If you’re not familiar with the extraordinary oeuvre of Mozambican writer Mia Couto, Woman of the Ashes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a good introduction. Based on historical events (with layers of magic realism, Achebe-style allegory, and folklore ladled on top), Couto’s ninth novel is the first in a trilogy. It tells the story of Imani, a 15-year-old girl who finds herself playing a pivotal role in a 19th-century culture clash between an African emperor and Portuguese colonialists. Couto treats his characters to a world of blazing specificity, and yet Imani is also a vessel for our more contemporary battles: “I wasn’t born to be a person. I’m a race, I’m a tribe, I’m a sex, I’m everything that stops me from being myself.”
Imagine me and you: Curtis Sittenfeld has her finger on the pulse of our intimate relationships with You Think It, I’ll Say It (Random House), her first story collection. Media maven Joanna Coles takes an explanatory swipe at dating and romance in Love Rules (Harper). In The Female Persuasion (Riverhead), Meg Wolitzer’s latest epic of American life, she pursues the friendship and mentorship between two women: “Greer didn’t really know why Faith took an interest. But what she knew for sure, eventually, was that meeting Faith Frank was the thrilling beginning of everything.”
In Short
Clarice Lispector sparkles under The Chandelier (New Directions). Cleo Wade assembles the affirmations in Heart Talk (Atria). Leslie Jamison breaks the addiction-lit mold with The Recovering (Little, Brown). Michael Benson tells a HAL of a good story in Space Odyssey (Simon & Schuster). James Comey demands A Higher Loyalty (Flatiron). Diplomacy is on the decline in Ronan Farrow’s War on Peace (Norton). Jennifer Palmieri gets epistolary and empowering with Dear Madam President (Grand Central). Cherokee chiefs battle beneath John Sedgwick’s Blood Moon (Simon & Schuster). Shahriar Mandanipour’s soldier is haunted by Moon Brow (Restless). Richard Flanagan’s First Person (Knopf) features a spectral scribe. Michelle Dean culls the clever in Sharp (Grove). Steve Israel whips out the Big Guns (Simon & Schuster). William Vollmann is in No Immediate Danger (Viking). David Gahr’s Bruce Springsteen (Rizzoli) was born to run. Steven J. Zipperstein uncovers crimes of the Kishinev Pogrom (Liveright). Masha Gessen and Misha Friedman seek Stalin in Never Remember (Columbia Global Reports). Alex Wagner abstracts ancestry in Futureface (One World). Ondjaki transports us to Transparent City (Biblioasis). Åsne Seierstad follows a father’s pursuit of his daughters in Two Sisters (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Magdalena J. Zaborowska voyage chez James Baldwin dans Me and My House (Duke University). William Middleton has Double Vision (Knopf) for art-world avatars. Christopher Petkanas’s Loulou & Yves are a match made in Saint Laurent (St. Martin’s). New York is for the very young in Iris Martin Cohen’s The Little Clan (Park Row). Ruth Rogers, Sian Wyn Owen, Joseph Trivelli, and Rose Gray invite you to dine at the River Cafe London (Knopf). Wade in the Water (Graywolf) with the lyrical Tracy K. Smith. Rex Sorgatz explains it all in the Encyclopedia of Misinformation (Abrams Image). But Julian Barnes tells The Only Story (Knopf).
