What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a memoir by Haruki Murakami (Knopf): This plain-speaking, suggestive memoir by the prolific and internationally acclaimed novelist Murakami is part runner’s diary, part writer’s handbook, part spiritual meditation. "Writing honestly about running and writing honestly about myself are nearly the same thing," he states. His example…
"We should contribute to the surprise of creation," a country pastor says during a sermon in one of Charles Baxter's stories, "by exercising charity." "Surprise" and "charity" — these two words suggest both the form and the theme of Charles Baxter's brilliant new collection, A Relative Stranger. The surprising always happens in these wonderful stories…
Robert Boswell, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards, stories: These stories display Boswell’s extraordinary range, from the end of two women’s marriages, to a young man’s obsession with his fortune, to another man’s self-discovery on a mountaintop. (Graywolf)
Irish Elegies, personal essays by Chris Arthur (Palgrave-Macmillan): Irish Elegies is Chris Arthur’s fourth book of new essays in a series that includes Irish Nocturnes (1999), Irish Willow (2002), and Irish Haiku (2005), all published by the Davies Group, all fondly recommended by this reviewer. Irish Elegies departs from the trilogy by joining the ranks…
Without, a doubt, Absent Without Leave and Other Stories, Jessica Treadway's first book, is one of the most powerful debuts by an American writer in years. The ten stories in the collection are emotionally raw, unflinching in their honesty and generous in their depth. In another writer's hands, the situations presented here — often about…
Jorie Graham, Sea Change, poems: Bringing readers to the threshold at which civilization becomes unsustainable, Graham questions how the human spirit might persist in a world where the future is no longer assured. (Ecco)
leadbelly, poems by Tyehimba Jess (Verse): Tyehimba Jess, like the subject of his National Poetry Series–winning debut, coaxes an astonishingly rich world from the wood and steel scraps of the life he finds before him. He chronicles the story of Leadbelly—the killer, the lover, the victim, the son, the greatest bluesman of his time—and…
Water: Nine Stories, stories by Alyce Miller (Sarabande): By its title, Miller’s collection offers a fitting symbol for the multiple forms of desire that take shape within her characters. Filled with beautiful phrasings and descriptions of longing, the book sometimes shows desire’s fluidity as a result of age; other times, as in the story "Ice,"…
Antonya Nelson, Nothing Right, stories: Set in the American southwest, the stories of Nothing Right explore domesticity with characters who try to keep themselves intact while their personal lives explode around them. (Bloomsbury)
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