The newest novel from Ottessa Moshfegh is a change of pace from her usual style of immediate, biting provocation. With Death in Her Hands, she crafts an unnerving murder mystery that unfolds solely within the mind of her narrator...or does it? This is a heavily internalized work of psychological suspense in the vein of another great New England writer, Shirley Jackson. Moshfegh has a delicate handle on the perspective of her prickly narrator, and slowly envelops the reader in an interior world of delusions both grand and small. This is by no means a traditional mystery, but a suspenseful and genuinely chilling character study.
Akhtar, a highly acclaimed playwright, writes yet another brilliant piece on his experience as an American with Pakistani family roots. As with his protagonist here, Akhtar's vivid and thought-provoking memories before and after 9/11 have played a huge role in his writings. In this work of auto-fiction, he has imagined just what every young Muslim during that period must have thought of: his identity, roots, family, and his future in this country. His father, a physician to Donald Trump, opposed his son's political opinions often, and as this work shows, the two men struggle to live with their differences as Akhtar's protagonist goes into business with a wealthy Pakistani-American hedge fund manager and earns a fortune. While based in fact, this book succeeds brilliantly as fiction.
Each day is a gift composed of twenty-four hours. How many do you spend thinking about what other people think of you? What if you stopped? If your life was free from the tedium of social convention and self-judgment, could you fill it like a jewelry box? In Madeleine Ryan's debut novel, the reader enters the captivating mind of a young woman as she embarks on an epic journey--to a house party. As a woman living with autism, Ryan's narrator perceives the world with documentary clarity. She wastes nothing and savors everything (including her ritual "post-party suppers"). A tantalizing, bingeworthy read, A Room Called Earth is the literary equivalent of sitting inside of a kaleidoscope.
