Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fiction and nonfiction, to consider for your May reading list.
Whether it's first love, obsessive love, or familial love, May's new releases have a lot to say about what makes the world go round. However, if you're not willing to choose a love story, there's also a memoir based on American history, an excellent beach read set on Cape Cod, and the autobiography of an eponymous “feminist punk.” Happy reading!
FICTION
Shanghainese: a novel
By Julio Min
Spiegel and Grau: 288 pages, $28
(May 7)
Rewinding from an imaginary 2040 to 2014, this novel shows a Chinese family facing the pressures and pleasures of the 21st century on three continents. The Yangs (father Leo, mother Eko, and eldest daughters Yumi and Yoko) will interact with the “baby” of the family, Kiko; a long-suffering babysitter, or aye; and a taxi driver, in chapters that return to a denouement as sophisticated and moving as Leo, “a real Shanghai man.”
Blue Ruin: a novel
By Hari Kunzru
Knopf: 272 pages, $28
(May 16)
Kunzru's novel ends a trilogy that speaks to the current problems of racism, right-wing politics and inequality. Struggling artist Jay is delivering groceries during the global pandemic. Not feeling well, he seeks refuge with an ex-girlfriend. Alice, whose husband was Jay's enemy in art school, hides Jay in a barn. But isolation of all kinds, including economic one, increases the dramatic stakes, and the three “friends” must face their decisions.
Housemates: a novel
By Emma Copley Eisenberg
Hogarth: 352 pages, $29
(May 28)
Eisenberg's fictional debut feels like swimming in a heated pool after a long trip. Philadelphia housemates Bernie and Leah embark on a road trip west to reclaim some photographic materials from Bernie's former academic mentor. Along the way, the women meet all kinds of characters and discuss all kinds of topics, and eventually (some readers will say inevitably) fall in love with each other. They will never bore each other or the readers.
Exhibition: A novel
By RO Kwon
Riverhead Books: 224 pages, $28
(May 28)
Kwon, who tackled obsessive faith in his debut, “The Incendiaries,” and obsessive intimacy in the anthology “Kink,” co-edited with Garth Greenwell, here explores the landscape of obsessive desire between married woman Jin Han and ballet star Lidija Jung. The author elegantly uses Jin's belief that she is cursed by a restless spirit as a means of expressing the torment Jin feels at being torn between security and ecstasy.
The winner: a novel
By Teddy Wayne
Harper: 320 pages, $30
(May 28)
The author sees this novel as a departure from his usual work. But readers will see that even if “The Winner” has a more propulsive plot, it relates to Wayne's novels “Kapitoil” and “The Great Man Theory” in that it also focuses on socioeconomics. Conor O'Toole gets a job as a tennis pro in a wealthy community near Cape Cod and thinks he's living a dream, juggling two women, until he hits a metaphorical foul shot.
NON-FICTION
First love: essays on friendship
By Lilly Dancyger
Press dial: 224 pages, $28
(May 7)
Dancyger, who has written about women and anger (“Burn It Down”) and her parents’ addiction (“Negative Space”), turns to the friendships that have sustained her. From childhood to adolescence and into adulthood, the author's intense bonds with other women, based on commonalities as varied as kinship, substance abuse or care, place these essays that integrate personal experiences and cultural allusions alongside the work of Leslie Jamison.
Throne of Grace: A Mountain Man, an Epic Adventure, and the Bloody Conquest of the American West
By Bob Drury and Tom Clavin
St. Martin's Press: 368 pages, $30
(May 7)
Jedediah Smith might be one of the most important and most overlooked 19th century explorers in our nation's history. Authors Clavin and Drury, who last wrote “Blood and Treasure,” about Daniel Boone, are correcting that oversight. Here they use Smith's own journals, among other resources, to capture the adventures of a man who was the first white settler to see much of the territory between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, as well as parts of Mexico.
The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning
By AJ Jacobs
Crown: 304 pages, $30
(May 7)
The father of the specialist memoir (“The Know-It-All”), Jacobs examines those we call our Founding Fathers in an effort in which the indefatigable author wears a tricorn hat, battles redcoat reenactors, and delivers missives written with a pen to strangers. He challenges assumptions about some truths we have long considered self-evident. Oh, he waits, that's the Declaration of Independence. It's time to read this book!
Love is a burning thing: a memoir
By Nina St. Pierre
Dutton: 320 pages, $28
(May 7)
His mother set herself on fire once and then discovered transcendental meditation. While she pursued enlightenment, she moved the author and her brother throughout California, until causing another fire that would result in tragedy. As St. Pierre confronts her parents' mental illness, she also investigates how and why people who lose their place in society often resort to extremes of spirituality, as well as how deep compassion can help them find peace. true.
Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk
By Kathleen Hanna
Ecco: 336 pages, $30
(may 14)
Hanna, former leader of Bikini Kill and co-founder of the Riot Grrrl movement, begins with her difficult childhood and traces its influences on her future actions such as “Girls to the Front” and lyrics about gender violence. She survived Lyme disease, married Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys and became a mother. Along the way, her views have changed, but her honest, funny, raw voice has not.
