Summer is upon us, that season of blankets spread on park grass and beach sand, of long days and plane rides. Of worn paperbacks damp with salt water, crisp hardcovers pressed into overstuffed suitcases, musty mysteries pulled from vacation house shelves. Read-a-Thons. Library air-conditioning. Happy reading. —Keziah Weir
‘Ways and Means’ by Daniel Leffert
At first glance, a novel about gay guys in finance, failed artists, and, of all things, the 2016 election might not sound like anyone’s idea of a good time, but in Daniel Leffert’s capable hands, it’s an absolute riot. Leffert’s thrilling debut novel, Ways and Means, follows Alistair McCabe, a bright and exceedingly ambitious NYU Stern student whose drive to change his and his mother’s station in life winds up being his Achilles heel. After moving to the big city from Binghamton, NY, Alistair finds himself falling into an unwitting throuple with Mark and Elijah—a listless but attractive gay couple that should have broken up years ago (if I had a nickel…) Via his relationship with Mark and Elijah, Alistair finds himself working for a billionaire businessman whose politics are, to put it lightly, questionable at best at the precipice of the most consequential election in our nation’s history. Given the way things are shaping up for 2024 (wait, can a convicted felon be president?), Lefferts wry examination of the societal and economic shifts that led to the once unthinkable hits incredibly close to home. (Abrams, 2024) —Chris Murphy
‘American Glitch’ by Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein
Fittingly, I discovered this book on Instagram. American Glitch by Andrea Orejarena & Caleb Stein drops into an altered reality where the digital world and all its aberrations have somehow oozed into the “real” world. Images of septuple rainbows, sinkholes, mirages, unidentified flying objects, and US military training exercises in a book about the size and color of a MacBook Pro evoke a paranoid hive mind informed by endless hours on the internet. Of course, there is humor in these visual “glitches” as well. Imagine jpegs of clouds in the shape of angels and scans of FBI documents discussing “Spying by mind-reading!” An essay by David Campany and shorter texts by 36 contributors add to this wildly inventive set of images that asks all of the questions that we may not want answered. (Gnomic Book, 2024) —Madison Reid
‘Giants: Art from the Dean Collection’ by Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys
Giants is a substantial and boldly designed catalog of artworks from The Dean Collection, the private art collection of Swizz Beats and Alicia Keys. Accompanying a major exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum (and a feature in Vanity Fair), the curation is informed by a desire for living artists, and in particular artists of color, to receive timely and deserved recognition for their work, which is no small feat. With the phrase “standing on the shoulders of giants” in mind, Dean and Keys show pieces by multiple generations of Black American, African, and African diasporic artists alongside one another: a stainless steel sculpture by Hank Willis Thomas, stylish portraits by painter Toyin Ojih Odutola, and a mix of images by photographer Gordon Parks, among many others. Colorful pages with artist questionnaires and extensive artist bios elevate a museum catalog to an encyclopedic necessity for anyone interested in contemporary art. (Phaidon, June 2024) —MR
On display at the Victoria and Albert Museum is an 18th-century work entitled “Tippoo’s Tiger,” which the museum describes as “one of the V&A’s most famous and intriguing objects.” It’s a nearly life-sized wooden carving of a tiger mauling a British soldier, fitted with a crank that, when turned, causes the soldier’s arm to move and an internal organ to simulate the moans of a dying man. The makers of this singular object, whose identities have been lost to history, serve as the animating life force in Tania James’ exquisite novel, out in paperback this month: Abbas, a teenage woodcarver, is brought under the wing of the French clockmaker Lucien du Leze, whom the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, has tasked with creating an automaton to gift to his son. But carving the tiger is only Abbas’ first trial in what becomes an epic saga of loss and romance, in a novel that raises questions of art, artifice, and authorship; of power and plunder. (Knopf, 2023) —KW
‘A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide To Understanding and Writing Poetry’ by Mary Oliver
Over the last couple years I’ve been attempting to make up for a reading lifetime of feeling weirdly intimidated by poetry, and therefore avoiding it. This warm, crystalline guide by one of our country’s most popular contemporary poets serves as a pleasurable and accessible survey course, plucking examples from Emily Dickinson, Robert Lowell, John Keats, and more to demonstrate meter, form, diction, and imagery. “Handbook” has a cold, utilitarian ring to it, but Oliver breathes life into the concepts. “Remember,” she writes, “language is a living material, full of shadow and sudden moments of up-leap and endless nuance.” She notes that the pentameter is the prevailing line length because it most closely hews to human lung capacity, and that if a “poem is thin, it is likely not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers—has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.” (Ecco, 1994) —KW
LIGHTNING ROUND
From the magazine, a taster-plate of noteworthy new titles.
‘Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones’ by Priyanka Mattoo
Kashmir-born Priyanka Mattoo details her life in spry essays that include such horrors as a great-aunt’s violent death but also find boundless joy: kids’ word choices, a family recipe. (Knopf)
‘Wives Like Us’ by Plum Sykes
A sought-after butler employed by an Oxfordshire wife keeps the Thomas Goode sugar bowls polished and the Instagram influencers in check in Plum Sykes’s glossy comedy of manners. (Harper)
‘The Uptown Local’ by Cory Leadbeater
For the final nine years of Joan Didion’s life, Cory Leadbeater worked as her assistant. Intimately, he describes her endless tissues and delight in children, his complicated family, their shared love of Auden. (Ecco)
‘Fire Exit’ by Morgan Talty
Morgan Talty’s pensive, probing debut novel circles a decades-old family rift centering on tribal lineage and land laws on Maine’s Penobscot Reservation, which separates a father from his child. (Tin House)
‘The Memo’ by Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling
In Rachel Dodes and Lauren Mechling’s clever time warp, a mysterious consortium allows Jenny Green to revisit key moments that have contributed to her “suboptimal” life—and redo them. (Harper Perennial)
‘Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life’ by Michael Nott
Michael Nott, coeditor of Thom Gunn’s letters, paints a keen portrait of the poet, from his psychedelic life in Haight-Ashbury to thoughtful dives into his body of work. (FSG) —KW
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