May is a rich month for fiction, welcoming the latest from Irish Canadian Anakana Schofield, whose Library of Brothel (May 26) may be even bolder and more inventive than her Giller-nominated Martin John, as well as Canadian Alecsandra Kakon’s This is Why I Need You, a character-driven debut about the messy reality of long female friendships through seasons of personal change (May 12). Besides these homegrown picks, here are eight more satisfying spring reads.
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May’s Days of Fiction
8 notable new novels by blossoming talent and returning favourites
1Five Weeks in the Countryby Francine ProseAs she did in Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, the literary critic imagines the fading friendship between cultural figures – here, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Dickens. It’s set in the summer of 1857 at the Dickens household in the London countryside, just as the author’s messy family life is getting messier: he has fallen in love with a young actress and plans to leave his wife and nine children. The disastrous real-life visit – when Anderson came for the weekend and overstayed his welcome by five weeks – is fictionalized and told from both his and Dickens’s points of view, revealing their shared ambitions, celebrity and uncomfortable domestic close quarters that inspired creativity. (May 5)
As she did in Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, the literary critic imagines the fading friendship between cultural figures – here, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Dickens. It’s set in the summer of 1857 at the Dickens household in the London countryside, just as the author’s messy family life is getting messier: he has fallen in love with a young actress and plans to leave his wife and nine children. The disastrous real-life visit – when Anderson came for the weekend and overstayed his welcome by five weeks – is fictionalized and told from both his and Dickens’s points of view, revealing their shared ambitions, celebrity and uncomfortable domestic close quarters that inspired creativity. (May 5)
2Honeyby Imani ThompsonWhen bored graduate student Yrsa accidentally causes a man to die, it awakens something in her – a thirst for retribution for the entitled, sexist and racist micro-aggressions of her daily academic life. Soon, she’s on a killing spree (offering up justifications along the way). Thompson (who penned the novel while working as a bookseller at London’s Daunt Books) writes Yrsa in the snarky, sarcastic tone of a Jason Statham-like vigilante weaned on feminist theory. As one of May’s buzziest debuts, it’s a provocative, deliciously dark novel of ideas – both morally grey and gleefully nasty. (May 5)
When bored graduate student Yrsa accidentally causes a man to die, it awakens something in her – a thirst for retribution for the entitled, sexist and racist micro-aggressions of her daily academic life. Soon, she’s on a killing spree (offering up justifications along the way). Thompson (who penned the novel while working as a bookseller at London’s Daunt Books) writes Yrsa in the snarky, sarcastic tone of a Jason Statham-like vigilante weaned on feminist theory. As one of May’s buzziest debuts, it’s a provocative, deliciously dark novel of ideas – both morally grey and gleefully nasty. (May 5)
3Homeboundby Portia ElanThe hotly contested rights battle for this debut by a San Francisco public librarian (and University of Victoria alum) attests to an emphatic new talent. Like bestseller Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow crossed with Canadian Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, the speculative epic harnesses the cultural power of video games in creativity and human connection. It opens in 1983 Cincinnati with a 19-year-old’s discovery of a floppy disk holding a text-based computer game created by her uncle, who has since died of HIV/AIDS, and the game stealthily connects characters and love across time and in multiple narratives of a future shaped by tech. The scope and complex timelines encompass more than a century: from scientists battling climate change in the late 21st Century to a far-distant dystopia. (May 5)
The hotly contested rights battle for this debut by a San Francisco public librarian (and University of Victoria alum) attests to an emphatic new talent. Like bestseller Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow crossed with Canadian Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, the speculative epic harnesses the cultural power of video games in creativity and human connection. It opens in 1983 Cincinnati with a 19-year-old’s discovery of a floppy disk holding a text-based computer game created by her uncle, who has since died of HIV/AIDS, and the game stealthily connects characters and love across time and in multiple narratives of a future shaped by tech. The scope and complex timelines encompass more than a century: from scientists battling climate change in the late 21st Century to a far-distant dystopia. (May 5)
4The Hillby Harriett Clark In this affecting, bitterly comic novel written by the daughter of Judy Clark (a former member of the Weather Underground), the three generations of radical women each have their own take on revolutionary idealism. During the family’s estrangement, we follow young Suzanna’s coming of age as she’s raised by her Communist grandmother (a Jewish survivor of the Second World War) and through weekly visits to her mother, serving life in prison for a bank robbery turned fatal. Juxtaposing the absurd with emotional depth, it’s a debut that Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides) praises as reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, with themes similar to One Battle After Another. (May 5)
