Featuring annotated stories gathered over a decade of traveling, Joe Sacco’s Journalism
is the almost-obsessively detailed account of a journalist abroad in
India, The Hague, Gaza, and elsewhere. Sacco is a reflective
journalist, observing every element he encounters in his travels and
rendering them fully onto the page with a harmonious balance of art and
letters. Because Sacco has recounted these events in graphic form,
they hit home in a way that words alone cannot; yet his writing is as
thorough and sparse as you could wish. Among the most compelling parts
of Journalism is Sacco’s clearheaded look at one of the
definitive moments of the early 21st century: the war in Iraq and the
torture of detainees.
What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World (Mariner, $14.95) is a fascinating new instructional guide as perfect for the experienced birdwatcher as it is for the aspiring naturalist. Jon Young shares decades of experience and scores of anecdotes to explain how learning to observe carefully and to understand the language and behavior of both unusual and ordinary birds can help us see and appreciate the complexity of the natural world, even in an urban environment like Washington, D.C. Descriptions of flight patterns, distinct bird calls, and avian reactions to disruptions in territory are fundamental aspects of the book; throughout, Young provides online links so readers can listen to the songs, chatter, and warning calls he mentions.
Sam Kean ‘s clever and engaging biography of DNA covers far more than biology; it explores how one elegant molecule structures our bodies and lives, and it captures the complex discoveries of scientists—and their equally complex personalities—in an entertaining narrative style. The Violinist’s Thumb (Little, Brown, $15.99) is full of amazing facts (did you know that there’s enough DNA in our bodies to stretch to the moon?) and illuminating analogies (the nimble, ever-shifting RNA is compared to ancient oral storytelling, while sturdy, consistent DNA is like writing). The book’s broad range makes it ideal for readers of history, biology, psychology, and politics; the many tales of A, T, C, and G reveal what our genes mean to us and how they have shaped us as a culture, a species, and as individuals.
Egan has won the Pulitzer Prize for A Visit From The Goon Squad and is now considered a great modern American novelist. However, if you go back fifteen years or so you’ll find Emerald City, a collection of short stories that showcases her talent and foretells her success. The eleven stories involve themes of shifting identity, beauty, travel, family trauma, and emerging adulthood that occupy many of her novels. If you ever wanted to find out if you like one the best writers currently working, this is a great way to start.
Darling, Bastard, Chipo, and their friends are the focus of NoViolet Bulawayo’s novel, We Need New Names (Reagan Arthur, $25). They spend their days in Paradise, a shantytown in Zimbabwe where people whose homes have been bulldozed by the government end up. Darling is just old enough to remember “before,” when things were normal—when her family had a TV and she didn’t have to steal guavas. The children are curious, bemused witnesses to a world gone mad, where even the adults have no real control or understanding of their circumstances and everyone is filled with an impotent rage. Eventually, we follow Darling to her aunt’s home in “Destroyed” (Detroit), Michigan, where she adapts, too easily in some ways and with great difficulty in others, to a place that will never really be home, and learns that abandoning one, however full of violence and despair it is, brings its own sense of loss.
learning live, dead, or simply unconscious languages
bacon! (the presence of an
exclamation mark can either mean I am excited about bacon, or it can
indicate that this is the factorial function of bacon -- you decide).
Welcome to the new Irish literature: its capital is the City of Bohane (Graywolf, $15), Kevin Barry’s dystopian vision of a town in the West of Ireland. This decrepit and malevolent metropolis is ruled by gangs, and its streets are full of people doing whatever they can just to survive. At the center of the book is the gang leader who is ready to step down, and the power struggle such a transition precipitates. Bohane’s language and street slang might give you pause, but Barry’s novel is more than worth the effort. Barry himself calls this book a “weird kind of Neo-Western”: a tale intended for entertainment, with a cast of colorful characters wearing elaborate (and meticulously described) costumes. This melancholic yet funny novel will both challenge and amaze you.
Whenever Ursula dies, she is immediately born again in Surrey on the same snowy night in 1910. The regenerations that make up Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life (Reagan Arthur, $27.99) provide more than the spark for an adventure tale—each new existence Ursula takes up is like a novella unto itself, as she encounters characters and places that are rich and fully realized before dissolving in her next untimely demise. Atkinson puts her skill as a mystery writer to new, deft use here as she manipulates time so that each of Ursula’s new lives plays on landmarks of the old ones in cleverly satisfying ways. You won’t be able to put this book down as Ursula comes closer and closer to realizing her fate, and, as World War II approaches, has to decide if she will use her unique talent to change the course of history.
