Flesh by David Szalay

 

There’s something about capitalism in the 21st century that can gnaw at your very soul and leave it chewed up to the core. István feels this first-hand as he gets tossed around, simply drifting in and out of events that take him from his native Hungary to the rest of Europe and back. Seduced by a 40-something neighbor as a teenager, István soon learns to peddle his one currency, his good looks to move up the ladder. The view from the top is precarious however, and dependent on the good graces of people beyond his control. Mildly engaging social satire.

Flashlight by Susan Choi

 When Louisa was just 10, her Japanese-Korean father drowned off a beach in Japan. Or so she remembers. Dad, Serk, an American immigrant with a fractured family had been cobbling a life with Anne, a WASP-y curious yet distant woman, with family challenges of her own. When it all splinters, Louisa’s relationship with her mother grows icier. But the landscape recasts when new information about the family’s past surfaces from a most unexpected place. In brilliant and nuanced writing, Choi delivers a masterpiece. She plays with the title “flashlight,” showing how limited brightness can create its own unknown dark shadows.

The Antidote by Karen Russell

 

Harp Oketsky’s farm in dust-drowned Uz, Nebraska, is flourishing even as his neighbors’ are failing. And a serial killer is on the loose, even if the town sheriff tries to bury the plot. Central to the story though is a “prairie witch,” the antidote in the title, whose strength as a keeper of secrets might be on the wane. Russell is famous for elements of magical realism and this novel too weaves strands in expertly. At times the stories of the various characters strain to merge into a cohesive whole but the vivid and energetic narrative is a winner nevertheless. 

The Apartment by Ana Menendez

The high-rise building in Miami already rests on the ghosts of indigenous people. As apartment 2B gets going, from the early 50s on, stories of the residents layer on like wax on the parquet flooring. A soldier and young bride for whom the apartment marks just the beginning; a Cuban concert pianist whose best days are behind him; and most of all, Lenin, a young Cuban man whose exile haunts him. In the present is Lana, troubled by these collective ghosts and by the mice in the apartment. The collective symphony is aching and melodious, full of beauty and anguish.

American Bloomsbury: : Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work by Susan Cheever

Before I read this absolutely mesmerizing account of literary heavyweights in nineteenth century Concord, my knowledge of the giants was piecemeal. Thoreau setting up home by Walden Pond. Louisa May Alcott’s blockbuster, Little Women. Emerson’s role in launching the Transcendentalists movement. Cheever adds putty to this framework, portraying the characters in their full humanity, foibles and all. The short chapters keep the narrative brisk and there’s enough gossip in here to rival People magazine. I especially appreciated the personalities being set against the history-laden town of Concord, and, eventually, against the larger context of the Civil War. A riveting read.

Eastbound by Maylis De Kerangal

The Trans-Siberian Express is the focal point for this absolutely transfixing novella, brilliantly translated from French. Aliocha is a 20-year-old conscript who desperately wants to escape a certain harrowing fate in Siberia as part of the Russian army. He pleads with a woman on the train, secreted in first class, to hide him. And so launches this firecracker of a story that delivers a nerve-wracking ride. Maylis de Kerangal packs much energy into a dyamite narrative that moves linearly—quite literally, except for a short aside into the woman’s backstory. A marvel that has had me seeking out the author’s backlist.

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

What does the fall of an empire look like when distilled down to its most basic elements? This absolutely beautiful and elegiac novel shows us as it traces the lives of the father and son Trotta, descendants of the senior Trotta who saved the Kaiser’s life in the Battle of Solferino. That singular act casts a long protective shadow over the family, taking every generation under its wing. Roth traces Junior’s gradual disillusionment with his military duty, honorbound as he is by tradition and his father’s word. As the empire crumbles, the Trottas stand out in even starker contrast. Brilliant!