Nine Inches
by Tom Perrotta (St. Martin’s, $26)
Tom Perrotta’s ongoing interest in the residents of suburbia “marks him as the descendent of such chroniclers of small-town America as Thornton Wilder and Willa Cather,” said Alix Ohlin in The New York Times. In this story collection, characters come under pressure at work, school, or Little League and sometimes reveal ugly sides. Along the way, though, the author of Little Children manages to make community life itself feel like the book’s “most vibrant and fully developed character.”
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The Measures Between Us
by Ethan Hauser (Bloomsbury, $26)
“Bad weather as a manifestation of emotional turmoil is an old literary trick,” said Stephan Lee in Entertainment Weekly. But when Ethan Hauser decided to set his first novel in the Boston suburbs as the region braces for a devastating storm, he also had more useful tricks up his sleeve—like “beautiful prose and sensitive characterization.” The challenges these characters face—including infidelity, mental illness, and an unusual child—“prove more dramatic than any meteorological havoc.”
Duplex
by Kathryn Davis (Graywolf, $24)
“I can’t remember the last time I read a book so disorienting,” said Rosecrans Baldwin in NPR.org. Part of Kathryn Davis’s seventh novel is set in a world much like a 1950s suburb, except for countless discontented robots. And then there’s a second world that, perhaps, exists atop the first. Hard as it is to follow Davis’s imagination from one line to the next, reading this book is great fun. “Sometimes really good company, the interesting, mind-expanding kind, leaves you scratching your head.”
The End of the Suburbs
by Leigh Gallagher (Portfolio, $26)
Give Leigh Gallagher credit for not hating on the suburbs, said Josh Dzieza in TheDailyBeast.com. Like other urbanites, she’s predicting the demise of the sprawling, car-dependent suburb, but at least she’s not gleeful about it. Her real contribution is that she’s talked to a lot of the builders who are responding to the preference of Millennials for dense, walkable communities. Only well-off Millennials interest her, but given that those are the industry’s targets, “the focus is perhaps justified.”
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”