Welcome, one and all, to perhaps the only story you'll read today that's not awash in Election Day content.
Now, that's not to say these books coming out in November dodge politics — everything is politics, to be clear — just that here, in this safe space, you may enjoy a rare reprieve from punditry, polling or horserace imagery.
So take a deep breath, stretch your poor neck and shoulders, and relish imagining your carefree self a few days or weeks from now. Surely everything will have worked out by then (right?), and you'll be contentedly nosedeep in one of this month's notable books: immersed in stories of star-crossed romance or hard-won redemption, high-stakes struggle or sex-fueled farce.
Let's get to it.
Stations by Louise Kennedy
Talking with All Things Considered in 2022, Kennedy described how it felt, after nearly three decades as a chef, to take up writing in earnest for the first time: "I just felt better somehow, which is kind of weird," observed Kennedy, describing the feeling as "strangely liberating." Now the Northern Irish author is returning with her sophomore effort. And like her debut, Trespasses, Kennedy's new book foregrounds the devastating fallout of an inauspicious young love, which struggles this time around not under the weight of religious difference but the long shadows of their family pasts.
Whale Harbor by Mary Beth Keane
In a review of Ask Again, Yes, which Keane published in 2019, Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan compared the American writer to Ann Patchett: "Both have the magical ability to seem to be telling 'only' a closely-observed domestic tale that transforms into something else deep and, yes, universal." The ability showcased in that "modestly magnificent novel" is on display again in her latest novel, which, with the tale of an Irish father and his many sons, weaves a sweeping narrative that comes to encompass years, seas and continents.
The Flying Death: Poison, Plunder, and the Quest for a Miracle Medicine in the Amazon by Matt O'Hara
O'Hara, a history professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, leaves the territory typically trod by academics — research journals, conference keynotes — with this book that, though rooted in archival study, often reads like a swashbuckling adventure story. At the heart of it all is a poison – so notoriously lethal that it was known as "flying death" – called curare, which was deployed in blowdarts used by some Amazon tribes. As it turns out, the herbal mixture also was thought to have medicinal properties, the pursuit of which began in the 1930s, spanned continents, incited rivalries and opened new avenues in pharmacology — not to mention moneymaking — and indelibly impacted the tribes whose role has been all but forgotten.
Long Wave by Daisy Johnson
Johnson's debut novel, Everything Under, earned her the mantle of youngest Booker Prize finalist ever, at 27 years old, when it appeared on the award's shortlist in 2018. By now, the British writer has outgrown her wunderkind status, with another novel and a short story collection already under her belt. Long Wave fits well with the rest of Johnson's growing catalog — elusive images, spare prose, a foreboding atmosphere redolent of myth and mystery. And at the heart of it all, women whose family bonds they carry like broken glass, all aglitter with love and menace.
Uprising by Tahmima Anam
Make no mistake, Uprising sets a bleak scene: a river island in Bangladesh where women have been tricked, drugged, beaten and trapped in a life of prostitution they didn't choose. They're in thrall to a cruel madam, the men arriving nightly by boat and the inexorably rising waters of a region brutalized by climate change. But leaving the island is all but unthinkable, not only for them but their children fathered by customers. It's largely from the children's perspective that we hear this story, which, while bleak, isn't hopeless, as the arrival of a new girl has just set something in motion.
Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League by Cleo Birdwell
Unquestionably the strangest entry on this month's list, Amazons also happens to be the oldest. This ribald romp of ice hockey and sexy times first hit bookshelves more than four decades before Heated Rivalry ushered in the Era of Hockey Romance that we live in now. Which is notable, sure, but the strangeness is supplied by the name on the spine, Birdwell — she doesn't exist. The writer behind the pseudonym is the revered American novelist, Don DeLillo, who didn't publicly acknowledge having written it until 2020. The book itself developed a certain cult status even as copies became harder and harder to find at all. It wasn't until earlier this year that DeLillo OK'd its republication … with apparent reluctance, still. The sprightly comedy's only preface from him is a business card with his name below a brief statement: "I don't want to talk about it."
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