Escape into books that are well worth your time
There are plenty of reasons to hide your nose in a book this summer — escape cable news, escape the kids when they aren’t at summer camp, escape to a vacation destination a long flight away. So our avid team of readers is offering up plenty of books worthy of your attention and worth the distraction. From a clever memoir to a Shakespeare reboot, from a utopian commune to a community of refugees, there’s something for everyone here. Grab one of these books and hide behind the pages — we won’t tell anyone where you went. — Jenn Fields
Emil Ferris’ own story is incredible — the Chicago-based illustrator had to teach herself to draw again after being paralyzed by the West Nile virus — but her debut graphic novel is even better. Presented as a sketchbook diary
complete with blue notebook lines, our artist and confidante is Karen, a 10year-old lover of pulp monster magazines growing up in Chicago in the late 1960s. When her upstairs neighbor, an enigmatic Holocaust survivor named Anka, is murdered, Karen takes on the case, sketching herself in the pages of her notebook as one part pintsize P.I., one part girl werewolf. It’s no easy mystery to solve, though, as Karen struggles not only to figure out what happened to Anka but also her own place in the world. It’s a powerful story, and Ferris’ astonishing illustrations, crosshatched and only selectively drawn in color, make it absolutely unforgettable. — Emilie Rusch The Dinner Party and Other Stories
Joshua Ferris strikes a nerve as he explores modern desperation and searching among his characters in the 11 short stories that make up “The Dinner Party”: an elderly widower whose birthday present is a prostitute and a blue pill; a childless couple stood up in an extreme way by dinner guests; a young woman whose struggles to find satisfaction in her marriage play out over planning a date with her husband. These stories aren’t of the feelgood variety. Ferris’ stories dwell on tragedy and drama — affairs, loneliness, aging, alcoholism — but he brings wit and grace to the dark corners of human nature and shines a light into the beautiful complexity of ordinary lives. — Noelle Phillips Priestdaddy
She may have proudly worn the title before, but Patricia Lockwood is no longer just the poet laureate of Twitter. That’s because “Priestdaddy,” a memoir chronicling her return to the clutches of her childhood home and Catholic upbringing (her father is a priest), confirms a higher calling for the writer. Lockwood’s take on the world — one where Jorge Luis Borges references commune with the rites of furries — reads like a stupidly smart sitcom, complete with an incorrigibly dysfunctional family. Religion, parents, the internet — it’s all gleefully absurd until it’s not. Unshackled from a 140-character limit and troll vitriol, Lockwood weighs her former idols against her moral compass and scores the difference in consistently compelling prose. You’ll laugh, you’ll think, you’ll follow her on Twitter. — Dylan Owens The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley By Hannah Tinti (The Dial Press)
Warning: You will fall in love with Samuel Hawley. In the tradition of great literary bad boys with soft hearts, Hawley fits right in: He’s a small-time hood who has killed a bad guy or three. He has a pretty big collection of weapons, a drinking problem, knows a lot of dangerous people, and scars from bullet wounds are all over his body. All he needs on the road to salvation is a little love, which Tinti provides via Hawley’s wife, Lily, and daughter, Loo. (The Halloween scene, in which his little girl, Loo, is an electric toothbrush and he is a tube of toothpaste, is especially lovely.) Tinti intersperses the chronological narrative with chapters that describe the number of times Hawley had been shot — a technique that could have been jarring, but instead builds the suspense and deepens our affection for the title character. This story of love, loss and redemption — as well as a coming-of-age tale for Loo — is one of those 3 a.m. bleary-eyed page-turners. Novelist Ann Patchett called it “one part Quentin Tarantino, one part Scheherazade.” Indeed. — Barbara Ellis Transit
“Transit” is the second unconventional novel in the trilogy that Cusk started with 2014’s “Outline.” Pay close attention to catch the narrator’s name in both books — the people Faye encounters are much more adept at talking about themselves and sharing their inner emotional lives than she is. Faye’s story comes out little by little as a byproduct of her keen observations and perceptions, and her poignant questions for the those who cross her path as she moves into a new London flat (she’s recently divorced) and renovates it, or when she goes to a writers’ forum (she’s an author) or visits friends who have strange children (she has two boys). Everyone’s going somewhere in “Transit,” and though Faye knows who she is, she isn’t sure she’s in control of where she’s heading. The quiet intensity of that uncertainty creates a tension that’s existentially powerful and palpable, and it makes “Transit” — a tome that only has a wisp of plot — into a book that forces you to pick it up late at night and turn the page again and again. — J.F. The Idiot
By Elif Batuman (Penguin Press, 2017)
Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, starts her freshman year at Harvard, befriends a worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and develops an emailbased crush on a Hungarian in her Russian class, Ivan — and the mystery and comedy of growing up ensues. From her outlandish classes, teaching ESL and then spending the summer in Europe, Selin journeys into her own mind only sometimes likes what she discovers. She aspires to be a writer, so her internal monologue is pitch-perfect and witty. As Selin says to Svetlana, “I still think everyone experiences their own life as a narrative,” and lucky for the reader, Selin’s story is smart, self-effacing and full of charm. — Alison Borden Perfect Little World By Kevin Wilson (Harpercollins Publishers)
