares Isabelle to Google herself, and the results are beyond shocking. Another Isabelle, same name, hometown, birthday, and face, is the result, and our Isabelle does not appear. Thus begins a road trip for the two sisters to discover who this other woman is. It’s followed by another search, another woman, same everything, and then a third. Izzy, Belle, Iz—each of them is the result of a turn in the road, a choice taken or not. None recognize their doppelgänger. Isabelle confronts herself through these others and finds some clarity, family ties, and love while maintaining her life’s core. A strange and magical story. —Danise Hoover
Before We Forget Kindness.
By Toshikazu Kawaguchi. Tr. by Geoffrey Trousselot.
Nov. 2024. 240p. Harlequin, $21.99 (9781335915283).
The fifth in the globally beloved, best-selling Before the Coffee Gets Cold series is another familiar balm, gently translated again by Trousselot. Kawaguchi introduces another four visitors to Tokyo’s time-traveling café, Funiculi Funicula, while updating the lives of the caring staff and the regular customers, who are often ready with (unsolicited) advice. The rules haven’t changed. The most important are that the woman in the white dress must vacate her seat (yes, ghosts need the toilet, too) before the temporal seeker can commence their traveling opportunity (into the past or future), where they must finish drinking the coffee before it’s cold. This latest quartet features the precocious seven-year-old son of divorced parents who would like not to cry when his parents first announce their separation, a grieving widow who wants her late husband to name their newborn daughter, an estranged father and daughter hoping to make confessional amends, and a woman who longs to apologize to her former best friend. Formulaic these volumes may be, but the hopeful do-over potential provides irresistible, feel-good rewards with each new chapter. —Terry Hong
The Beggar Student.
By Osamu Dazai. Tr. by Sam Bett.
Nov. 2024. 96p. New Directions, paper, $14.95 (9780811238588).
Japanese author Dazai, born Tsushima Shūji, often used his own troubled life as inspiration for his fiction, repeatedly sharing his pseudonymous moniker with his characters. Dazai is again the protagonist here and a pen name, as the novella’s Dazai, revealing his “incredibly embarrassing” birth name, explains. Dazai “makes [him] sound like a streetfighter who might break your neck.” When this story was originally published in 1941, the author and protagonist were both 32-year-old struggling writers. Here International Booker Prize shortlisted translator Bett sublimely provides anglophone access. Fictional Dazai has just “sent a truly awful piece of writing to a magazine in order to survive.” While avoiding going home, he walks along the Tamagawa Canal (where real-life Dazai’s fifth suicide attempt will succeed in 1948) and encounters a high-school student turned one-day dropout. Age differences aside, the pair seem to revel in unlikely conversations—at turns adversarial, agitated, comical—that lead to “not a care in the world” youthful adventures. But then, Dazai can be such an unreliable narrator. Dazai aficionados will recognize parallels with the posthumously published, now-classic novel, No Longer Human. —Terry Hong
Brightly Shining.
By Ingvild Rishøi. Tr. by Caroline Waight.
Nov. 2024. 192p. Grove, $20 (9780802163493); e-book (9780802163509).
Ten-year-old Ronja’s school caretaker hands her a flyer to give to her out-of-work father. A Christmas tree stand in Oslo is seeking workers. Ronja’s father lands the job, and for a little while, things look up for their little family—Ronja, her dad, and her 16-year-old sister, Melissa. But when one of his drinking buddies comes around, their father’s back to spending his earnings on alcohol. Melissa begs to take over his shift, fitting it in before and after school, and soon Ronja finds solace among the pines. Told with the clear-eyed candor of young Ronja, this beautifully crafted novel explores the challenges of a child’s unpredictable life with an alcoholic father and the band of kind people who try to help, including an older neighbor and the tree-stand worker about to become a father himself. This moving tale, with not a single wasted word, asks how we keep going when hope fades and life’s burdens become too much to bear, leaning on the power of imagination and connection to find a way forward. —Bridget Thoreson
Children of the Ghetto: Star of the Sea.
By Elias Khoury. Tr. by Humphrey Davies.
Nov. 2024. 250p. Archipelago, paper, $24 (9781962770064); e-book (9781962770071).
Adam, born in 1948 to freedom-fighter Palestinians behind barbed wire in a ghetto in Palestine, is determined to forge his own destiny. After a beating from Israeli police (“he’d realized that being in the right and being maltreated went hand in hand”) and abandoning his mother and abusive step-father, he is virtually adopted by an Israeli garage owner who believes Adam resembles his lost brother. Gradually the blond and light-skinned Adam, who speaks nearly perfect Hebrew and longs to study Hebrew literature at Haifa University, changes his last name and begins to “pass” as Jewish. His identity conflict comes to a head when he is outed on a university tour of Auschwitz. Overwhelmed by the enormity of the Holocaust yet seeking to reconcile his sorrow with his anger over Palestinian suffering, Adam ruefully concludes that “this world isn’t big enough for two tragedies.” Khoury skillfully evokes the cruel absurdities of Israeli occupation as Adam attempts to cope with past and present anguish. The second in a trilogy, following My Name Is Adam (2019), this novel can be enjoyed on its own. —Lesley Williams
Cross.
By Austin Duffy.
Nov. 2024. 304p. Melville, paper, $19.99 (9781685891770); e-book (9781685891787).
Northern Ireland in 1994 is on the verge of peace after decades of fighting. However, in IRA-run small towns such as the fictional Cross, the mood is one of exhaustion and paranoia. Francie Begley fears that the code of the republicans has been overtaken by a sadistic acceptance of violence as a way of life and not a means to an end. Yet the rising politician nicknamed M.O.C.—a stand-in for the real Gerry Adams—denies the IRA’s existence altogether. Conflict is stirred when a protesting mother of a missing man brings international attention to the ongoing (2019). —