Under the radar, underrated, or simply missed: 7 books from 2019’s first half that deserve more attention
Aux Features Books
As we approach the longest day of the year later this week, one could certainly take advantage of the extra daylight and warm weather and spend some time outside. Drink a drink on a porch, take a boat out on a body of water, or even just go for a walk. Or—but really, and—one could use the extra daylight to read, either outside or by the gentle, natural light coming through one’s window. From a sci-fi master’s short story collection, to an incendiary feminist novel, to a warm, gritty ode to America’s fourth largest city, we’ve already read some excellent books in the first half of 2019 that have also earned their fair share of praise elsewhere. But what about the books we love that haven’t quite risen to the fore of the conversation? In addition to this year’s blockbusters, we’ve been digging the following books, which have either flown under the radar or deserve just a little more love. There’s a pair of surrealist short story collections in translation, a novel from a writer who’s had little trouble earning attention in the past, the latest entry in a genre we’re calling “Anthropocene feminist fiction,” and more. Add them to your stack. You’ve got some extra time this week.
Mouthful Of Birds by Samanta Schweblin (trans. by Megan McDowell, January 8, Riverhead Books)
My favorite genre of late is what might be called Anthropocene feminist fiction, literature that wrestles with the lives of women staring down a world’s end brought upon by men. The best of these novels—Megan Hunter’s The End We Start From, Sarah Moss’ Ghost Wall, and Samanta Schweblin’s Fever Dream—are much like life: brief, terrifying, and obstinately weird. Fever Dream is perhaps the strangest of all: the chronicle of a poisoned river, a sickbed ghost tale, a hallucinatory horror story that more than earns its title. The collected stories in Schweblin’s Mouthful Of Birds, first published in her native Argentina in 2010, likewise bathe in a surrealist delirium. Here, new brides find themselves abandoned in the darkness of a rural highway, a teenage girl devours live birds, a father crushes a butterfly and loses the person he loves the most. [Rien Fertel]
The Atlas Of Reds And Blues by Devi S. Laskar (February 5, Counterpoint)
Following a brutal encounter with the police outside her home, an Indian-American woman lies bleeding out on the concrete. An inevitability, one senses. In those moments, Mother—as she is called in Devi S. Laskar’s singularly sharp novel The Atlas Of Reds And Blues about life in the shadow of confounding racial brutality in America—recalls her life in fleeting memories, a mishmash of unresolved stories. It makes sense that a poet would write such a book: the novel, like memories, is prismatic and free-flowing. Unsparing, too. As Mother bleeds, she thinks, “A miscarriage of a different kind. No baby to lose this time. A different kind of secession.” It’s an unrelenting story, but the way Laskar renders it is vital. Mother, of three daughters, and the child of Bengali immigrants, is often kind, cruel, tired, practical. And dying for no reason at all. [Kamil Ahsan]
The Heavens by Sandra Newman (February 12, Grove Press)
Remember that house party in your early 20s where you met someone so interesting that you wanted to keep talking to them all night? Reading a Sandra Newman novel feels like that, and it’s actually how The Heavens begins. In an alternate version of New York City—where a female Green Party candidate won the White House—Ben falls in love with a “Hungarian-Turkish-Persian” artist named Kate at a party. The thing about Kate is, every night she dreams about living in 16th-century England as a woman named Emilia, and having an affair with William Shakespeare. In fact, it’s more than a recurring dream to Kate—it’s a second life. Newman is one of the smartest and funniest writers on Twitter, and this weird, addicting, masterful novel should catapult her to further acclaim. [Adam Morgan]
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli (February 12, Knopf)
