January 1, 2022
International award winner Cercas expands to literary suspense inEven the Darkest Night, featuring a young ex-con who read Les Mis�rables in jail and after the murder of his sex-worker mother joins the Barcelona police and is sent to investigate a particularly brutal double murder outside the city. In another genre blender, the New York Times best-selling Crosley purveys humor, psychological twistiness, and strong writing to create what could be a Cult Classic featuring a woman who leaves a work dinner to buy cigarettes and encounters a string of ghostly ex-boyfriends (100,000-copy first printing). From Dermansky (e.g., the multi-best-booked The Red Car), Hurricane Girl sends 32-year-old Allison Brody from the West Coast to the East Coast, where she buys a small house on the beach and is promptly hit by a Category 3 hurricane that leaves her with a bleeding head and some very confused thoughts. Following Delicious Foods, which boast PEN/Faulkner and Hurston/Wright Legacy honors, Hannaham's Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta features a woman who transitioned in prison and is finally released after more than two decades, returning apprehensively to a New York she barely knows and a family that doesn't understand her (40,000-copy first printing). Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, Holleran returns after 13 years with The Kingdom of Sand, whose nameless narrator has survived the death of friends from AIDS and his parents from old age and tragedy and is surviving his own end time by enjoying classic films and near-anonymous sexual encounters (50,000-copy first printing). In Laskey's So Happy for You, following Center for Fiction First Novel finalist Under the Rainbow, Robin and Ellie have always been best friends, but queer academic Robin has her doubts about being maid of honor in Ellie's forthcoming wedding. In the medieval-set Lapnova, from ever-edgy, New York Times best-selling Moshfegh, hapless shepherd's son Marek--close only to a midwife feared for her ungodly way with nature--is caught up in the violence surrounding a cruel and corrupt lord. In this follow-up to Newman's multi-starred The Heavens, all The Men in the world mysteriously vanish at once, leaving women both to grieve and to rebuild. Prix Marguerite Yourcenar winner Nganang follows up hisLJ best-booked When the Plums Are Ripe with A Trail of Crab Tracks, whose protagonist slowly reveals his story--and the story of Cameroon's independence--on a prolonged stay with his son in the United States. The dedicated assistant principal at a New Jersey public high school thinks she has a lock on the principal's job when the current principal retires, but alas for the durable protagonist of Perrotta's Election, Tracy Flick [still] Can't Win (300,000-copy first printing). In Thrust, a motherless child from the late 21st century learns that she can connect with people over the last two centuries, from a French sculptor to a dictator's daughter; from Yuknavitch, a Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize finalist.
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May 1, 2022
Dermansky's latest, following Very Nice (2019), focuses on Allison Brody, who, at 32, is adrift after she leaves a screenwriting career and an abusive boyfriend behind in Los Angeles only to have her Plan B derailed when a hurricane destroys the small North Carolina beach house she just bought for herself. Rendered homeless, she goes home with an older man, only to have him hit her over the head with a glass vase. Injured Allison makes her way to her mother in New Jersey, who gets her to a hospital, where Allison finds herself under the care of Danny Yang, a college classmate who still carries a torch for her. Aimless once again, Allison finds herself recovering from brain surgery in Danny's fancy apartment and spending her days swimming in his rooftop pool, trying to decide whether she loves him or just the comfort he offers. Allison might be a hot mess, but she's also eminently relatable in a world filled with pitfalls for women who try to figure out what they want for themselves.
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May 16, 2022
In Dermansky’s lackluster latest (after Very Nice), a young woman contends with a certain well-worn millennial malaise. Allison Brody, 32 and “sick of everybody and everything,” leaves Los Angeles and her abusive movie-producer boyfriend, Keith, and buys a beach house in North Carolina. The house is destroyed in a hurricane soon after Allison moves in, and she holes up with another Keith, who shatters a vase over her head after she rejects his advances. Bleeding from an open head wound, Allison drives eight hours to New Jersey to be with her mother. There, after being treated at a hospital, she wakes to find her brain surgeon is Danny Yang, an old college fling. In what might be a dream state, Allison processes her father’s death, which took place a year earlier, as well as her recent trauma. She begins to develop new romantic feelings for Danny, while coming up with a plan for a fresh start. There’s some deliciously dry humor (“Allison was doing a horrible job at saving her life. Shameful, in fact”), but the surreal aura doesn’t really develop into anything substantial or comprehensible. Readers are left with a Moshfegh-like vibe, but without a strong character or story. This one is safe to skip. Agent: Alex Glass, Glass Literary.
April 1, 2022
With her new work, Dermansky (The Red Car) creates a central character whose life is a hurricane of impulsivity. At 32, Allison Brody flees an abusive relationship in Los Angeles and impulsively buys a beach house in North Carolina. She has only 10 days to enjoy her new home before a hurricane demolishes it. Offered a guest room by a cameraman who discovers her sitting in the house's debris, she eagerly accepts, but the man objects when she tries to leave the next morning and hits her with a glass vase. Rather than seek medical help for the subsequent hole in her head, she rushes to her mother in New Jersey and ends up in emergency surgery. As it happens, the surgeon is an old boyfriend, and they relaunch their relationship, but during their get-away weekend in Miami, Allison suddenly decides that it's time to face what happened in North Carolina and returns to confronts her assailant. VERDICT Dermansky surrounds Allison with disappointing men, making her trust issues understandable, and she effectively captures Allison's brain fog and inability to make reasonable decisions, particularly following a traumatic brain injury. The ending is satisfying, if unconventional. For readers of general fiction.--Joanna M. Burkhardt
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Starred review from April 1, 2022
Just a little comedy about the loss of all worldly possessions, near-deadly assault, brain surgery, and violent revenge. When we meet Allison Brody, she has just left an abusive movie-producer boyfriend in Los Angeles, driven across the country, and bought a small but sweet foreclosed beach house in North Carolina. Once you get to know the hapless protagonist of Dermansky's fifth novel, you realize this sequence of decisive actions was a pretty big accomplishment. Allison is plagued by self-doubt ("Maybe leaving had been stupid"), agency is not her strong suit ("Allison was not sure what to do"), and she has no faith to sustain her when, a week and a half later, a storm destroys her new home. ("Such a God, Alison was sure, would have to be a man, and not a particularly nice one.") Sentences with fewer than 10 words, mostly one-syllable each, are the building blocks of this stripped-down narrative--the tone is so consistent it's a kind of poetry. "Allison was homeless and she was broke. It was wild how fast the tides could turn. Part of her also knew that she was fine." Unfortunately, Allison is not all that fine, and the cruel winds of destiny that blew her house down are not finished with her yet. Again Dermansky has come up with a seemingly artless but in fact very controlled novel, focusing this time on the many things other people do to our heads without permission (this is a metaphor with legs, you'll see). Small comic gems sparkle in their deadpan settings on every page. No matter how bad things get, Alison's running joke to herself--she still has her health--never ceases to amuse her, though at a certain point, "she did not think anyone else would think it was funny." She's wrong about that. The only bad thing about this book is that you will likely finish it in one sitting.
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