5 new books to read in March

Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. So every month, The A.V. Club narrows down the endless options to five of the books we’re most excited about.

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Recollections Of My Nonexistence by Rebecca Solnit (March 10, Viking)

“To be a young woman is to face your own annihilation in innumerable ways or to flee it or the knowledge of it, or all these things at once,” writes Rebecca Solnit in her latest book, Recollections Of My Nonexistence. While misogyny and its effect on women’s psyches is familiar territory for Solnit, as in her breakthrough 2014 essay collection, Men Explain Things To Me, here the prolific writer gets more personal than ever as she reflects upon her youth in 1980s San Francisco.

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The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (March 24, Orbit)

The first installment in her latest trilogy, and her first novel since her unprecedented three-year Hugo Award streak, N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became follows five New Yorkers, each embodying one of the city’s boroughs, who must come together to fight an “ancient evil.” Drawing partly from her experience of racism within the sci-fi and fantasy community, Jemisin told The New Yorker that the new project is an “emotional palate cleanser” and a critique of the genre in which she writes. Jemisin has attracted wider attention since late last year, when DC Comics published Far Sector, her take on the Green Lantern, and this new novel is being billed as her most accessible yet.

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The Office: The Untold Story Of The Greatest Sitcom Of The 2000s: An Oral History by Andy Greene (March 24)

It was 15 years ago this March when American audiences first met Jim, Pam, Dwight, Michael, and the rest of the ragtag crew of Dunder Mifflin. The Office’s central paper sales company was, of course, fictional, but here’s some real paper you can buy: Rolling Stone writer Andy Greene’s oral history of “The Greatest Sitcom Of The 2000s,” as the book’s subtitle goes. While reruns and frequent reconsiderations of the show have kept The Office alive and well, super fans can sate their hunger for the “untold story” of everyone’s favorite workplace sitcom with this new volume.

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Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor (trans. by Sophie Hughes, March 31, New Directions)

Alternating perspectives among the inhabitants of a Mexican village, Fernanda Melchor’s profane and violent novel begins with the discovery of a witch’s body and revolves around the investigation into her death, full of rumor and hearsay, and images glimpsed in shadow. Melchor’s first book to be translated into English, which has earned the author comparisons to the late Roberto Bolaño, is a deluge of long, breathless sentences that pick up more and more energy as they span out—some across entire pages—with nary a paragraph break in each breakneck chapter. The novel takes place in the modern day, but Melchor has created a dark myth that reads like it was conjured eons in the past.

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Wow, No Thank You. by Samantha Irby (March 31, Vintage)

No one utilizes hyperbole quite like three-time author Samantha Irby, who can make the most microscopic of indignities feel like atrocities and turn the smallest of details about her favorite show or song into resonant revelations. In her latest collection, Wow, No Thank You., Irby continues her grand tradition of outsize reactions and deep dives into her psyche that put both the reader’s woes and good fortunes into perspective. To laugh at Irby’s retelling of her move to Michigan or a middle-aged girls’ night out is to laugh off our own fears of change; to worry about her place in a blue town in a red state is to consider a larger clash of cultures. You might never meet her in real life, but reading Wow, No Thank You. provides the most extensive look at Irby’s life yet.

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More in March: The Ice Cream Man And Other Stories by Sam Pink (March 3, Soft Skull); Deacon King Kong by James McBride (March 3, Riverhead); Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth (March 3, Graywolf); The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (March 3, Harper Collins); Temporary by Hilary Leichter (March 3, Coffee House); We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry (March 3, Pantheon); Lorrie Moore: Collected Stories (March 3, Everyman’s); 33⅓: D’Angelo’s Voodoo by Faith A. Pennick (March 5, Bloomsbury); 33⅓: David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs by Glenn Hendler (March 5, Bloomsbury); My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (March 10, William Morrow); Call Your Mother: Memoirs Of A Neurotic Filmmaker by Barry Sonnenfeld (March 10, Hachette); The Gringa by Andrew Altschul (March 10, Coffee House); The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel (March 10, Henry Holt); You Will Never Be Forgotten by Mary South (March 10, FSG Originals); Whiteout Conditions by Tariq Shah (March 17, Two Dollar Radio); How To Be An Artist by Jerry Saltz (March 17, Riverhead); Stay: Threads, Conversations, Collaborations by Nick Flynn (March 17, ZE Books); My Meteorite: Or, Without The Random There Can Be No New Thing by Harry Dodge (March 17, Penguin); Later: My Life At The Edge Of The World by Paul Lisicky (March 17, Graywolf); Don’t You Know I Love You by Laura Bogart (March 17, Dzanc); The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel (March 24, Knopf); Save Yourself by Cameron Esposito (March 24, Grand Central); Days Of Distraction by Vanessa Chang (March 31, Ecco); Threshold by Rob Doyle (March 31, Bloomsbury); Artforum by César Aira (March 31, New Directions)