5 new books that you shouldn’t miss this fall
It isn’t even Labor Day, and yet I’m already experiencing fall fiction FOMO.
For years I’ve been complaining — sometimes in this space — about the standard practice of publishers putting out their lead literary fiction titles in the fall season, leaving us with a glut of high-profile reads hitting shelves all at once, which triggers my anxiety over not getting to something that the rest of the world is telling me is a “must read.”
Two years ago, around this time, I noted that a new book from a previous Pulitzer Prize winner would publish every single week in the month of September.
This year, it seems as if the publishing gods have responded to my pleas by moving the fall fiction season into the summer. Colson Whitehead’s “Crook Manifesto,” a terrific sequel to his previous “Harlem Shuffle” was out in July. James McBride’s “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store,” an effort that has Laura Miller at Slate declaring McBride the “great American novelist,” published the first week of August.
Still, there is a veritable flood of books coming from authors whose books I’ve greatly enjoyed, but haven’t published a novel in a good long time. This will take some planning.
It’s been seven years since Zadie Smith published a novel (“Swing Time”), so “The Fraud” (Sept. 5), a Victorian-era suspense/mystery dealing with issues of race, history and class will go to the top of my pile.
At 464 pages, I’ll be able to read “The Fraud” in time to get to Nathan Hill’s “Wellness” (Sept. 19), his first book since his epic novel of Chicago, “The Nix,” published in 2016. “Wellness” is another Chicago book, set first in the 1990’s underground art scene, and then fastforwarding to what looks to be a midlife crisis 20 years later. Set in my city, during my era, by a writer whose first book I still think about sometimes, there’s no way I’m missing this one.
The wait for Ben Fountain’s next novel after his 2012 masterpiece, “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” ends Sept. 26. “Devil Makes Three” is set in Haiti in 1991 during the rise of a military dictatorship. Like “Billy Lynn’s …,” “Devil Makes Three” looks to be a mix of suspense, violence, and the explorations of the intersection of politics and power.
After that, I get a bit of a breather before Teju Cole’s “Tremor” arrives on Oct. 17. “Tremor” is Cole’s first new novel since “Open City” in 2011. “Open City” is told by Julius, a young doctor from Nigeria wandering through New York City, expounding on what he sees, only over the course of the novel, we realize that all along, Julius has been revealing himself. “Tremor” tells the story of Tunde, a photography professor at a prominent private college who, like the narrator in “Open City,” seeks to make that which seems familiar, new, strange and unsettling.
It’s hard to believe that “Let Us Descend,” a “re-imagining of American slavery,” is Jesmyn Ward’s first new novel since 2017’s “Sing, Unburied, Sing.” Ward’s novels are almost spell-like, incantations that draw the reader into her unique worlds. Ward’s novel comes on Oct. 24.
Don’t get me wrong, these are hardly the only books I’m anticipating. Paul Murray’s already-released “The Bee Sting” is tempting me from my “to be read” pile. J.M. Coetzee has a new novel, “The Pole,” in September, as does personal favorite Ron Rash with “The Caretaker.”
And November is larded with more choice books. I can’t even think about that now. I’m going to freak myself out.