Valeria Luiselli’s Lost Children Archive deserves a second look. Experimental, to a fault perhaps, Luiselli’s novel is the chronicle of a great American road trip, the story of a marriage breaking apart, a loving endorsement to raising children, a devastating commentary on U.S. history, a damning dissection of the nation’s modern immigration policy, and so much more. Combined, Luiselli has created, in the words of a character, an “inventory of echoes.” And no moment in Lost Children Archive will echo with readers like its climactic chapter, an agonizing, ecstatic 20-page, single-sentence masterpiece of imagination and creation. Kudos to Luiselli for conquering the art of the very long sentence (long the purview of men), and for writing a novel that seemingly takes on everything. This is the half-year’s most important book. Take the trip. [Rien Fertel]
The Parade by Dave Eggers (March 19, Knopf)
There’s a lot of Eggers out there, an Eggers for every reader. Postmodern-memoir Eggers. Tom Hanksian-Hollywood-vehicle Eggers. Great-American-novel-striving Eggers. Coffee-as-capitalism Eggers. Rewriting-kid’s-classics Eggers. And then there’s the odd, allegorical thriller Eggers. The Eggers that gave us Your Fathers, Where Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, a short novel, told entirely in dialogue, about American violence. Earlier this year, he published The Parade, a short novel also about American violence. Here, the pseudonymous government contractors Four and Nine are tasked with paving a highway, connecting country to capital in an unnamed war-torn country. An odd couple—Four is authoritarian and all business, Nine is inclined to dreamy declarations like, “The road is a highway of life”—they represent the flip sides of the American experiment abroad, remaking the world in our image, one doomed kilometer at a time. [Rien Fertel]
Flowers Of Mold by Ha Seong-Nan (trans. by Janet Hong, April 22, Open Letter)
Garbage, noise, traffic, the claustrophobia that comes from living among millions of people. Most of the stories in Ha Seong-Nan’s Flowers Of Mold are set in Seoul or its outskirts, and they emphasize the grimiest, most stifling parts of big city life. The walls are thin, and the neighbors make your business theirs—if they’re not going through your trash, they’re stealing your husband. Fitting to the book’s title, the characters’ arcs bend toward ruin in this, Ha’s first book-length publication in English (published originally in Korea in 1999). Coincidences, and there are many, rarely work in anyone’s favor. Wrapped up in fantasy or dreams, these men, women, and children are often confused over what is and isn’t real, the reader seeing before they do how their anxious yearning will go unfulfilled. As in opener “Waxen Wings,” wherein a growth spurt spoils a girl’s gymnastic promise, the strongest stories make clear these poor souls’ doom from the start. There’s something refreshing about Ha not giving them respite from bad luck and double crossers, the greasy oil of the fryer and the drunks pounding on their doors at all hours of the night. As one character puts it, “There’s nothing more telling than vomit.” [Laura Adamczyk]
Song For The Unraveling Of The World by Brian Evenson (June 11, Coffee House Press)
I’m not convinced Brian Evenson is entirely human. His literary horror fiction is just too good, too immersive, and too alien for a mere mortal. This book has everything one comes to expect from Evenson—brief glimpses of dark worlds where no one is completely sure where they are, who they are, or what is real. Like his previous collections, about half of the stories in Song For The Unraveling Of The World are set in our own reality, but my personal favorites have always been Evenson’s forays into science fiction. Here, the survivors of an apocalypse live beneath a half-destroyed skyscraper, astronauts awaken early during a long journey between stars, and siblings live in an unknown structure “in two places at once,” where one door leads to a barren plain and the other, total darkness. Every story is fascinating and leaves you wanting more. [Adam Morgan]
47 Comments
Other than the Evenson and Eggers, did they use the same graphic designer for the covers? Is there some sort of template in MS Publisher that’s used to crank ‘em out?
Probably. For awhile there it felt like every thriller/crime novel had to have a cover that looked like Gone Girl’s. I think it’s the publishing world’s equivalent of mockbusters, hoping people will buy anything that looks sort of like the thing they actually want if they squint and don’t, you know, actually read any part of it before purchase.
like 99% of book covers are so bad now. I don’t get it. It must be the publisher meddling because they’ve figured out the algorithm of how a cover can trick people into buying it or something. Everyone knows marketing is the best bit of art.
