Archives de catégorie : London 2021 Fiction

BROTHER ALIVE de Zain Khalid

An astonishing debut novel about family, sexuality, and capitalist systems of control, following three adopted brothers who live above a mosque in Staten Island with their imam father.

BROTHER ALIVE
by Zain Khalid
Grove Atlantic, August 2022
(via Neon Literary)

In 1990, three boys are born, unrelated but intertwined by circumstance: Dayo, Iseul, and Youssef. They are adopted as infants and come to live in a shared bedroom perched atop a mosque in one of Staten Island’s most diverse and precarious neighborhoods, Coolidge. The three boys are a conspicuous trio: Dayo is of Nigerian origin, Iseul, Korean, and Youssef indeterminately Middle Eastern, but they are inseparable, whether scheming or fighting or investigating the traces of their shared history. But Youssef has another sibling he keeps secret from his family, an imaginary familiar who seems hyper-real, a wondrous pet who lives in Youssef’s mind, a shapeshifting creature he calls Brother.
The boys’ adoptive father, Imam Salim, is known for his radical sermons extolling the virtues of opting out of Western ideologies. He is a distant father, never touching his boys physically, but supplementing their education with texts like The Blind Owl and The Foundations of Arithmetic. In the evenings, he likes nothing more than to pour whiskey into his coffee and escape into his study, where he corresponds with compatriots from his time in Saudi Arabia. Like Youssef, he too has secrets, including the cause of his failing health, the reason for his visits to a botanical garden in the middle of the night, and the truth about the boys’ parents he would be ashamed to share.
Imam Salim’s deeds and decisions will take him back to Saudi Arabia, where the boys were born and will be forced to follow. As they settle into an opulent, futuristic world that is designed to account for a new, more sustainable modernity than of the West, they will have to change if they want to survive. They soon realize that they are not the only ones who have returned home—the arrival of Youssef’s Brother will not go unnoticed.
With stylistic brilliance and intellectual acuity, in Brother Alive Zain Khalid brings characters to vivid life with a bold energy that matches the great themes of his novel—family, capital, power, sexuality, and the possibility of reunion for those who are broken.

Zain Khalid has been published in The New Yorker, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. He has also written for television. Brother Alive is his first novel. He lives in New York City.

HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS de Lauren Francis-Sharma

From the acclaimed author of Book of the Little Axe, HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS is the harrowing story of a young Black girl’s genius and resilience in the face of a world that would render her invisible.

HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS
by Lauren Francis-Sharma
Atlantic Monthly Press, May 2023

Lauren Francis-Sharma’s debut novel ‘Til the Well Runs Dry was short-listed for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and her second novel, Book of the Little Axe was praised as a “masterly epic” (Publishers Weekly) that spanned generations and continents. Now, she returns with HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS, a moving, richly imagined story of one family’s Great Migration and the foundations of Black Baltimore.
In 1904, the day the Great Baltimore Fire decimated the burgeoning city, William and Phyllis Battle welcome the arrival of their first child outside a whites-only hospital. The couple are recent arrivals in Baltimore, struggling to build for themselves the life they dreamed about down South. Phyllis, born with six fingers on each hand, has always been regarded with some suspicion by her community, but whether this suspicion is warranted or she’s simply misunderstood remains to be seen. Meanwhile, her daughter Margaret is coming of age, and demonstrates a keen intellect and photographic memory from a young age, but has never spoken a word. After William is injured in an industrial accident, Phyllis makes ends meet by teaching Margaret to use her extraordinary memory to count cards. However, the girl catches the eye of some unscrupulous characters who populate the gaming halls and dark alleyways of the city. And one day Margaret does not come home.
Set in the spring and Red Summer of 1919, a year whose racial terror incidents are now infamous, HOUSE OF TWELVE FINGERS is an evocative, suspenseful, and tenderly wrought story of an unforgettable family’s bitter fight to carve out a life on their own terms.

Lauren Francis-Sharma is also the author of the critically acclaimed novel ‘Til The Well Runs Dry, which was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize. She resides near Washington, DC with her husband and two children. She is the Assistant Director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

THREE WISE WOMEN de Gina Sorell

A witty and wildly enjoyable novel about the two adult daughters of an advice columnist and their meddling mother. Gina Sorell has created a captivating cast of characters and employs page-turning plotting and deep insight into family and relationship dynamics. Fans of Meg Wolitzer, Emma Straub, Claire Lombardo, Elinor Lipman, and Lian Dolan will love the Wise family.

