Also of interest... in conflicts of the heart

To Be a Man

Nicole Krauss’ first collection of short stories is “a sustained shot of brilliance,” said Priscilla Gilman in The Boston Globe. The book’s 10 tales vary widely in tone, voice, and setting, though almost all center on power struggles between parent and child or paired spouses or lovers. “Joy and woe are woven fine in this extraordinary book,” and life is always a yearning for independence that, if fought for and won, produces an unexpected self on the other side.

Divorcing A Lover’s Discourse

Xiaolu Guo’s new novel offers “a bracing portrayal of rootlessness in a divided nation,” said Kevin Canfield in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Its narrator is a Chinese expat in Brexit-era London who is studying anthropology as she gradually builds a life with a landscape architect who talks her into living on a houseboat. The two “find interesting ways to disagree about ideas both mundane and profound” as Guo, author of Nine Continents, constructs another “intellectually stimulating gem.”

The Harpy