And so, a new year begins. Among the books we’re most excited about due out this month are a wide range of works, from challenging short fiction to heart-rending memoir; from a novel that explores the convergence of genres to a novel that explores a politically charged moment in recent history. Here are a few of the works due out this month that have caught our attention.
Due out next month from Outpost19, the new anthology A Book of Uncommon Prayer finds dozens of writers revisiting the invocation. The book was edited by Matthew Vollmer, and features contributions from the likes of Leslie Jamison, Gabriel Blackwell, Scott Cheshire, Courtney Maum, Benjamin Samuel, Robert Lopez, and Catherine Lacey. And there’s a trailer for it, featuring music by Alicia Jo Rabins, which you can watch below.
In this afternoon’s reading: new fiction from Robert Lopez, an interview with Sarah Gerard, notes on Canadian whisky, regarding Matisse late at night, and more.
Selections from the correspondence between Leonard Bernstein and Martha Gellhorn; Luc Sante remembers Lou Reed; new Robert Lopez fiction; and more.
Reviewed by Tobias Carroll Robert Lopez Asunder Dzanc Books; 165 p. 2009 saw the release of Robert Lopez’s second novel, Kamby Bolongo Mean River, a meticulously crafted work that, over the course of its pages, brilliantly created contrasting senses of space. Its narrator begins the novel in a very particular kind of isolation, stylized and haunting; from there, the canvas of the novel expands via a series of memories. Suddenly, the room in which the narrator is confined gives way […]