The number of long-running series out there has taken over the new release rack, and they all use the same cover template. At least there’s truth in advertising so you won’t pick up something that looks interesting only to discover it’s number sixteen in a series:
Right now book design largely driven by realities of marketplace. Cover have to look good as thumbnail on Amazon. Hence, lot of big, bold, sans-serif text that easy to read at any size.
I’ve kind of liked some covers lately. Seems like they are letting graphic design folks loose with coming up with some cool stuff. I think we’ll look back at some and relish them like the Vintage Contemporaries, which I didn’t really like at the time. For instance of recent stuff, I like the design of “The Southern Reach Trilogy” (Annihilation, etc) and Tommy Orange’s “There There”
This. Thumbnails and “the look” of a given genre drive the cover market. The fact that these could all be described as “slipstream” “literary” and “new weird” means they’ve got to have similar-ish (serious, but odd; stark, but complex) covers. The fact that they’ve got to be visible as a tiny picture on your phone means what used to be called “airport-style” title and author fonts.
Big kerns
Especially comparing Mouthful of Birds to Flowers of Mold (and Jesus, these titles!). Also, look at Black Leopard Red Wolf.
*Looks at Seong-Nan’s cover. Looks at Evenson’s cover.* Hmm. Funny that you think Evensons’ is one of the stand outs. Wonder why you think that? Such a mystery.
Evenson’s is one of the stand-outs because it has an actual picture on the cover and not just giant text against an abstract background. But yes, everything is a racist conspiracy, which is why the white German lady’s book also looks like crap.
Maybe because Ha Seong-Nan’s cover is simple text over a background image, just like the other four I didn’t mention. If you can’t see a difference between the two I mentioned and the other five, maybe you’re the one with a problem. And the solution rhymes with “Shmoptometrist.”
I’ve been noticing this, too. It’s so weird and sad.
I know – it’s irritating. We’re not six-year-olds.
Six-year olds get books with great covers. We should be so lucky.
Never heard of them.
Never heard of who? All of them? Is this the equivalent of someone posting a story about Kesha or Lana Del Rey or somebody and then the first comment is “Who?”? If so, why even comment? What is your comment’s endgame?
What is your comments endgame? That comment was a masterful strategy so purposely designed to elicit lambasting. can’t you see that?
ISN’T IT OBVIOUS I DIDN’T!!??!!??
Which is the point of the article, yes? Either you’re missing the point, or I’m missing the extremely dry humor.
If this is a joke I apologize for my lambasting and I hope your spirit recovers.
…Well now you have!
That Evenson story collection looks good. I just got We Are Where the Nightmares Go and Other Stories out of the library, so I’m set for horror short stories for the moment, but I’ll have to remember to check it out when I wrap up.
I just realized I don’t like book covers anymore.
Those are not the unedited covers, right? There was some kind of color-treating or whatever (sorry, I know nothing about graphic design). But I agree with you, or at least it seems strange to me that in a given year most literary book covers are strikingly similar to one another.
It’s why I like hardcovers. Garish dust covers are just protection for the usually simple, utilitarian paperboard covers.
I still like to hit the Barnes & Noble every now and then and a good book cover will almost always get me to at least take a look. There aren’t many out there anymore.
Same, but I agree. I just like the smell of new books.
Stoked to see Mouthful of Birds on here (and mentioned along Ghost Wall, one of my favorite books of the year, to boot).
Great. Now do non-fiction.
Thanks for the list – I just bought The Heavens. You can never have too many book suggestions!
Books are where I go for escapism, and much of this list seems too heavy on social politics for my liking. Evenson & Ha both sound interesting though, I might have to look more into those writers!
I feel like we never get sci-fi or fantasy in this list.
