Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch, narrates the breakdown of society under the rise of fascism from the point of view of a family resisting it. Set in a version of Ireland, the tale is told through the eyes of Eilish, a mother trying to save her husband and children and some sort of domestic normality as the unraveling and oppression accelerates all around them. The prose is first person, very immediate (even thoughts are portrayed like fleeting sense impressions) and intimate. Those of us in America might look at it as a preview of what life could become if Donald Trump exercises control over the Department of Justice and, unlike characters in Prophet Song, there’s no place for us to escape. Lengthy, run-on, stream-of consciousness prose may wear out some readers. This book won the 2023 Booker Prize. Reviews mostly are over-the-top raves. Here’s more restrained applause from NPR:

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/11/1218053727/book-review-paul-lynch-booker-prize-winning-prophet-song

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store is the title of National Book Award winner James McBride’s newest novel and the center of the fictional universe he creates in 1920s Pottsville, Pennsylvania, where Blacks and Jews live side by side. Interconnected plots peopled with memorable characters illustrate cultures specific to race and ethnicity and community that transcends both in a world where people can be selfish or generous, evil or heroic. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/james-mcbride/the-heaven-earth-grocery-store/

Beyond the Door of No Return by International Booker Prize-winner David Diop is the story of a French botanist who becomes obsessed with the legend of a Senegalese woman sold into slavery who came back from “the door of no return,” as the location for loading slaves on ships bound for America was known. He sets out to find her, does, and falls in love with her. She turns out to be a healer with magical powers. The description is excellent and the story has a gothic feel. To me, the botanist’s obsession seems more like fetishization than love. All the reviews of this novel are effusive. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-diop/beyond-the-door-of-no-return/

A Darker Side of Noir is a collection of short stories of body horror written by women and edited by Joyce Carol Oates. Both Oates and Margaret Atwood are contributors to the volume. I’ve always told myself I’m not a horror fan, but these are some really interesting stories. A couple were too horrific for me, but several stories totally knocked my socks off. A good read if you like women-centered fiction, horror, or well-written short stories generally. “A bold collection of horror stories that flies in the face of both gender and genre conventions” says Kirkus Reviews:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/joyce-carol-oates/a-darker-shade-of-noir/

Let Us Descend, the title of Jesmyn Ward’s novel, is a reference to a line from Dante’s Inferno that Annis, a slave who is the protagonist of the novel, overheard the tutor of her master’s children recite. It also is descriptive of her journey when the master turns her over to the “Georgia Men” to be marched with other slaves to the auction market in New Orleans. Supporting characters include Annis’s mother, a spirit who accompanies her on the journey and its aftermath, and the history of slavery itself. The writing is visceral, evocative, and beautiful. There’s a reason Ward is a two-time National Book Award Winner. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jesmyn-ward/let-us-descend/ 

Best-selling Emily Henry’s Happy Place is a rom-com about ex-fiancés, Harriet and Wyn, who must spend a week together with college friends who don’t know they’ve broken up. To avoid spoiling the week for everyone else, they pretend to still be engaged, which means they act all lovey-dovey notwithstanding the heartbreak of their split. Lots of flirting, friction, and snappy dialogue, but we know from the beginning where Wyn and Harriet will end up – in their Happy Place. Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/emily-henry/happy-place-henry/

David Grann received accolades for his best-selling Killers of the Flower Moon and follows it with another piece of well-researched non-fiction, The Wager, in which he reconstructs the tale of an expedition that set out from England to the Cape of Horn on a secret mission against Spain. Grann uses diaries and other accounts to tell the tale through characters he makes come alive. The story involves shipwrecks, mutinies, madness, and murder. I found the imperialist and seafaring culture in which the events took place to be fascinating. It was also fascinating to see how order breaks down when individuals and groups react to potential death of the entire community. And it’s all true.  Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

Madison’s Militia, by distinguished law professor Carl T. Bogus, is appropriately subtitled The Hidden History of the Second Amendment. Among the things you’ll learn from this book: (1) state militias in slave-holding states were primarily slave patrols; they were worthless fighting the British and mostly stayed home because Southerners were more afraid of slave revolts than the British; (2) the backdrop for debates about arming militias was the experience of civil-war torn Britain, where Catholic-leaning King James had disarmed Protestant militias, voiding the will of the Parliament, and then attempted to impose a Catholic-favoring tyranny; consequently, the 1689 British Declaration of Rights, part of the deal made with King William of Orange (whom the Protestants invited in to replace James) prohibited any King from disarming Protestants without Parliament’s permission; (3) the 2^nd amendment was included in America’s Bill of Rights to appease the race-baiting of Patrick Henry and the anti-federalists who warned that if the Constitution were adopted, federalists controlling the new national government would disarm slave patrols the way King James disarmed Protestant militia. In the words of the author: “[W]hat would James Madison and his colleagues in the First Congress –  who, in their discussions about the Second Amendment, focused exclusively on military concerns related to the militia— have made of the United States Supreme Court declaring, for the first time in the year 2008, that the Second Amendment grants individuals a right to have guns for their own purposes, entirely divorced from the militia? Surely, they would have been astounded.”

Here’s what Kirkus Reviews says:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/carl-t-bogus/madisons-militia/

The Archivists is a collection of short stories by award-winning writer Daphne Kalotay.

The stories are hard to categorize or summarize thematically. All of them capture subtle emotions and uncanny perceptions that can only be evoked in context that the author creates brilliantly. This is excellent writing. Foreword calls the stories both triumphant and transcendent:

https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-archivists/