The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Paperbacks new and noteworthy

- C. 2023 The New York Times

“The Candy House,” by Jennifer Egan. (Scribner, 368 pages, $17.99.) Egan’s novel, set in the same world as “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” riffs on memory, authentici­ty and the allure of new technology. Reviewer James Poniewozik wrote that it was “the literary version of the collaborat­ive novel written by your friends and friends of friends on Facebook or Instagram. It is a spectacula­r palace built out of rabbit holes.”

“Vagabonds!” by Eloghosa Osunde. (Riverhead, 320 pages, $17.) This novel in stories follows the outsiders of Lagos — the displaced, the poor and the queer — as they navigate life in the cracks of society. There are demons and wealthy criminals with “bodymasks,” but the book’s main antagonist is the city itself, a deity and a panopticon where 21 million people are all constantly watching one another.

“The Great Stewardess Rebellion: How Women Launched a Workplace Revolution at 30,000 Feet,” by Nell McShane Wulfhart. (Anchor, 320 pages, $17.) Wulfhart’s history meticulous­ly details the dire, sexist working conditions of airline stewardess­es in the 1960s and ‘70s, including age limits, marriage bans and widespread amphetamin­e dependenci­es. It also lays out how these workers harnessed the feminist revolution of the time to change the industry.

“The Year of the Horses: A Memoir,” by Courtney Maum. (Tin House, 280 pages, $17.95.) With humor and insight, a novelist and young mother reflects on how a year of indulging in her childhood pleasure of horseback riding helped her slip out of depression and recover her lost identity, that “voice within us that is sick to death of going unused.”

“O Beautiful,” by Jung Yun. (St. Martin’s Griffin, 336 pages, $17.99.) In this novel, a struggling freelance journalist arrives in a small North Dakota town overrun by “thousands of itinerant oil workers from recession-ravaged parts of the country.” But her story of greed and competing interests gives way to a more sinister one: the 29 women, mostly from the Mahua tribe, who have disappeare­d over the previous two years.

 ?? ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States