This year saw many great graphic novel publications, but perhaps none so great as the deluxe two-volume hardcover box set of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. Those of you who recognize the name Miyazaki no doubt know him as the director of the monumental animated films Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. As triumphant as those films may be, this graphic novel remains Miyazaki's magnum opus, completed long before he became a director. Nausicaa set the tone for themes most people now associate with Studio Ghibli: strong female characters, environmentalism, and the inherent destructive nature of mankind. Nausicaa is the closest thing comics has to The Lord of the Rings and should be experienced whether you're a fan of high fantasy or Studio Ghibli.
In his eighth collection of humorous essays, David Sedaris celebrates all that is a little “off” in life, from the come-ons and exclamations of Lonely Planet’s phrase books (“That is amazing/weird/wild!”) to the difficulties of being an American living abroad in the Bush years. My favorite observations in Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls (Little, Brown, $27) involve the racial awkwardness occurring both before and after the elections of President Obama (turns out we may have a little work to do on the whole racism thing yet). Your favorite moments may be Sedaris’s uncomfortable memories of buying condoms in bulk at Costco, or when his voice morphs into that of a self-righteous suburbanite in one of the featured short stories. Whether or not you’re already familiar with Sedaris’s inimitable voice, you’ll find his take on modern life delightful.
If you’ve ever wondered, as Heidegger, put it, “why is there something rather than nothing?” try imagining nothing. That inconceivable void is the point of departure for Jim Holt’s thorough parsing of the question,
Why Does the World
Exist? (Liveright,$16.95).
Holt, author of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes, is a genial and thoughtful guide to the many theories we’ve come up with to explain the universe, from creation myths and a benign deity to godless materialist theories and on to the wild, everything-goes scenarios of the multi-verse. For each line of inquiry, Holt surveys the major literature and interviews the experts, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of each argument. So why is there something? Ultimately, the answers don’t resolve the matter but raise more questions, implicitly suggesting, perhaps, that the world exists to make us wonder.
This is not just a novel. Nor is it merely the cleverest, most giddily absorbing satire you’re likely to inhale this summer. It’s a collage, an astonishingly creative, ceaselessly inventive exercise in storytelling. On one level, it’s a classic missing-person case: when Bernadette Fox vanishes on the eve of a family trip to Antarctica, her teenage daughter sifts through the reams of documentation (emails, letters, telephone transcripts, police files, school report cards) left behind. But people have long been asking Where’d You Go, Bernadette? (Back Bay, $14.99). What made Bernadette –former architect and MacArthur “Genius”–turn into a recluse who hides in her ramshackle manor and cowers from Seattle private school moms? That’s the real mystery, and it’s a joy to follow along as Maria Semple nimbly teases it out.
HHhH (Picador, $16,) by Laurent Binet, tells the true story of two heroic Czech patriots, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, who parachuted behind enemy lines to assassinate Nazi, Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague. The title refers to the epithet ascribed to Heydrich: Himmler’s Hirn heist Heydrich, or “Himmler’s brain is called Heydrich.” Part historical fiction and part creative meta-fiction, Binet’s novel features a narrator who muses upon the nature of historical novels and the impossibility of objectivity. When he finally nears the end of his story, he finds ways to extend the telling so as not to lose contact with his fearless heroes—a narrative ploy that may sound odd, but one that really works. HHhH is smart, playful, and engrossing.
The term “boomerang generation” is common fodder for New York Times trend pieces, but in The Smart One (Knopf, $24.95), the first novel by local author Jennifer Close, the Coffey family, with its trio of grown children, is anything but common. Claire, the middle sister, has just cancelled her wedding and left her life in New York City. Martha, a registered nurse and the eldest of the siblings, has been home for seven years, working at J. Crew. Their mother, Weezy, oversees the family while keeping a secret from her husband and her children. Adding to the mix is the return home after college of Max, the youngest, with his intimidatingly beautiful girlfriend and secrets of his own. Close tells the Coffeys’ story with pathos, just as she did those of the Girls in White Dresses, her earlier story collection. A talented writer, Close imbues her characters with humor and insight, sometimes hard-earned.
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