THREE WISE WOMEN
by Gina Sorell
HarperCollins, January 2022

Famed advice columnist Wendy Wise has been teaching women how to live their best lives for four decades, so why are her own two daughters such a mess? Clementine, who followed her mother’s advice to the letter, has just discovered that her husband secretly funneled their home fund into his fledgling business, while Barb, who always did the opposite of Wendy’s advice, is juggling too many projects and has moved back in with her cheating girlfriend. When Wendy swoops into town to save the day, the girls discover that their mother has problems of her own to address, and the three Wise women must confront the disappointments and heartaches that have accumulated between them over the years. Together, they learn that life and love don’t always look the way we think they should, and that what you want isn’t always what you need. At once witty and wise, humorous and heartbreaking, THREE WISE WOMEN is a novel about aging and change, the struggle to move forward into uncharted territory, and the courage and power of love to embrace a future that looks different than the one we expected.

Gina Sorell’s debut novel, Mothers and Other Strangers, was published by Prospect Park Books in May, 2017, quickly went into three printings, made the best-seller lists at several bookstores, and continues to find new readers. The novel has received wonderful press in the United States and Canada, including Good Housekeeping (Riveting!), The Toronto Star (One Mother of a Story), The Globe and Mail (An author to watch!), San Francisco Book Review (4/5 Stars) and made the Best Of lists at Refinery 29 and Self Magazine. It was also chosen as a Great Group Reads of 2017, Foreword Reviews Favorite, Best for Bookclubs by Chapters Indigo Bookstores, and Library Journal called it A Felicitous Find.

THE MUTUAL FRIEND de Carter Bays

From the creator of the global hit TV show How I Met Your Mother comes a saga of modern life and love. Set in NYC, and with a cast of characters with noses pressed firmly up against their iPhone as they date, mate, and search for happiness, this sprawling romantic comedy is for the people who love the film Love Actually and are looking for a lighter escape from our day-to-day word.

THE MUTUAL FRIEND
by Carter Bays
Dutton, Summer/Fall 2022

THE MUTUAL FRIEND is an observational romantic comedy in the vein of Jane Austen, about how technology has changed the way we relate to the world and each other, and how we relate to that technology. It takes place over the summer of 2015, in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. Our hero, Alice Quick, is a 26-year-old former classical pianist child prodigy, now floating through life as a nanny. Alice has a dream: She wants to be a doctor. Once upon a time, in an impassioned Facebook post, Alice announced to all her friends that she’s finally gonna get her act together, take the MCAT, apply to medical school, and make something of her life. That post got hundreds of likes. But now it’s been three years and she still hasn’t done any of it. This summer, that’s all going to change. One day in June, when Alice moves in with her wild new roommate Roxy, and then goes on an unplanned blind date with a somewhat-mysterious 40-year-old bachelor named Bob, the wheels are set in motion for Alice to sign up for the MCAT, and spend the next 81 days studying like crazy, so she can pass the test and finally get into Medical School. But it’s not going to be easy. To complete her journey, Alice must do battle with a dragon, and the name of this dragon is distraction…
THE MUTUAL FRIEND is an immersive and richly-detailed exploration of life in two different worlds – the world outside our phones, and the world inside our phones – and how hard it has become to say for sure which one is real.

Carter Bays is the creator of the show How I Met Your Mother, which ran on CBS for nine years. The show received thirty Emmy nominations and won ten, including one for best song, which was written by Bays. The show now streams on Hulu and has a cult following. Carter lives in LA with his wife and three children.

MEREDITH, ALONE de Claire Alexander

An utterly charming debut reading group novel by Scottish journalist Claire Alexander, MEREDITH, ALONE follows a perfectly ordinary woman with one extraordinary thing about herself – she hasn’t left her home in three years. A warm and uplifting novel that also deals with dark themes around mental illness.

MEREDITH, ALONE
by Claire Alexander
Michael Joseph UK / Grand Central US, 2022

“My name is Meredith Maggs, and I haven’t left my home for 1,215 days.” Meredith Maggs is an independent woman living in Glasgow, with no responsibilities apart from her cat. She has a successful job, likes to cook, and has regular visits from her best friend Sadie and Sadie’s children. But Meredith is not your average 39 year old. Following a traumatic event and the breakdown of family relationships, she hasn’t left home for more than three years. Meredith would rather not think about how her old life used to be – boyfriends, a close relationship with her sister, and a bustling social life. But when two new people enter her life, asking a lot of unwanted questions about her past, Meredith is forced to confront it at last. And, slowly, she realises that her journey towards happiness and self-acceptance involves much more than walking out of her front door.

Claire Alexander lives on the west coast of Scotland with her husband and children. During her career as a freelance writer, she has written for The Washington Post, The Independent, The Huffington Post and Glamour. In 2019, one of her essays was published in the award-winning literary anthology We Got This: Solo Mom Stories of Grit, Heart, and Humor. When she’s not writing or parenting, she’s on her paddle board, thinking about her next book.