Secret Father by James Carroll
James Carroll, Secret Father, a novel: Returning to fiction, Carroll presents the spellbinding story of a man and a woman in Berlin in 1961, trying to free their children from the East German Stasi. (Houghton Mifflin)
Review
Broken Ground by Kai Maristed
Margot Livesey recommends Broken Ground, a novel by Kai Maristed: “Maristed brilliantly depicts a woman’s search for her daughter and her past in Germany before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The novel moves gracefully between past and present, personal and political, and is intelligent, absorbing, and suspenseful at every level.” (Shoemaker &…
I Sailed with Magellan by Stuart Dybek
Stuart Dybek, I Sailed with Magellan, a novel in stories: In eleven achingly beautiful tales, Dybek captures the sweet rhythm and humor of growing up on Chicago’s South Side through Perry Katzek, a young Polish American. (FSG)
Search Party by William Matthews
Gerald Stern recommends Search Party, collected poems of William Matthews: “For my money, the new selected of Bill Matthews is a bit too thin considering his extraordinary vision and voice, but it is a magnificent book that the editors Sebastian Matthews and Stanley Plumly have brought out. I think Matthews will take his place as…
Eyeshot by Heather McHugh
Heather McHugh, Eyeshot, poems: With her usual bravura, McHugh gives us a brooding, visionary work that meditates on the big questions—love and death—while focusing on the senses as she tries to process the surrounding world. (Wesleyan)
Breakfast Served Any Time All Day by Donald Hall
Donald Hall, Breakfast Served Any Time All Day, essays: Hall collects forty years of writings on poetry into a luminous and essential volume about the sensuality of language, its pleasures and sounds. (Michigan)
One Kind of Faith by Gary Soto
Gary Soto, One Kind of Faith, poems: Soto once again displays dazzling range in his twenty-sixth book, exploring the wonders of the everyday in poems about Berkeley and Fresno, along with a nervy section of “film treatments for David Lynch.” (Chronicle)
The Wedding Dress by Fanny Howe
Fanny Howe, The Wedding Dress, essays: In these richly evocative and provocative pieces, Howe meditates on imagination, motherhood, art-making, and bewilderment, challenging conventional systems of belief. (California)
Gone by Fanny Howe
Fanny Howe, Gone, poems: With verve and clarity, Howe illuminates the interstices between the known and unknown worlds with motifs of advance and recovery, doubt and conviction, in her extraordinary new book. (California)