Edited by Jason Jefferies, Quail Ridge Books
September has been one of the biggest months of the year for new book releases, and October looks to be no slouch. Here is a list of ten of the best and most anticipated books of the fall:
The Testaments is Margaret Atwood’s sequel to the classic The Handmaid’s Tale, which has been adapted into a critically acclaimed television series for Hulu. This dystopian novel seems to spin out of the television series as much as the novel that it is based on, but is no worse for the wear. Margaret Atwood will be at North Carolina State University on November 15th; public tickets are sold out, but VIP tickets are still available.
Quail Ridge Books’ Sarah Goddin says “While Coates has made a name for himself as an award-winning writer of memoir, essays and journalism, his gifts in fiction seem to me, remarkably, even stronger. Hiram Walker, born a slave on a decaying Virginia tobacco plantation in the mid-1800s, is the hero and The Water Dancer is an adrenaline charged adventure story, a lyrical saga of family love, and a heartbreaking morality tale with a healthy dose of magic realism. Hiram is a complex young man with special gifts. He’s also a sympathetic narrator accompanied by a rich cast of unforgettable characters who are good or evil but never pure. The Water Dancer is a complete pleasure to read, even at its darkest, from the first page to the last.”
Rachel Cusk, known for her Outline Trilogy, is the winner of the Whitbread and the Somerset Maugham awards. Her new collection Coventry: Essays reflects upon her strange relationship with her parents, the perils of domestic life, family, motherhood, marriage and community. She also offers us criticisms of Virginia Woolf, Kazuo Ishiguro and Elizabeth Gilbert. An urgent, fascinating read.
Ducks, Newburyport (published by Canadian imprint Biblioasis) seemingly came out of nowhere to be nominated for the Booker Prize. First prints of this book sold out quickly across the country. A large, ambitious novel on the scale of Infinite Jest, Lucy Ellmann’s novel reads like a 21st Century version of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Ducks, Newburyport is a literary marvel that is quite unlike anything else released in 2019.
This Zen koan of a memoir about Kingsnorth’s flight from the United States to a simple cottage in the Irish countryside reads similarly to Walden. Savage Gods is a subtle investigation of what it means to be an American ex-patriate in the era of Brexit and Donald Trump. Unlike Thoreau, Kingsnorth fled American civilization with his wife and family in tow. Savage Gods is another home run by indie press Two Dollar Radio.
From Quail Ridge Books’ Mamie Potter: “Ann Patchett’s characters get to me. The Dutch House itself is fascinating, described in exquisite detail and a wonderful setting for the story. The peripheral characters, who worked for the Dutch House families through the years, are endearing. I have loved Patchett’s writing since reading Bel Canto, and I have no idea how she writes these brilliant novels while running a bookstore. Maybe I should thank her outstanding staff? As with all Patchett’s books, The Dutch House is a good book for book clubs.”
Ann Patchett will be in Raleigh on October 27th as part of Quail Ridge Books and the North Carolina Book Festival’s Arts & Lecture Series. Tickets are sold out, but waitlist spots are still available.
From Tin House Books: “Feed is the fourth book in the Teebs tetralogy. It’s an epistolary recipe for the main character, a poem of nourishment, and a jaunty walk through New York’s High Line park, with the lines, stanzas, paragraphs, dialogue, and registers approximating the park’s cultivated gardens of wildness. Among its questions, Feed asks what’s the difference between being alone and being lonely? Can you ever really be friends with an ex? How do you make perfect mac & cheese? Feed is an ode of reconciliation to the wild inconsistencies of a northeast spring, a frustrating season of back-and-forth, of thaw and blizzard, but with a faith that even amidst the mess, it knows where it’s going.”
Tommy Pico’s previous book IRL was published by Birds, LLC, a press that is partially run by North Carolina Book Festival Co-Director Chris Tonelli.
Zadie Smith was a keynote speaker at this year’s Greensboro Bound festival.
Mamie Potter says: “Pretty much, if Zadie Smith’s name is on it, I’m in. I loved Swing Time and Feel Free and signed up as soon as I heard she’d be the keynote speaker at the 2019 Greensboro Bound Literary Festival. She is one brilliant wordsmith, both on paper and in person. I approached her new story collection, Grand Union, with skepticism. How could she be good at everything? She is. I finished the collection at the end of a day full of family and friends celebrating an upcoming birth and woke the next morning to the news that there had been not one, but two mass shootings in the twenty-four hours I had been away from the television. Smith’s stories contain visions of the future that echo the horrors of this present; yet she inserts just enough humor to keep me from falling into the abyss. Some of the stories read like free-writes, riffs from the mind of a compelling writer, and others drift into absurdity, like the story of Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando escaping from the carnage of 9/11. And now, I will wait for a collection of poetry from her, because, well, Zadie Smith.”
Again, from Mamie Potter: “I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Olive Kitteridge until I started reading Elizabeth Strout’s new episodic novel. In moments, I had settled into the pages of this book and the familar streets of Crosby where I encountered well-known characters like Jack Kennison and Olive’s son, Christopher, and made some new friends too. Through most of the book Olive remained almost the same, except that in this sequel she seems to have a tiny bent toward self-improvement and making amends with Christopher. Strout has a way of drawing the readers into an intimate relationship with every person she writes about. And it’s obvious that Strout knows Olive Kitteridge as well as she knows anyone and loves her in spite of herself. This is the same fine writing and thoughtful characterization that won Strout the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. Could it happen twice?”
From Sarah Goddin: “Jacqueline Woodson writes sentences so beautiful they make you ache to read them. In Red at the Bone, five people tell their personal stories as one Brooklyn family navigates across 40 years of American history. Each is changed by his or her own choices, by each other and by the affairs of the country. The music of each decade weaves in and out, providing a rhythmical backdrop to a lyrical and compelling story.
