Современная зарубежная литература
Различные книги в жанре Современная зарубежная литератураThe Warmest December
"McFadden's reissued second novel takes an unflinching look at the corrosive nature of alcoholism . . . This is not a story of easy redemption . . . McFadden writes candidly about the treacherous hold of addiction."–Publishers Weekly"Riveting. . . . So nicely avoids the sentimentality that swirls around the subject matter. I am as impressed by its structural strength as by the searing and expertly imagined scenes."–Toni Morrison, author of Beloved"The sharpness of the prose and power of the story make it hard to stop reading even the most brutal scenes . . . The story feels real perhaps because it’s familiar . . . Or maybe, as Frey points out, the story is too vivid to be read purely as fiction. But in this Precious-style novel, genre is the least of our concerns."–Bust magazine"This is a story that cuts across all race and social strata in its need to be told."–The Dallas Morning NewsThe Warmest December is the incredibly moving story of one Brooklyn family and the alcoholism that determined years of their lives. Narrated by Kenzie Lowe, a young woman reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, as she visits her dying father and finds that choices she once thought beyond her control are very much hers to make.Bernice L. McFadden is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels.
Call Me Home
Call Me Home has an epic scope in the tradition of Louise Erdrich’s The Plague of Doves or Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping and braids the stories of a family in three distinct voices: Amy, who leaves her Texas home at 19 to start a new life with a man she barely knows, and her two children, Jackson and Lydia, who are rocked by their parents’ abusive relationship. When Amy is forced to bargain for the safety of one child over the other, she must retrace the steps in the life she has chosen. Jackson, 18 and made visible by his sexuality, leaves home and eventually finds work on a construction crew in the Idaho mountains, where he begins a potentially ruinous affair with Don, the married foreman of his crew. Lydia, his 12-year-old sister, returns with her mother to Texas, struggling to understand what she perceives to be her mother’s selfishness. At its heart, this is a novel about family, our choices and how we come to live with them, what it means to be queer in the rural West, and the changing idea of home.
Speaking of Murder
After a divorce and an early retirement from newspaper reporting, Hank Fowler’s life is back on track—he has a girlfriend, steady freelance work, a teaching job—that is, until he gets a call from his old pal Chris Beckwith. Beckwith, his college roommate and a former drug-addict turned motivational speaker, is found dead not too long after. Following up on Chris’s sudden death, Hank begins to unravel a series of gruesome murders, all involving motivational speakers.Meanwhile, Rachel, newly divorced and trying to write a book, enrolls in Hank’s writing class. With her help, Hank must track down the killer before the killer tracks him. In this suspenseful and tightly woven narrative, Jonathan Black creates a fast-paced murder mystery for the digital age. An homage to Chicago, Speaking of Murder is a noir whodunnit and a gripping read for lovers of the mystery genre.
October Suite
It is 1950 and October Brown is a twenty-three-year-old first-year teacher thanking her lucky stars that she found a room in the best boardinghouse for Negro women teachers in Wyandotte County, Kansas. October falls in love with an unhappily married handyman, James Wilson, but when she becomes pregnant, James deserts her. Stunned, and believing that James will eventually come back to her, October decides to have the baby. But he doesn’t come back. As her reputation suffers, and with her job in jeopardy, she spends her days in self-deception and denial. Her best friend, Cora, contacts October’s family: her older sister, Vergie, and her aunts Frances and Maude, who raised the sisters after their mother was killed by their father.October goes back to her family in Ohio and gives birth to her son. Numb, she gives the child–David–to Vergie and her husband to raise as their own, then returns to Kansas City to rebuild her life. But something is missing–and, apparently too late, October realizes what she has done.What follows is the heartrending account of October’s efforts to reclaim her dignity, her profession, and her son, efforts that lead her into a bitter struggle with her sister and a confrontation with her parents’ violent past. The Midwest, the flourishing of modern jazz, and the culture of segregation form a compelling historical backdrop for this timeless and universal tale of one person’s battle to understand and master her own desires, and to embrace the responsibilities and promise of mature adulthood. October Suite plays a beautiful, haunting melody, turning everyday life into exceptional art.
The Tiger's Back
What do you do when Fate shows up in your rose bed with three-inch canines and retractable claws Robert–not Bob!–Stevenson wakes up one morning in his Vermont home to find a Bengal tiger sitting in his rose garden. Is the tiger real? Or has the illness that has invaded every other part of Robert's body finally and quite literally gone to his head? Real or imaginary, there is no dismounting once you get on the tiger's back.
