| Such a fun age by Kiley ReidStarring: Emira, a college-educated babysitter, who is black; her wealthy employer Alix, who is white.
What happens: An accusation of kidnapping shakes and terrifies Emira, shocks Alix, and leads to a complicated situation when well-meaning (but clueless) Alix proceeds to implement a "solution" for her own feelings of guilt -- regardless of what Emira wants.
Read it for: An upending of the white saviour trope; a thought-provoking examination of contemporary race relations; nuanced characters; and even some humour. |
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The man who saw everything
by Deborah Levy
In 1989, Saul is hit by a car on the Abbey Rd crossing. He is fine; he gets up and goes to see his girlfriend, Jennifer. They have sex and then break up. He leaves for the GDR, where he will have more sex (with several members of the same family), harvest mushrooms in the rain, bury his dead father in a matchbox, and get on the wrong side of the Stasi. In 2016, Saul is hit by a car on the Abbey Rd crossing. He is not fine at all; he is rushed to hospital and spends the following days in and out of consciousness, in and out of history. Jennifer is sitting by his bedside. His very-much-not-dead father is sitting by his bedside. Someone important is missing. Deborah Levy presents an ambitious, playful and totally electrifying novel about what we see and what we fail to see, about carelessness and the harm we do to others, about the weight of history and our ruinous attempts to shrug it off.
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The subjects
by Sarah Hopkins
Daniel is a sixteen-year-old drug dealer and he's going to jail. Then, suddenly, he's not. A courtroom intervention. A long car ride to a big country house. Other 'gifted delinquents'; the elusive, devastating Rachel, and Alex, so tightly wound he seems about to shatter. So where are they? It's not a school, despite the 'lessons' with the headsets and changing images. It's not a psych unit; not if the absence of medication means anything. It's not a jail, because Daniel's free to leave. Or that's what they tell him. He knows he and the others are part of an experiment. But he doesn't know who's running it or what they're trying to prove. And he has no idea what they're doing to him.
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| This is happiness by Niall WilliamsWhat it is: an old man's memories of falling in -- and out of -- love for the first time, at the same time that his tiny Irish hamlet finally adopts electricity and a newcomer provides his own tale to tell.
Why you might like it: A reflective, contemplative story with a strong sense of Ireland in the 1950s, This is Happiness is narrated in a poetic, lyrical manner.
Reviewers say: "a lilting, magical homage to time and redemption, and a stirring, sentimental journey into the mysteries of love and the possibilities of friendship" (Booklist). |
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Summer of my amazing luck
by Miriam Toews
Lucy and her eight-month-old son live in a Winnipeg housing project filled with single mothers on the dole. Still dealing with her own mother's sudden death, and new to the ever-multiplying complications of life on welfare, Lucy strikes up a friendship with her neighbour, Lish. On the whole, they're pretty happy. But Lucy wants to make sure they stay happy. And she has a plan. Told with Toews's signature scalding wit and deep compassion, Summer of my Amazing Luck is a brilliantly funny book about the intricacies of friendship, grief, and poverty.
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Starling Days
by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Mina is staring over the edge of the George Washington Bridge when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the officers she's not about to jump but they don't believe her. Her husband, Oscar is called to pick her up. Oscar hopes that leaving New York for a few months will give Mina the space to heal. They travel to London, to an apartment wall-papered with indigo-eyed birds, to Oscar's oldest friends, to a canal and blooming flower market. Mina, a classicist, searches for solutions to her failing mental health using mythological women. But she finds a beam of light in a living woman. Friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina's complicated love is tested.
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Focus on: The Debuts of 2019
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| The red address book by Sofia LundbergWhat it is: a lifetime's worth of stories, all prompted by a handwritten address book owned by 96-year-old Stockholm resident Doris.
Why you might like it: Spanning multiple historical settings from Paris in the 1930s to Stockholm today, this sweet and sentimental novel offers a tale of star-crossed lovers and a strong grandmother-granddaughter connection.
For fans of: the novels of Fredrik Backman or Nina George. |
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| We cast a shadow by Maurice Carlos RuffinWhat happens: Tired of experiencing nearly constant racism in the near-future American South, the unnamed black narrator is desperate to protect his biracial son from the same fate: he's considering an experimental plastic surgery to make his son appear white.
Why you should read it: The seemingly absurd situations the narrator experiences highlight the structural racism of this dystopian future...which is simply a forecast of the world today.
Reviewers say: "rakishly funny and distressingly up-to-the-minute" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| A people's history of Heaven by Mathangi SubramanianWhat it is: The story of five best friends in a Bangalore slum, who together with their independent mothers and their community fight to save their homes from being bulldozed to build a mall.
Who they are: Already marginalized by their poverty and gender, these five friends are of different religions, backgrounds, and sexual identities, but they share the same tenacious spirit.
About the author: This is YA author Mathangi Subramanian's first novel for adults. |
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| On Earth we're briefly gorgeous by Ocean VuongWhat it is: a novel framed as a letter from an adult son to his illiterate mother, exploring the legacy of the Vietnam War on their family and explaining his first doomed love with a boy two years older.
Reviewers say: "a raw and incandescently written foray into fiction by one of our most gifted poets" (Kirkus Reviews).
Want a taste? "Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between hunter and prey." |
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| The girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara ZgheibStarring: French former ballerina Anna Roux, who enters an American treatment facility to get help for a life-threatening eating disorder.
Why you might like it: Poetically written, this moving debut captures the challenges of disordered eating as it depicts the friendships that form among the young women at 17 Swann Street.
About the author: Yara Zgheib is herself in recovery from anorexia. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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