Review

Ann Beattie, Follies, stories: In nine scintillating stories and a novella, Beattie—with her keen, morbid wit—looks at baby boomers, aging parents, and the chance encounters that irrevocably alter lives. (Scribner)

Alice Hoffman, The Ice Queen, a novel: In this enthralling tale, a small-town librarian is hit by lightning, and finds her heretofore frozen heart suddenly burning. (Little, Brown)

Frank Bidart, Star Dust, poems: Finishing the sequence that began with his chapbook Music Like Dirt, Bidart illustrates with unforgettable passion that the dream beyond desire is rooted in the drive to create. (FSG)

Maxine Kumin, Jack and Other New Poems: Kumin’s powerful fourteenth collection contains her signature pastoral poems, but also meditations on the body, war, civil liberties, and the environment. (Norton)

Donald Hall, The Best Day the Worst Day, a memoir: This beautiful book’s account of Hall’s life with his late wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, is joyful, intimate, heartbreaking, and generous. (Houghton Mifflin)

Jay Neugeboren, News from the New American Diaspora, stories: The twelve stories in Neugeboren’s illuminating new collection focus on Jews in various states of exile—strangers in strange lands, far from home. (Texas)

Joyce Peseroff, Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon, essays: Peseroff gathers personal and critical essays, letters, poems, and memoirs that piercingly celebrate Kenyon’s spirit and charm. (Graywolf)

Howard Norman, In Fond Remembrance of Me, a memoir: A moving memoir of Norman’s time in Manitoba, where he and an Anglo-Japanese woman—fatally ill, but an ardent spirit—were translating Inuit tales. (North Point)