The Possibility of Lions
Suddenly driven from their African home by a war in Biafra, the McCall family washes up in a small town in the San Joaquin Valley. The locals assume they must be glad to be back in the "civilized world." But life in America is lonely, desolate and dull, and the children and their  fragile mother hope that one day they will return to the life they left behind. Their father, a hardened oil man, knows better: war has destroyed any home they may have had. As the truth begins to sink in, mother and children gravitate toward another refugee from war-torn Africa and his dream. Anatole imagines an African animal park on the dry plains surrounding their California town and offers hope that these two worlds can be brought together in one place.
The Playgroup
Sarah Holloway is a frustrated painter, sketching on the backs of shopping lists and sharing her studio with a washer and dryer. Abandoned by her mother, she has tried to hide her childhood wounds by healing others through art therapy. During her daughter’s first two years, she has faked her way through motherhood with the help of women in her neighborhood playgroup. She hopes she has gotten the hang of it when she learns she is expecting another child. Then, a routine test reveals a mysterious mass in her unborn baby's abdomen. The sonogram awakens an old fear that her children have inherited her damage—and uncovers a secret that could end her marriage.
Airport
On any given day, in any given city, countless people are arriving and departing…to visit grandma, to close a business deal, to hook up with a lover, to climb a mountain. Intrepid traveler Luis is trapped in flight delay and has many hours to see and hear and sense his fellow passengers. As he grows more invisible, the kinetic world around him takes on a life of its own. Where can all these people be going? Where in the world do we belong? Part of the prestigious Open Door Series, originally designed for adult literacy in Ireland, these books confirm the truth that a story doesn't have to be big to change our world. Airport is part of the US launch of Open Door books written by North American authors.        
Chronicles of the Knobs
In the little-known mountain region of south central Kentucky, there is an area settled 250 years ago by people of Scottish descent. The Knobs are a narrow, crescent-shaped band of conical hills that cover approximately 2,200 square miles. Far from any major highways, it hosts a variety of little-known communities. The landscape forced the farmers to eke out a living on rocky soil with little modern technology from small tobacco crops.The Knob people retained their social customs of the 18th and 19th centuries long into the 20th century. Language, folklore, and general outlook on life were those of another age to the middle and beyond the central part of the 20th century.The settlements of Chapel Gap, Ottenheim, Pine Hall, Broughtontown, Crab Orchard, and the larger city of Stanford were the trade points of the communities, and this is where this story takes place.Nothing was more beloved by the people living in the Knobs than their churches. This is a tale of the Preacher who served them, and two boys who could barely keep all the rules. Chronicles of the Knobs is a fascinating adventure story that includes murder, rape, and moonshining.
LARB Digital Edition: The Year in Fiction
The reviews selected for this month’s Digital Edition, “Foreign Lands, Invisible Cities,” are a sampler of the places we readers of fiction visited this year. From the flood-prone hills of Haiti to the common courtyards of Queens, New York, fiction reminds us that everywhere we go we find humans who love and lust and scheme and hope. Some of the reviews mix personal history with criticism: Lisa Locascio describes her own fascination with Mormonism in terms of Ryan McIlvain's Elders, while Courtney Cook lets her love for Jane Gardam shine in her aptly-titled essay, “Go Read Jane Gardam.” For a dash of digital-age, we include Susanna Luthi’s sharp take on The Circle, Dave Eggers’s dystopian novel that tackles big data collection, surveillance, and transparency.It isn’t the stories alone that transport us: imagery and rhythm, form and tone all work together to take us elsewhere. This is evident in Edwidge Danticat’s “Claire of the Sea Light,” reviewed by Rita Williams. And discussed in both Nathan Deuel’s review of Lucy Corin’s “One Hundred and One Apocalypses” and Katie Ryder’s essay on Renata Adler, whose 1976 “Speedboat” was republished this year by NYRoB.Some travel to see the great landmarks, others to meet and mingle with the natives. Michael LaPointe’s gorgeous review of Javier Marias’s “The Infatuations” takes us deep into the sorrows and desires of Marias’s characters. And we round out the issue with Greg Cwik’s “Donna Tartt's New Anti-Epic,” a review of both the writer and her latest novel, The Goldfinch. No doubt we’ll remember Tartt’s warm and seedy characters long after the twists and turns of the plot are forgotten…and then, as with all dear and distant friends, consider visiting them again.