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Contemporary Fiction Views: A new Angela Flournoy novel is published [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-16
Another week in which up is down, down is up, and hyperbole has lost its meaning in current affairs. So it is good to note that books still exist. Read what you can when you can.
Among the new releases this week is a new novel by Angela Flournoy, whose The Turner House several years ago remains one of the most measured and lovely stories about a family. Instead of a Detroit family, this time she writes about a group of connected friends and others in The Wilderness. Already honored in this year's longlist for the National Book Award, The Wilderness begins with a woman in her 20s, not sure what she wants to do, who is caring for her beloved grandfather. He is mortally ill and determined to go out as he wishes. So they travel to Paris for one more night in a city he loved while in the service, en route to Switzerland.
This is a novel to savor. The characters feel real. They are filled with feelings and thoughts, and command respect and empathy.
Other books scheduled for release this week follow, with links to The Literate Lizard and descriptions by the publishers.
Things Get Funnier by Okwudiri Gabriel Job
A taboo-boy flees his village through an unusual ford to avoid being stoned to death. He amasses a weighty size of wealth and bribes his way back home. And just when mortals seem to have unduly forgiven and forgotten the law he broke, the gods break his head with a concrete on his coronation eve, leaving everyone to marvel at how skillfully gods can handle funny situations their own way.
Beenie at Fourteen by Margaret Buckhanon
Beenie hates her mother. The fights are constant with Doll as the family becomes homeless again after a fire with little brother Jamal staying in the city and Beenie moving to the suburbs with her father Ruben and husband Marcus.
New neighbors, a doctor and professor husband, move in across the street. At the neighborhood potluck, Beenie mentioned seeing a young girl; the doctor insists there is no girl, only their boys away at school.
Under the cover of night, persistent Beenie confronts the girl, Ninah, who reveals she was sold to the doctor. Ninah’ s refusal marriage to an elderly man forced her to flee after her father gave the choice of drowning in the river to save the family from shame or be sold to the highest bidder. When Ninah reveals bruises from the doctor, Beenie decides to help her. Enlisting BFF Tiki, the girls hatch a plan to free Ninah from her abusive enslaver.
Wolf Bells by Leni Zumas
On a bluff above a river rises The House, where elderly and disabled residents live alongside young people who help out in exchange for free rent. The community is led by a former punk singer who never wanted to be responsible for anyone yet now finds herself the caretaker of this precarious collection of lives. It’s not a family, exactly, but it’s got the complicated, sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious, dynamics of kinship.
When two kids—Nola and her little cousin James—show up on The House’s back porch in need of refuge, the whole experiment is thrown into question. All are welcome here, or that was the idea. But the authorities are looking for these children, and The House’s finances are teetering on the edge.
People with No Charisma by Jente Posthuma
An unnamed narrator grows up overshadowed by her unconventional mother, an ex–Jehovah’s Witness and former television star with an inferiority complex. Her father is the head of a psychiatric institution, whose only form of parenting is to offer his daughter the same life advice he dispenses to his patients. Reserved and somewhat aloof, he chooses not to intervene when his wife obsesses about charisma, calorie counting, and turning their daughter into a child prodigy.
Their daughter strives to meet her mother's expectations and bond with her father while secretly worrying she lacks the drive or charisma to do anything significant with her life. When her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she begins to address their generational trauma, forge a new relationship with her father, and discover life on her terms.
Dealing with the Dead by Alain Mabanckou
One day in the Congolese town of Pointe-Noire, Liwa Ekimakingaï wakes to find himself in a cemetery where, three days earlier, he had been buried at the age of twenty-two in a pair of flared purple trousers in which he is now trapped forever. All around him are the other residents of the cemetery, all of whom have their own complex stories of life and death to share.
Bewildered by his predicament and unwilling to relinquish his tender bond with his devoted grandmother, Liwa makes his way back home to see her one last time, against all spectral advice. As he does, disturbing rumors swirl together with Liwa’s jumbled memories of his last night on earth, leading him to try and solve the mystery of his own untimely demise.
Trigger Warning by Jacinda Townsend
Early in life, Ruth survived a series of devastating events: Her little brother died from a childhood illness, her mother died of grief, and then her father was shot by the police right in front of their home. In the years following her father’s murder, Ruth pushes her past underground. She changes her name and moves to Kentucky, marries a man named Myron, and together they raise a kid. It’s been two decades, and she is, by outside measures, living a good life—but why doesn’t it feel good? When her marriage comes to a sudden end, their house burns down in the middle of the night, and she learns that her estranged sister has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Ruth is jolted back into action. She flees again, this time back to her home state of California, with her nonbinary teenager in tow, perhaps ready at last to face her pain and retrieve her former self.
Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin
The characters of Good and Evil find themselves at a point of no return, dazzled by the glare of impending tragedy. Vulnerable and profoundly human, they become trapped in the instant in which the uncanny has lurched into their lives. Some are transformed, some are isolated, others waver between guilt or tenderness. All of them are driven by uncertainty.
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE
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