April
Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, by former poet laureate Ada Limón, is a slim but passionate essay on the value of poetry as a means of connecting with others. “The right poem,” she writes, “can make us recommit to the world.”
Rachel Khong’s short story collection, My Dear You, offers speculative takes on everything from the afterlife to Asian American identity and late-stage capitalism. Never didactic, often funny.
The Left and the Lucky, from Oregon-based author-musician Willy Vlautin, is the tale of the unlikely friendship between Eddie, a recently divorced housepainter, and his eight-year-old neighbor, Russell, who is seeking refuge from a criminally abusive older brother.
In Lidie: The Further Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton, Carmel Valley–based Pulitzer winner Jane Smiley revisits the unsinkable Ms. Newton. This time, she heads overseas with her feisty niece, a budding actor.
Questions 27 & 28, from Karen Tei Yamashita, mixes fact and fiction. She explores the dark history of the loyalty questionnaires Japanese Americans were required to fill out to be considered for release from World War II detention camps.
This roundup appears in Issue 35 of Alta Journal.
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And The Original, by author-playwright Priya Parmar, provides a fictional reimagining of Katharine Hepburn’s odyssey from Connecticut to Hollywood, exploring the gap between her public persona and private life.
May
In Nerve Damage, Los Angeles–based author Annakeara Stinson’s exuberantly profane debut, intrepid hero Clarice turns the tables on the hipster ex-boyfriend who she suspects is once again stalking her. All is not necessarily as it seems, to put it mildly, but mess with Clarice at your peril.
The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos, from Kendra Langford Shaw, is as wild as its title. When a centuries-old piano is accidentally dredged up in the Arctic, the by-product of a time when homesteaders were required to bring such instruments with them to prove eligibility in “mannerly society,” it sets off a feeding frenzy: piano hunting. Buckle up.
Berkeley’s own Ayelet Waldman explores new vistas with A Perfect Hand. It’s the tale of a lady’s maid at a country house in 19th-century England who schemes to spend more time with the visiting servant she’s fallen in love with by secretly arranging a romance between their respective employers. A long way from Telegraph Avenue, baby.
June
Lisa See’s Daughters of the Sun and Moon portrays the trials of three Chinese women—Dove, Petal, and Moon—in post–Civil War Los Angeles who survive anti-Asian racism, including the Night of Horrors, a mob attack on a Chinese neighborhood that left at least 17 immigrants dead. Together, the women provide mutual aid as they navigate the treacherous hills of a Gold Mountain that does not glitter.
Josh Weil’s historical novel, What Came West, explores the saga of Silas Hall, an early white settler in the Sierra Nevada, whose efforts to make peace with the area’s Indigenous people are unutterably changed by the gold rush and the influx of thousands of new miners. Crime, and punishment, ensue.
Villa Coco, the latest from Andrew Sean Greer, is the tale of a youth who lands a job in Italy as the all-purpose assistant to Coco, a wealthy local widow with an eclectic art collection and an overwhelming social schedule. The novel is handled with Greer’s customary wit and emotional depth.
In Red Sheet, noir master James Ellroy interweaves an LAPD anti-Communist probe (fictionally) dictated by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis—and a Halloween murder with possible links
to Nixon.
City on the Edge: Technology, Politics, and the Fight for the Soul of San Francisco, from Jonathan Weber, explores the deepening divide between the utopian promises of the internet and a homelessness crisis that won’t quit.
Finally, Lauren Hough’s Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America channels John Steinbeck as she travels the highways and byways of this country with her trusty dog, Woody (named for Guthrie), who’s featured on the cover, sporting shades. Woody, meet Charley.•
Editor’s Pick
Contrapposto
By Dave Eggers
Elementary schooler Cricket Dib, whose home life is rough because of his mother’s abusive boyfriend, becomes friends with precocious Olympia Argyros when she asks him to deface a jungle gym. When she praises his work, he is filled with love. Even as Cricket comes to believe she is his soulmate, Olympia is always looking elsewhere for romance. Told from Cricket’s perspective, Eggers’s novel, which includes drawings, follows their friendship for 65 years, all over the globe—from figure drawing in art school to working together to old age, through the relationship’s expansions and contractions. Contrapposto is by turns wistful and humorous, a wide-angle, wholly absorbing study of deep friendship and making meaning through art. —Anita Felicell
Paul Wilner is a longtime journalist, poet, and critic who lives in Monterey County. He is the former editor of the San Francisco Examiner Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle Style section and managing editor of the Hollywood Reporter. His work has been published in the Paris Review, New York Times, ZYZZYVA magazine, Barnes and Noble Review, Los Angeles Times and many other publications.
