Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction. Shakespeare’s Sisters, by Ramie Targoff (Knopf). In this thoughtful study, Targoff, a literary scholar, highlights four female contemporaries of Shakespeare, women who “weren’t encouraged” and rarely received “even a shred of acclaim,” but managed to write nonetheless. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Limitarianism, by Ingrid Robeyns (Astra). This provocative consideration of extreme wealth accumulation asks how society might improve if the phenomenon were eliminated. Robeyns, a philosopher, uses the term “limitarianism” to describe an economic framework that would impose a cap on how much money any single individual can amass. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Rough Trade, by Katrina Carrasco (MCD x FSG). The protagonist of this transgressive crime thriller, set in Tacoma, Washington, in the late nineteenth century, is Alma Rosales, an ex-detective who has constructed a new life as Jack Camp, a stevedore and an opium smuggler both beloved and feared by his crew. Alma commands this masculine world with “hard-worn knuckles and small-man’s swagger,” but when an old friend and love interest unexpectedly arrives, with a detective on her tail, their meeting sets off a series of dangers that almost cost Alma and her crew their livelihoods. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Leaving, by Roxana Robinson (Norton). This quietly compelling novel of forbidden love focusses on two characters in their sixties, Sarah (divorced) and Warren (married, not entirely happily), who dated as teen-agers and meet again by chance one evening at a performance of “Tosca.” Though its tone is muted, the book captures the aching pull of an all-consuming affair, which draws the characters away from the lives they have painstakingly built. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. What are you reading this week? Reply to let us know. |
No comments:
Post a Comment