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Spring is a time for renewal, and that includes refreshing your ‘to be read’ pile. This April, readers have plenty of new books to look forward to, including a metafictional exploration of memory, a look at the effects of family vlogging and a mysterious depiction of gentrification in Brooklyn.
‘The Witch’ by Marie NDiaye; translated by Jordan Stump
Translated to English for the first time since its publication in France in 1996, Marie NDiaye’s novel is “compact and surreal” while “unspooling more mysteries than it resolves,” said The New York Times. The book, “narrated by a down-on-her-luck sorceress stuck in a disintegrating marriage in a drab provincial town,” highlights the French author’s “recurring themes of domestic entanglement and betrayal.”
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The book is “witty, dreamlike, unsettling and enchanting,” said The Booker Prizes. It “brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief” and leaves readers “teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.” (out now, $18, Penguin Random House, Amazon)
‘Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online’ by Fortesa Latifi
As courts grapple with the effects of addictive social media on young people, journalist Fortesa Latifi’s debut “scrutinizes the highly profitable world of family vloggers and momfluencers,” said Publishers Weekly. The book features interviews with influencers and their children, along with “nannies, psychologists and social media marketing managers.”
The author surveys various aspects of the industry, from “the odd preponderance of Mormon influencers” and the “discomfiting popularity of teen mom accounts” to the “over-the-top viciousness of anti-momfluencer forums.” Latifi observes how “understandable it is that parents are willing to swap their family’s privacy for financial stability, given the greater lack of structural support for families in the U.S,” the outlet said. It is a “perceptive, often stomach-churning exposé.” (out now, $30, Simon & Schuster, Amazon)
‘Transcription’ by Ben Lerner
Ben Lerner’s latest is a “deeply pleasurable, absorbing book” and a “metafictional meditation on memory and influence,” and the way “technology has changed our relationship to both,” said Literary Hub. It features a “series of moving portraits: the anxious interviewer, the aging genius, the reflective son.” Readers may get the sense that “what he’s doing really shouldn’t work” and that it wouldn’t if it were in anyone else’s hands. But it’s not, and “so it does,” the outlet said. “Thank goodness.” (out now $25, Macmillan, Amazon)
‘Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower’s Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID’ by Nicholas Enrich
Former civil servant Nicholas Enrich, who worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development under four presidents, was optimistic about his agency’s future after Trump won a second term in 2024. “The authors of Project 2025 liked their work, as did the incoming secretary of state, Marco Rubio,” said the Times. Unfortunately, Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency “had other plans,” as the author shows in this “ground-level account — part memoir, part government tell-all — of the agency’s demise.” (April 14, $29, Simon & Schuster, Amazon)
‘Livonia Chow Mein’ by Abigail Savitch-Lew
This debut novel is a “vivid, savory blend of family saga, cultural history and detective story, rich with urban life and lore,” said Kirkus Reviews. The story follows activist Lina Rodriguez Armstrong and journalist Sadie Chin as they piece together the history of a section of Brownsville, Brooklyn, decades after a fire ravaged the neighborhood,
Savitch-Lew shows “prodigious narrative gifts” in her debut novel, weaving Sadie and Lina’s “tension-filled transactions in the present with the life stories of the Wong family,” as it makes its “uneasy and often heartbreaking way through a 20th century of world wars, economic upheaval and racism as it’s enforced by institutions and perpetrated between individuals.” (April 21, $29, Simon & Schuster, Amazon)