Agreed. Especially since waiting for the next ASoIaF book seems to eclipse other worthwhile fantasy books out there.It irks me to no end that Tad Williams doesn’t get the fanfare he deserves, especially since he’s staying on schedule with his current fantasy series “The Last King of Osten Ard”.And people not knowing Williams here in the States is ESPECIALLY egregious as this series is the narrative sequel to the trilogy “Memory, Sorrow & Thorn” (The Dragonbone Chair, The Stone of Farewell, To Green Angel Tower) -which is just as good as the work of G.R.R.M.(The latest book is Empire of Grass. The first book in the new series is The Witchwood Crown. Plus there’s a novel that links both old & new series: The Heart of What was Lost).Empire of Grass just came out a month or two ago, but was eclipsed by the shitstorm of S8 GOT.And the “Memory, Sorrow & Thorn” is one of the major influences that encouraged Martin to write “Game of Thrones” in the first place.
Not with all that feminist bullshit we won’t
The Evenson book has plenty of science fiction and the Newman is quite fantastical.
I came in to complain about the similarities of the covers only to find that my comment would be indistinguishable from the other comments. How ironic, like something from a novel.
Came here just to mention Tiamat’s Wrath, the latest book in the Expanse book series, which I don’t believe got even a mention back in March when it was released. The book was EXCELLENT start-to-finish, and has set up an exciting end-game for the series as a whole. Can’t reccomened it (and the entire series) enugh.Also, not to drag GoT into this (but actually yes, as I only got into the Expanse series based on an iBooks recommendation that I would like it since I read ASOFI), but this series actually hits its release dates regualary, and it maintains its quality all the way throughout, which the show has mirrored so far, and which also gives me hope that it won’t run into the same issues Thrones did down the line.
Just read Girls with Sharp Sticks. I highly recommend everyone read this mindblowing YA novel that carries more gravity than most literary darlings. I’m an author and I hate 95% of the books I read. Girls with Sharp Sticks absolutely blew my mind. I haven’t killed a book in two sittings in years. Completely reinvigorated my interest in literature.
Atlas of Reds and Blues and Lost Children Archive were such beautiful books that I couldn’t stop thinking about after reading.
I really enjoyed Fever Dream and Ghost Wall and I havent heard of Mouthful of Birds, but I guess that goes to show that its an under the radar book.
I love that you assembled this list of books. More book coverage, please!
May I suggest Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg? Its a novel exploring art, feminism, family, and city life in NYC, and it is very moving (and also has an interesting cover illustration for you design critics.)
“Anthropocene feminist fiction” is exactly what I’ve been into lately without being able to articulate it so clearly! Fever Dream is so disturbingly amazing, I’ll definitely track down Mouthful of Birds. In that genre I would also highly recommend Sealed by Naomi Booth. I was filled with deep sickening dread for about a week after finishing it, which I guess is a sign of a good read?
It definitely is a sign of a good read!
My books fall under that category. They’ve had no attention, are completely ignored, to the point that I now offer them for free on my patreon. At http://www.99geek.ca you can find links to both my books on Amazon, and my patreon page where the paywall has come down. On my patreon I release new chapters once a month like episodes of a tv show. The finished seasons are then the books I put on Amazon. You’ll find an urban fantasy tale about a teenage girl turned into a vampire against her will. She the new leans on her geeky friends to cope. Rachel Lin Smith is Asian, lgbtq (in a bisexual love triangle), and develops into an asskicker and super hero. That series also has two spinoffs. Dakotah Slade about a lovelorn woman who’s abusive ex is causong people to spontaneously combust around the city, and Isabol Tseung Voice News, about a reporter in Iraq dealing with adversity therewhile trying to do her job.Then I have a medieval fantasy story about sarcastic loud mouthed lesbian thief who teams with a fallen angel to prevent the end of the world.And I have a sci-if story about a people on a dying desert world building. Massive colony ship to the stars.So please please please check them out, please spread the word, please leave comments and discussions. Become my fans. I desperately need an audience. I just want my stuff to be read and enjoyed.Try not to judge everything by the first book Suburban Fantasy. I wrote it right out of university. It’s been a decade since then, and every chapter I earn a lot and get slightly better at this.
Usually I have to turn to Slate for this kind of identity lit parade.