6 of 2021’s most acclaimed titles make it into paperback
Some of 2021’s most acclaimed titles are making their way into paperback, and here are six fresh ones.
‘Who Is Maud Dixon?,’ by Alexandra Andrews (Little, Brown, $16.99):
Film rights sold quickly for Andrews’ Highsmithesque debut, a twisty tale of a young aspiring novelist who gets a job as assistant to a famously reclusive writer whose true identity is a secret. “The playful Andrews alerts us early on, with a nod and a wink, to what she might be up to in this assured novel, though there is a bit of misdirection here, too,” wrote Sarah Lyall in The New York Times.
‘Klara and the Sun,’ by Kazuo Ishiguro (Vintage International, $16.95):
Ishiguro, one of the most elegant prose stylists working today, wrote this bestselling tale of an Artificial Friend — for sale in a shop window, in a not-toodistant future society — as a companion piece to his earlier novel “Never Let Me Go.” I thought of that, while immersed in “Klara and the Sun” last year, and marveling how a book about someone who isn’t human could nonetheless become a poignant, unexpected story about love. (I also thought of Mr. Stevens, in “The Remains of the Day,” and how good Ishiguro is at characters who feel more than they can express.)
‘No One Is Talking About This,’ by Patricia Lockwood (Riverhead Books, $17):
This book, a 2021 Booker Prize finalist and one of The New York Times’ 10 best of the year, is Lockwood’s debut novel; she previously published two poetry collections and an
acclaimed memoir, “Priestdaddy.” In this book, a social media star navigates a worldwide appearance tour after going viral. NPR reviewer Heller McAlpin called it a “tour de force
... It’s a testament to her skills as a rare writer who can navigate both sleaze and cheese, jokey tweets and surprising earnestness, that we not only buy her character’s emotional epiphany but are moved by it.”
‘How Beautiful We Were,’ by Imbolo Mbue (Random House, $18):
Named as one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times, Mbue’s follow-up to her acclaimed debut “Behold the Dreamers” is set in a fictional African village, where representatives from an American oil company have come to meet with the people they are poisoning. “This decades-spanning fable of power and corruption turns out to be something much less clear-cut than the familiar David-and-Goliath tale of a sociopathic corporation and the lives it steamrolls,” wrote The New York Times books staff in its year-end roundup. “Through the eyes of
Kosawa’s citizens young and old, Mbue constructs a nuanced exploration of self-interest, of what it means to want in the age of capitalism and colonialism — these machines of malicious, insatiable wanting.”
‘The Rope: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP,’ by Alex Tresniowski (37 Ink, $18.99):
Two threads intertwine in Tresniowski’s nonfiction work: a Black man falsely accused of the murder of a child in 1910, and groundbreaking Black journalist Ida B. Wells’ work to expose the truth about lynching. Washington Post reviewer Jerald Walker called it an “outstanding, meticulously researched book,” noting that “anyone interested in Wells’s evolution from obscure schoolteacher to civil rights icon and co-founder of the NAACP will find ‘The Rope’ compelling and inspirational. They may find it plenty upsetting, too.”
‘You Made Me Love You: Selected Stories, 19812018’ by John Edgar Wideman (Scribner, $18.99):
This is the first short-fiction anthology from Wideman — winner of the 2019 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story — since 1992; it includes 35 stories. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly wrote, “In stories selected from 1981’s Damballah up through 2018’s American Histories, Wideman conveys a mastery of gritty realism, freewheeling blues, erudite autofiction, and African American mysticism, often grounded in a semi-fictional version of the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, the historically Black neighborhood where Wideman grew up ... A stunning showcase of Wideman’s range.”