Await Your Reply
by Dan Chaon
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Dan Chaon’s “mesmerizing” literary thriller braids three stories about characters who have abandoned their old lives to remake themselves, said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. An orphaned high school girl runs off with her history teacher, a college dropout heads to the sticks with his long-absent con-man father, and a distraught drifter hunts for his mentally ill twin. But seek no further summaries. “You need to step into this work of psychological suspense completely unprepared for what lurks there.”
Short Girls
by Bich Minh Nguyen
(Viking, $26)
“Location matters” in Bich Minh Nguyen’s novel about two height-challenged Vietnamese-American sisters and their tinkerer father, said Grace Park in the San Francisco Chronicle. Living in the Midwest, each woman feels stuck on life’s “periphery.” Though Nguyen’s characters could be better fleshed out, she’s deftly mined the theme of shortness—both as a comic effect and “as a metaphor for the many ways we feel out of place in the world.”
The Magicians
by Lev Grossman
(Viking, $27)
Lev Grossman’s new novel about a secret American school for magicians “might all too easily feel like a retread,” said Moira Macdonald in The Seattle Times. But after creating a university-age Harry Potter stand-in and then hustling him through a Hogwarts-like college and into the letdown years beyond, the Time literary critic demonstrates that there are fresh ways to consider “the isolation inherent in being different” and the “uncertainties of young adulthood.” A satisfying coming-of-age tale that’s definitely not for children.
This Is Where I Leave You
by Jonathan Tropper
(Dutton, $26)
Sitting shiva with testy family members would seem to be no way for a cuckolded Everyman to rebound from a broken marriage, said Holly Silva in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Late-onset maturity is “rich comic ground,” though, and Jonathan Tropper has created an “uproarious” read out of one laggard’s forced study in the art of growing up. Tropper has given adultery in the suburbs a fresh, “painful” edge. “You wince as you laugh out loud.”
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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.”