Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction.  The Grand Affair, by Paul Fisher (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). As one of the premier portraitists of the Belle Époque, John Singer Sargent lived a life befitting his status: garnering praise at the Paris Salon, painting such figures as Isabella Stewart Gardner and Teddy Roosevelt, and socializing with luminaries like Henry James and Oscar Wilde. But, as this sensitive biography makes clear, the painter’s art and social life also took on quietly unconventional forms. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. We Are Not One, by Eric Alterman (Basic). In this fearless account, Alterman, a journalist and a historian, sets out to describe the complex relationship between Israel and the U.S., at a moment when the former, having just elected the most conservative government in its history, is a distinctly red state, while, in the latter, Jews make up one of the bluest constituencies. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Scatterlings, by Rešoketšwe Manenzhe (HarperVia). Set in South Africa in 1927, this powerful novel chronicles the unravelling of a biracial family in the wake of the Immorality Act, which outlawed sexual relations between white and Black people. A winemaker of Dutch and English heritage; his wife, who was born to formerly enslaved parents in Jamaica; and their two daughters are “tumbled into chaos” by the new law. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Flight, by Lynn Steger Strong (Mariner). In this compact, minutely observed novel, the fate of a house in Florida—in which the three adult children of a recently deceased woman were raised—becomes the subject of delicate debate. Taking place in the lead-up to the first Christmas after the mother’s death, the story centers on her gathered offspring, their spouses, and their own children. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. What are you reading this week? Reply to let us know. | 
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