Transcription by Ben Lerner

 

Memory is fleeting. It’s why we have recorded our lives since time immemorial— on stone tablets and today, we connect through digital tablets. At its heart, Lerner’s brilliant novel, tinged with evanescence, is about communication. The narrator’s daughter Emmie, struggling with a lack of interest in food, turns the corner with soothing (to her) videos through a tablet. When his father is quarantined with COVID in the early days of the pandemic, it’s again an inefficient medium that serves as communication vector. Do these methods amplify or dilute our memories? Lerner explores this thesis well in this delightfully cerebral novel. 

Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman by Callum Robinson

 

The tools of the trade for Callum Robinson might be the predictable ones, but it’s true grit and the ability to look outside the box that end up rescuing the author’s fragile business. When a significant client bails, the bottom caves under and Robinson and his enterprise and ever-resourceful architect wife, Marisa, learn how to pivot. They decide to sell directly to consumers and slowly build their failing business back up. The descriptions of woodworking are entrancing but they’re not as abundant as I hoped they would be. Part memoir, part business how-to, the book nevertheless is an engaging read.

Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven

When teenage Ellis Samuelson decides to just up and stay in Bug Hollow one summer, the events that unfold will affect him and his family forever. Spanning the 70s through contemporary times, Huneven gives the Samuelson family story a touching and simultaneously vivacious arc. The smallest moments of tenderness and joy permeate practically everything, including a deeply touching deathbed scene. The family packs into the old beatup sedan to rescue one of their own and have the battle scars to prove it. Through it all they share life’s vicissitudes, accommodating each person’s foibles as they go. Profound and simultaneously propulsive. 

Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet

Set in the time of the wealthy Medicis in 16th century Italy, this raucous epistolary novel is a murder whodunnit at its heart. Who killed the artist Pimponael found dead in Florence’s holy chapel, his frescoes unfinished. A chorus of characters adds drama to engaging, if sometimes dizzying effect. The real treat is in uncovering the larger undercurrents: the increasingly conservative social mores of the time; the geopolitical maneuvering between the Italians, French and the Spaniards; the stirrings of revolution; and the manipulation of women as mere property to be used for strategic gain. A thoroughly enjoyable if manic romp. 

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.