Pamela Dorman:

For readers who enjoyed the darkness of Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen, or Joyce Carol Oates’s Jack of Spades.

As he did in his Premio Strega–winning debut, The Solitude of Prime Numbers, Giordano deftly mines the vast, mysterious territory of childhood, illuminating how our first relationships and loves inform the adults we become. A big, delicious mash-up of a novel blending the vividly drawn friendships of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan stories with the urgency of Richard Powers’s acts of ecoterrorism in The Overstory. [See Prepub Alert, 1/15/20.]

Not only a charming story of strangers connecting in beguiling ways, this debut fiction by memoirist (The Sober Diaries) and blogger Pooley is a thoughtful meditation on authenticity in the age of self-promotion. Recommended for readers looking for a pick-me-up.

Stradal’s follow up to Kitchens of the Great Midwest wins you over with its good-heartedness, despite its flirtation with cloying folksiness at times. For regional collections and where beer is popular. [See Prepub Alert, 1/7/19.]