In this affecting, bitterly comic novel written by the daughter of Judy Clark (a former member of the Weather Underground), the three generations of radical women each have their own take on revolutionary idealism. During the family’s estrangement, we follow young Suzanna’s coming of age as she’s raised by her Communist grandmother (a Jewish survivor of the Second World War) and through weekly visits to her mother, serving life in prison for a bank robbery turned fatal. Juxtaposing the absurd with emotional depth, it’s a debut that Jeffrey Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides) praises as reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping, with themes similar to One Battle After Another. (May 5)
5Look What You Made Me Doby John Lanchester When details of their private love language and intimacies begin to appear on Cheating, the most talked-about series on television, middle-aged widow Kate wonders if her late husband Jack betrayed her with the hit show’s much younger writer, Phoebe. This cutting portrayal of the absurdity of modern life (from the bestselling Booker-nominated author of The Wall and Capital) is also a juicy, page-turning revenge story that uses dark humour to probe the friction between generations. (May 19)
When details of their private love language and intimacies begin to appear on Cheating, the most talked-about series on television, middle-aged widow Kate wonders if her late husband Jack betrayed her with the hit show’s much younger writer, Phoebe. This cutting portrayal of the absurdity of modern life (from the bestselling Booker-nominated author of The Wall and Capital) is also a juicy, page-turning revenge story that uses dark humour to probe the friction between generations. (May 19)
6A Perfect Handby Ayelet Waldman The Israeli-American novelist sets her frothy latest at a country manor, skews the class and gender politics of Victorian marriage-plot tropes and delivers a historical romance that, according to Kirkus, reads as, “if Jane Austen and Nora Ephron collaborated.” A lady’s maid falls for a visiting viscount’s valet and conspires to induce their employers to get hitched, so they can be united under one roof. Oh, the upstairs-downstairs of it all! We are amused. Doubly so by the audiobook narrated by British thesp Juliet Stevenson, whose readings of George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell and Jane Austen books are magical. (May 19)
The Israeli-American novelist sets her frothy latest at a country manor, skews the class and gender politics of Victorian marriage-plot tropes and delivers a historical romance that, according to Kirkus, reads as, “if Jane Austen and Nora Ephron collaborated.” A lady’s maid falls for a visiting viscount’s valet and conspires to induce their employers to get hitched, so they can be united under one roof. Oh, the upstairs-downstairs of it all! We are amused. Doubly so by the audiobook narrated by British thesp Juliet Stevenson, whose readings of George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell and Jane Austen books are magical. (May 19)
7Frame 37by Nicholas ShakespeareThe prize-winning novelist and Ian Fleming biographer blends suspenseful political fiction with elegant prose stylings in a new thriller featuring ex-foreign correspondent-turned-investigator John Dyer (last seen in The Sandpit). And from Argentina and Michigan to Northern Canada, it’s a breathlessly globe-trotting tale in the vein of Graham Greene. Looking into the death of a long-ago friend, Dyer uncovers a large-scale conspiracy. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that recent events in the U.S. have come to mimic the plot of this novel as esteemed British television journalist and writer Lindsey Hilsum calls out the book as “terrifyingly resonant at a time when allegations of high-level corruption and sexual violence are shrugged off in Washington.” (May 19)
The prize-winning novelist and Ian Fleming biographer blends suspenseful political fiction with elegant prose stylings in a new thriller featuring ex-foreign correspondent-turned-investigator John Dyer (last seen in The Sandpit). And from Argentina and Michigan to Northern Canada, it’s a breathlessly globe-trotting tale in the vein of Graham Greene. Looking into the death of a long-ago friend, Dyer uncovers a large-scale conspiracy. It hasn’t gone unnoticed that recent events in the U.S. have come to mimic the plot of this novel as esteemed British television journalist and writer Lindsey Hilsum calls out the book as “terrifyingly resonant at a time when allegations of high-level corruption and sexual violence are shrugged off in Washington.” (May 19)
8Things We Never Sayby Elizabeth StroutThe Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of iconic characters Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton leaves her Maine multiverse behind in this standalone novel set in coastal Massachusetts. It explores the interior life of Artie, a 57-year-old high school history teacher who’s heartsick over the election of Republican Donald Trump. As he grows resigned and consumed by political angst, obsessing about his own death, family relationships become strained (including wife Evie, impatient with Artie’s pessimism). The cast may be new, but the emotionally raw and deep voice-driven observations are recognizably Strout. (May 5)
The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of iconic characters Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton leaves her Maine multiverse behind in this standalone novel set in coastal Massachusetts. It explores the interior life of Artie, a 57-year-old high school history teacher who’s heartsick over the election of Republican Donald Trump. As he grows resigned and consumed by political angst, obsessing about his own death, family relationships become strained (including wife Evie, impatient with Artie’s pessimism). The cast may be new, but the emotionally raw and deep voice-driven observations are recognizably Strout. (May 5)
