Summer must be over -- publishers are hawking autumn books already. Here are three that deserve a second look.
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Anika Fajardo
Gallery Books - September 16
[from the publisher]
In the span of a year, Dolores Moore has become a thirty-five-year-old orphan. After the funeral of the last living member of her family, Dorrie has never felt more lost and alone. That is, except for a Greek chorus of deceased relatives whose voices follow her around giving unsolicited advice and opinions. And they’re only amplifying Dorrie’s doubts about keeping the deathbed promise she made to return to her birthplace in Colombia.
Fresh off a breakup with her long-term boyfriend, laid off from her job as a cartographer, and facing a daunting inheritance of her mothers’ aging Minneapolis Victorian and two orange tabbies, how can she possibly leave the country now? But when an old flame offers to housesit, the chorus agrees that there’s no room for excuses. Armed with only a scrap of a hand drawn map, Dorrie sets off to find out where—and who—she came from.
In the span of a year, Dolores Moore has become a thirty-five-year-old orphan. After the funeral of the last living member of her family, Dorrie has never felt more lost and alone. That is, except for a Greek chorus of deceased relatives whose voices follow her around giving unsolicited advice and opinions. And they’re only amplifying Dorrie’s doubts about keeping the deathbed promise she made to return to her birthplace in Colombia.
Fresh off a breakup with her long-term boyfriend, laid off from her job as a cartographer, and facing a daunting inheritance of her mothers’ aging Minneapolis Victorian and two orange tabbies, how can she possibly leave the country now? But when an old flame offers to housesit, the chorus agrees that there’s no room for excuses. Armed with only a scrap of a hand drawn map, Dorrie sets off to find out where—and who—she came from.
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Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell
Hogarth - September 30
Hogarth - September 30
[from the publisher]
Mariana Enriquez—called by The New York Times a “sorceress of horror”—has been fascinated by the haunting beauty of cemeteries since she was a teenager. She has visited them frequently, a goth flaneur taking notes on her aesthetic obsession as she walks among the headstones, “where dying seems much more interesting than being alive.”
But when the body of a friend’s mother who was disappeared during Argentina’s military dictatorship was found in a common grave, Enriquez began to examine more deeply the complex meanings of cemeteries and where our bodies come to rest.
In this rich book of essays—“excursions through death,” she calls them—Enriquez travels through North and South America, Europe and Australia, visiting Paris’s catacombs, Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery, New Orleans’s aboveground mausoleums, Buenos Aires’s opulent Recoleta, and more. Enriquez investigates each cemetery’s history and architecture, its saints and ghosts, its caretakers and visitors, and, of course, its dead.
Weaving personal stories with reportage, interviews, myths, hauntology, and more, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is memoir channeled through Enriquez’s passion for cemeteries, revealing as much about her own life and unique sensibility as the graveyards and tombstones she tours. Fascinating, spooky, and unlike anything else, Enriquez’s first work of nonfiction, translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, is as original and memorable as the stories and novels for which she’s become so beloved and admired.
Mariana Enriquez—called by The New York Times a “sorceress of horror”—has been fascinated by the haunting beauty of cemeteries since she was a teenager. She has visited them frequently, a goth flaneur taking notes on her aesthetic obsession as she walks among the headstones, “where dying seems much more interesting than being alive.”
But when the body of a friend’s mother who was disappeared during Argentina’s military dictatorship was found in a common grave, Enriquez began to examine more deeply the complex meanings of cemeteries and where our bodies come to rest.
In this rich book of essays—“excursions through death,” she calls them—Enriquez travels through North and South America, Europe and Australia, visiting Paris’s catacombs, Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery, New Orleans’s aboveground mausoleums, Buenos Aires’s opulent Recoleta, and more. Enriquez investigates each cemetery’s history and architecture, its saints and ghosts, its caretakers and visitors, and, of course, its dead.
Weaving personal stories with reportage, interviews, myths, hauntology, and more, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is memoir channeled through Enriquez’s passion for cemeteries, revealing as much about her own life and unique sensibility as the graveyards and tombstones she tours. Fascinating, spooky, and unlike anything else, Enriquez’s first work of nonfiction, translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, is as original and memorable as the stories and novels for which she’s become so beloved and admired.
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This is the Only Kingdom
Jaquira Díaz
Algonquin Books - October 21
[from the publisher]
When Maricarmen meets Rey el Cantante, beloved small-time Robin Hood and local musician on the rise, she begins to envision a life beyond the tight-knit community of el Caserío, Puerto Rico – beyond cleaning houses, beyond waiting tables, beyond the constant tug of war between the street hustlers and los camarones. But breaking free proves more difficult than she imagined, and she soon finds herself struggling to make a home for herself, for Rey, his young brother Tito, and eventually, their daughter Nena. Until one fateful day changes everything.
Fifteen years later, Maricarmen and Nena find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation as the community that once rallied to support Rey turns against them. Now Nena, a teenager haunted by loss and betrayal and exploring her sexual identity, must learn to fight for herself and her family in a world not always welcoming. For lovers of the Neapolitan novels, This is the Only Kingdom is an immersive and moving portrait of a family – and a community – torn apart by generational grief, and a powerful love letter to mothers, daughters, and the barrios that make them.
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