Sophia Hersi Smith & Jennifer Russell, My Work Gurba’s forthcoming book is “an informal sociology of creeps” that implicates everyone from “Joan Didion to her former abuser, everything from Mexican stereotypes to the carceral state.” With personal essays that transform into astute pieces of cultural criticism, Gurba explores the way creeps haunt our books, our schools, and our homes-and how we can work to challenge them. Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions It’s hard to imagine this being anything but this year’s blockbuster. Smith has folded this historical episode-already rife with drama and intrigue-into a larger character-driven narrative about truth and deception and what we choose to believe. Zadie Smith’s first novel since 2016’s Swing Time is based on Tichborne case, a lengthy English trial in the 1880s over a man’s claim that he was the presumed dead son of a wealthy family-and thus entitled to a hefty inheritance. Lerner’s mind is huge and encompassing, his thoughts rove and leap and sink and stretch it’s a gift that he allows us to be there with him. This collection was written over the past 15 years, years in which his career has erupted and his life has changed, all against the backdrop of calamity and chaos, of joy and wonder. It strikes me as the space he gives himself to figure out his own place in the mess of the world. Some people will probably pick up Ben Lerner’s new book of poetry expecting the ease of accessibility promised by The Topeka School-but Lerner’s poetry is where he lets loose, ignoring anyone’s conventional wishes for succinctness and poignancy. So I’m particularly excited to ping-pong about in her new story collection, which gathers tales of loss and longing from the past decade and features a cast of characters whom I can’t wait to meet. What I love about Yiyun Li’s work is that her voice never fails to surprise and captivate me, whether she’s writing from the perspective of a young woman in rural, postwar France ( The Book of Goose), a grandmother of 17 revisiting a bygone love affair ( Must I Go), or herself ( Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life).
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