In his new novel, Kevin Wilson kicks his exploration of family dynamics up a notch from his dark consideration of family as performance art in his debut, “The Family Fang.” This time, the family is constructed — a group of 19 adults and their newborns knit together in utopian community by Dr. Preston Grind, who is attempting to right the wrongs inflicted by his own experimentalpsychologist parents. The novel spins around the evolving relationship between the brilliant but stunted Dr. Grind and Izzy Poole, the only single parent in the family, a teenager when she commits to raise her infant son in the commune funded for a decade by an idealistic billionaire. They are the warp to the weft of the other family members in this rich tapestry of relationships that bind in unexpected ways, and fray as the commune matures. The book takes on weighty subject matter — adultery, jealousy, aspiration, boredom — for sure. But Wilson’s deliciously breezy style reels you in and holds you tight. Like family. — Dana Coffield
By Tracy Chevalier (Hogarth Shakespeare)
Tracy Chevalier (“Girl with a Pearl Earring”) breaks “Othello,” Shakespeare’s classic play of jealousy and betrayal, free from iambic pentameter and moves the action from a military camp in Venice to an American school playground in the 1970s. The villain’s treachery and evil is, if anything, even more chilling when his motivation for wreaking havoc is just boredom rather than frustration and professional jealousy. The action plays out on the playground as the son of an African diplomat starts his first day at an all-white school. A teacher tasks school golden girl Dee with shepherding Osei, the new boy, and a romance quickly buds. It’s all too much for Ian, who quickly takes advantage of the casual racism of his fellow students and teachers to spur the familiar tragedy. — Sara B. Hansen The Refugees By Viet Thanh Nguyen (Grove Atlantic)
The ghosts of people lost in the Vietnam War inhabit the stories in “The Refugees,” a short story collection from the author of the Pulitzer-winning “The Sympathizer.” The phantoms are mostly figurative: A woman whose husband and son went missing back home in Vietnam long ago still sews uniforms for soldiers in a war that, in her mind, isn’t over. But when a young man lost at sea on the way to America comes to visit his mother and sister, it’s literal — his ghost leaves puddles on the floor. The missing are part of the dual lives these characters lead, and part of the feeling of separation, the realities of being an outsider in a new country. That struggle — and the humanity, and even humor found in the struggle — pervades this brilliant collection. — J.F. Pachinko
By Min Jin Lee (Grand Central Publishing)
Sunja is a teenager from a poor family in pre-world War II Korea who is seduced by a Japanese yakuza and becomes pregnant. A missionary who is staying at her mother’s boarding house offers to marry her and take her to Japan rather than have her bring shame to the family. In Japan, Sunja raises two sons and holds her family together, through poverty, war and tragedy. This sweeping tale of four generations of Koreans touches on enduring issues of displacement, regionalism, culture clashes and prejudice. It is fitting that pachinko — a pinball-like game of chance that had a reputation in Japan of being controlled by gangsters — proves to be the family’s salvation. While Min Jin Lee’s writing is unexceptional, the story is extraordinary: Ultimately, she gives us a tale of survival that should be familiar to immigrants everywhere, who just want to accepted. — B.E. My Not So Perfect Life
By Sophie Kinsella (Penguin Random House)
Sophie Kinsella’s latest blends a little romance and a lot of comedy with workplace drama colored by social media-inspired envy. On Instagram, Katie Brenner has a perfect London life with a glamorous marketing job and interesting flat mates and friends. The reality is she’s stuck in a lowly administrative job and is forced to rent a tiny room and spend hours commuting to work. She’s jealous of her boss, Demeter, who seems to have it all — job success, big house, handsome husband and beautiful kids. When Katie gets laid off, she’s forced to return to her country roots and helps her dad and stepmom launch their new glamping business. Demeter and her family show up for a vacation, and Katie takes the opportunity to exact a little revenge and learns that Demeter’s life isn’t quite as picture-perfect as it seems. Since the book’s a romantic comedy, the pair ultimately work their way to happy endings. But the twists and turns along the way offer plenty of humor tinged with commentary on the unrealistic expectations social media can create. — S.B.H. Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century
By Chuck Klosterman (Penguin Random House)
Here’s a bit of pop for your summer: a collection of essays and interviews from a prolific writer (and pontificator) on all things pop culture — everything you probably argued about with your college roommate. (Is Eddie Van Halen the greatest rock guitar player of all time? Why doesn’t he listen to music?!?) Klosterman went into the weeds of the past 10 years of his work to compile (and comment on) this collection, and the result is a best-of, with classic interviews you appreciated the first time (Taylor Swift), essays you probably missed (on exactly why Charlie Brown is so beloved) and the story of perhaps the most amazing basketball game ever, which no one knows about. Read, enjoy, throw the book when the pontificator angers, then pick it up again and keep going because you have to. — J.F.