By Ottessa Moshfegh
Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest novel takes place in Lapvona, a medieval fief ruled by a vain and gluttonous lord, Villiam. The story begins with Marek, a masochistic and God-fearing 13-year-old boy who craves pain and punishment because he knows that God loves those who suffer. His father, Jude, cares much more about the lambs he raises than his son. The town they live in is full of strange people and a cruel tragedy: an old woman who survived a plague as a child and started breastfeeding spontaneously at the age of 40 becomes a wet nurse for most of the town’s children; a brutal summer drought grips the town while Villiam lavishes himself by the reservoir of his mansion. Lapvona it turns all the conventions of family and parental relationships upside down, putting hate where love should be or negotiation where pain should be. Ultimately, it is the story of a boy whose parents don’t really care about him, and the corruption and tragedy he falls into because of it. Through a mix of witchcraft, deception, murder, abuse, grand hoax, ridiculous conversation, and embarrassing moments of body disgust, Moshfegh creates a world you definitely don’t want to live in, but can’t look away from. -Maya Chung
Buy Lapvona from bookshop.org
By Jean Hanff Korelitz
From birth, the Oppenheimer triplets, Harrison, Sally and Lewyn, operate under an unspoken pact of mutual avoidance. They have it all: a stately home, wealth, close grandparents, and a mother, Johanna, who binds and keeps her family together by sheer will. But she can’t stop her husband, Salo, from straying from her, and she can’t bring her children closer to her or to each other. In adolescence they act like magnets with the same charge; for example, Sally and Lewyn attend Cornell, where they tell everyone they don’t know each other (eventually causing both of them profound damage). In adulthood, their shared disgust crystallizes into outright contempt and anger. But, as the title suggests, they are not the only Oppenheimers with an interest in the family’s affairs. Though their domestic drama becomes more entangled with each passing year’s refusal to address it, someone finally arrives intent on cutting the knot. Read it now to get a head start on the next, inevitably star-studded, TV version: Jean Hanff Korelitz’s latest adaptation, the ruinhad Nicole Kidman as the lead, and Mahershala Ali is attached to an upcoming series based on Korelitz. the plot. -Emma Sarapo
Buy Newcomer from bookshop.org
By Akwaeke Emezi
Akwaeke Emezi is well versed in writing the tender devastation of meat. His first critically acclaimed novel, sweet water, presents a furtive and wounded narrator, the son of a deity, who speaks in the first person plural, who struggles and suffers the restrictions of living in a human body. the memories of him, Dear Senthuran, directly analyzed the author’s own struggles with incarnation. Emezi’s latest offer, You made the ridiculous of death with your beauty, is in many ways a classic romance novel; At first glance, this may seem like a sea change for a writer who normally deals with spirituality and mortality. But here, too, Emezi makes the duel the centerpiece of it, even as sex and seduction form the basis of the book. A young widow and artist named Feyi is tentatively coming to terms with life after losing her lover. Between breathless erotic encounters and luxurious tropical escapades, Feyi returns again and again to that absolute pain. The novel is in some ways a beach read and a psychological portrait, and is likely to spark conversations both sensual and vulnerable. -Nicole Acheampong
Buy You made the ridiculous of death with your beauty from bookshop.org
By David Sedari
David Sedaris is back, doing what his readers love: delivering wry, poignant, and hard-hitting stories about his eccentric family. This batch also touches on some of the most tumultuous moments of our last two years, sometimes quite irreverently. Reading Sedaris about, shall we say, his pathetic efforts to stockpile food in the early days of the pandemic is sublimely amusing: He ends up with an assortment that includes a pint of buttermilk, tacos, and a pack of hot dogs. These essays also have more darkness and death than his previous work, and are based on themes he began to explore in his earlier collection. Calypso. The pieces vary widely, following the path of Sedaris’s travels and his eccentric mind, but one direct line involves his nonagenarian father who lives in an assisted-care facility and whose eventual death is captured in these pages. This is one of the most complicated relationships of Sedaris’s life, and he remains undeterred as he tries to understand who his enigmatic father was and how living with him altered the shape of his very existence. -Gal Beckerman
Buy Happy-Go-Lucky from bookshop.org
.