Fiona and Jane is a debut collection of short stories by Jean Chen Ho. The title characters are Taiwanese with different backgrounds growing up in America as best friends.  The stories fit together like a novel tracing the lives of Fiona and Jane from adolescence into late twenties/early thirties. The plot lines move well and the characters are portrayed with just the right amount of innocence, selfishness, shortcomings and nobility appropriate for their ages and circumstances that have shaped them. The title characters, and also supporting characters, are drawn with love and skill through simple events with multiple layers of meaning the reader can see without the author saying. These characters are real. Very good work. Here’s what The New York Times says:

In Win, Harlan Coben’s latest novel, Windsor Horne Lockwood, III (a/k/a “Win”) a supporting character from other novels is spun off into a novel of his own. Win, who poses as a conceited and selfish rich man, sets out to solve a murder and an art heist that involved his own rich family. There are multiple plots that become elaborate with misdirection, surprise, and coincidence, but everything gets tied up by the end. The plotting is good and there’s plenty of action, which makes it a page turner. I thought a few of the features in the plot were too improbable, but ignoring that, this is a good novel for readers who like plot and characters who are not what they appear to be. 

Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/harlan-coben/win/

American Melancholy is the title of Joyce Carol Oates’ latest collection of poems. These poems have appeared over the last couple of decades in top-name publications where we mortal poets wish we were published. While there are a few obviously personal poems, most of the poems are political, or political in a personal way, and have a lot to say about what America has become. My favorites include “Doctor Help Me,” a poem about abortion, “Hatefugue,” and “To Marlon Brando in Hell.” Oates is a skilled writer and worth studying if you’re a poet looking to learn how to write effectively.

Here’s what Publishers Weekly says:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-303526-3

Life After Death is Sister Souljah’s sequel to Coldest Winter Ever, a sensation two decades ago and called by some the best urban fiction ever. I have not read Souljah’s other work but wanted to read Life After Death because of all the buzz around it. The plot premise is the protagonist, bad-ass bitch Winter Santiaga, is about to be released from prison and become the star of her own reality show but is shot the day she’s released. This causes her to go into an afterlife world that has elements of gangster life, science fiction, and purgatory (which is called, in the novel ‘The Last Stop before the Drop’).

Readers are sharply divided on this book. While some of the support may be political (e.g., a reviewer on Amazon who says “I haven’t even read it but I’m giving it 5 stars because I support a young black woman doing her thing”), 65% of Amazon reviews gave it 5 stars. Those who rave about it urge people not to listen to the negative reviews and often say they got the symbolism and Souljah is teaching them through this novel. At the other end are the 17% of Amazon reviews that gave it one star, many of them disappointed fans of Coldest Winter Ever. Similarly, some of the negative literary reviews are from disappointed Souljah fans.

Personally, the novel didn’t work for me, but the positive comments of Souljah’s fans on Amazon inspired me to look up some of her activist work. She’s trying to do good things. Rather than refer you to a review, here’s a link to one of her speeches in 1994 – “We are at War.” I think it reflects, or is consistent with, the message intended nearly three decades later in Life After Death.

Hamnet is a novel by Maggie O’Farrell about the family of Shakespeare as imagined by the author. Hamnet was the son of Shakespeare who died as a teenager. However, while Hamnet gets some ink, I thought the story was primarily about and told from the point of view of Shakespeare’s wife, Anne (or Agnes, as her father called her and as the author calls her in this story). “I have tried to stick to the scant historical facts known about the real Hamnet and his family” the author’s note says, but this is a work of fiction, not history, with personalities and plots invented by the author. The character Agnes is witchlike and empathic, curing people with herbs and able to see the future, including the artistic vision of her husband. The characters and the description of the times are interesting. The prose is skillful. This author knows what she’s doing and has won awards for other books she has published. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/maggie-ofarrell-1/hamnet/

A Children’s Bible is the latest novel by Pulitzer finalist Lydia Millet, is an apocalyptic story satirizing the feckless, self-indulgent, well-off, and educated adults for letting the future go to hell to the detriment of the next generation. The story is narrated by Eve, a teen among a group of teens who, with their parents, are vacationing at a lakeside mansion when a destructive storm hits and the world begins to fall apart. Abandoning their worthless parents, the kids strike out on their own with mixed results. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lydia-millet/a-childrens-bible/

The Best of Me by David Sedaris is a collection of pieces from his body of work. Much of it is about his love-hate relationship with his family. Some are anecdotes from his comings and goings around the world. There are even a couple of fables with animal protagonists. Often poignant, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny, always witty – if you’re a fan, you know what to expect. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-sedaris/the-best-of-me/

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is about Desiree and Stella, light-skinned “colored” twins, who choose to handle their racial heritage differently. Stella creates an identity and life in which she passes herself off as White, abandoning, hiding and denying her family heritage, marrying a White man, having a blond-haired daughter, and living in a racially segregated White neighborhood in L.A.  Desiree identifies as Black, has a dark-skinned daughter fathered by dark Black man, and embraces her identity as Black in the Black community in Louisiana where she was born. The plot revolves around Stella’s “disappearance” from her family and her efforts to conceal her African-American heritage. Added to the mix are supporting characters who are transgender or otherwise non-binary. The story is filled with lots of scenes where boundaries and social constructs about race and gender are explored. Especially poignant is when Stella finds her blond-haired daughter playing with a Black child and punishes her for “playing with N*****s”

The story will make you both feel and think. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/brit-bennett/the-vanishing-half-bennett/

Avni Doshi’s debut novel, Burnt Sugar, is the story of a toxic mother-daughter relationship, part biography of Tara, the Indian mother who leaves her husband to join a religious cult in Pune, and part autobiography of Antara (“not” Tara), the young daughter she takes with her. After some years at the ashram, they leave and live as beggars on the street. Chapters go back and forth between decades ranging from Antara’s early childhood to current times, in which Antara has married and is taking care of her mother Tara, who suffers from dementia (or does she?). The mother and daughter are fascinating characters and some of things they’ve said, thought, and done to each other are awful. It’s a love-hate bond that irrevocable binds and separates at the same time. The titleis apt, not only metaphorically, but because the book is filled with vivid smells of people, homes, and the streets. The author is a tremendous writer and Burnt Sugar was short-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/avni-doshi/burnt-sugar/

Death in Her Hands is the title of award-winning Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest novel, and a metaphor for the plot, and literally a scene near the end of story when the protagonist, Vesta, wanders down the road in a fugue state with a “self-help” book titled Death.  The story begins when Vesta, recently-widowed and living alone with her dog Charlie in a secluded house in the woods, finds a note on the ground that reads “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.” But there is no body. Vesta becomes obsessed with finding the body and solving the mystery. But the detective story becomes more and more surreal, as Vesta imagines how the crime was committed and weaves characters in the town into the plot. We begin to suspect she is an unreliable narrator – and it’s not clear what else she might be. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/ottessa-moshfegh/death-in-her-hands/