20 ON PAGE ON CANNADAY CHAPMAN ONTINUED ucinda Rosenfeld Rosenfeld ucinda C L wo books about the the about books wo T harles Blow, Elizabeth Kolbert, Kolbert, Elizabeth Blow, harles C THE FORCE FORCE THE HY THE LONG FACE? FACE? LONG THE HY N LUS LUS atricia Lockwood and audiobooks and Lockwood atricia ulture of policing in America in policing of ulture ooks at self-loathing literary heroines literary self-loathing at ooks O c W l P P It’s a propulsive beginning, though one that a propulsive It’s they get what they want, the villagers should they get what they want, men as prisoners. hold Pexton’s familiar roam about to feels at first as though it’s of a casually sociopathic corpo- — a tale ground it steamrolls. and the people whose lives ration help I couldn’t the end of the first chapter, By con- one of two toward for a long march bracing or victory, inevitable clusions: the corporation’s W BEAUTIFUL WE WERE WE BEAUTIFUL W O y Imbolo Mbue H B $28. House. Random 364 pp. drilling sites have left the fieldsdrilling fallow and the sites have want of Kosawa poisoned. Thewater residents to what gone and the land restored the company ago. up, decades showed Pexton before it was do- they’re say representatives The company’s their audience though they can, ing everything has the support of the a lie — Pexton it’s knows dictator village head as well as the country’s will be done. But Nothing and, with it, impunity. the village just as the meeting concludes, Konga, Until got another idea: in. He’s madman, bursts laustrophobia hangs over the hangs over laustrophobia c

14, 2021 14,

OF MORAL OF MARCH

KIND You Reap What You Sow What You Reap You A opening pages of Imbolo Mbue’s sweeping and sweeping Mbue’s opening pages of Imbolo Beauti- “How second novel, quietly devastating October of 1980, in the fictional In Were.” ful We of an representatives villageAfrican of Kosawa, come have called Pexton oil company American dy- are whose children to meet with the locals, oil pipelines and the company’s ing. Nearby, By Omar El-Akkad *3EB1* 2 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 Book Review MARCH 14, 2021 A secret network of women. A Forgotten Fiction 26 The Shortlist Nonfiction True Crime Reviewed by Kate Tuttle 1 HOW BEAUTIFUL WE 11 TERROR TO THE WICKED History of WERE America’s First Trial by By Imbolo Mbue Jury That Ended a War and Reviewed by Omar Helped to Form a Nation Children’s Books Revenge. El-Akkad By Tobey Pearl Reviewed by Francis J. 22 AMBER & CLAY 8 BROTHER, SISTER, Bremer By Laura Amy Schlitz MOTHER, EXPLORER Illustrated by Julia Iredale By Jamie Figueroa 12 UNDER A WHITE SKY Reviewed by Natalie Reviewed by Esmeralda The Nature of the Future Haynes Santiago By Elizabeth Kolbert Reviewed by Helen 22 OH MY GODS! 9 Listen Up Macdonald By Stephanie Cooke and Audiobooks Insha Fitzpatrick Reviewed by Sebastian 13 TANGLED UP IN BLUE Illustrated by Modak Policing the American City Juliana Moon By Rosa Brooks Reviewed by George 10 NO ONE IS TALKING O’Connor ABOUT THIS WE OWN THIS CITY By Patricia Lockwood A True Story of Crime, Reviewed by Merve Emre Cops, and Corruption By Justin Fenton Features Reviewed by Maurice 15 THE BONE FIRE 7 By the Book Chammah By Gyorgy Dragoman Jo Ann Beard Reviewed by Rebecca 14 FOUR LOST CITIES Makkai 19 Essay A Secret History of the Heroines of Self-Hate Urban Age 16 KHALIL By Lucinda Rosenfeld By Annalee Newitz By Yasmina Khadra Reviewed by Russell Reviewed by Helon Habila Shorto 27 Graphic Review “Normal People,” by 21 WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS Sally Rooney 16 THE DEVIL YOU KNOW By Naima Coster By Walter Scott A Black Power Manifesto Reviewed by Lauren By Charles M. Blow Francis-Sharma Reviewed by Tanisha C. Ford 21 SEX WITH STRANGERS Etc. Stories 17 THE GOOD GIRLS 4 New & Noteworthy By Michael Lowenthal “Abold, edgy, An Ordinary Killing Reviewed by Brandon 6 Letters By Sonia Faleiro Taylor Reviewed by Nina 23 Best-Seller Lists accomplished debut!” Burleigh 23 Editors’ Choice 24 Inside the List —Kate Quinn, 18 ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, JUNK 24 Paperback Row author of The Alice Network A History of Food, From Sustainable to Suicidal By Mark Bittman Reviewed by Ted Genoways

Available now

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 3 New & Noteworthy READTHEBOOK I HAD A MISCARRIAGE: A MEMOIR, A MOVEMENT, by Jessica Zucker. (Feminist Press, paper, THAT ' SSPARKINGAMOVEMENT $18.95.) The author, a psychologist specializ- ing in maternal mental health, struggled after her own pregnancy ended in miscarriage; this memoir seeks to destigmatize the issue. Now in Paperback

SHAKING THE GATES OF HELL: A SEARCH FOR FAM- ILY AND TRUTH IN THE WAKE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS REVOLUTION, by John Archibald. (Knopf, $28.) In this self-critical exposé of white privilege, a Birmingham News columnist born at the height of the civil rights movement examines his roots in a line of Methodist preachers.

TAKING A LONG LOOK: ESSAYS ON CULTURE, LIT- ERATURE, AND FEMINISM IN OUR TIME, by Vivian Gornick. (Verso, $26.95.) Spanning five dec- ades from the 1970s on, this collection of previ- ously published work includes incisive as- sessments of Lore Segal, Mary McCarthy and James Salter, among others.

THE PORNIFICATION OF AMERICA: HOW RAUNCH CULTURE IS RUINING OUR SOCIETY, by Bernadette Barton. (NYU, $24.95.) Zippy and well illustrated, this book persuasively argues that “equating hypersexualization with sex positivity is a form of Orwellian doublespeak.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES COOKING NO-RECIPE RECI- PES, by Sam Sifton. (Ten Speed, paper, $28.) The first cookbook from The Times’s popular Cooking app is less a recipe collection than a spur to improvisation, with lavish photos. “[A] Melvillian showdown.” — THENEWYORKTIMESBOOKREVIEW “Breathtakingly exciting.” WHAT WE’RE READING —IANFRAZIER , AUTHOROF TRAVELSINSIBERIA Growing up watching Bollywood movies might have primed me for romantic stories about people who look and sound like me. But that’s “Environmental writing as clear as the not entirely true, especially when fairness, caste, class and even body type dictate so much world’s most pristine waters .” of what is depicted. In the literary world, I find —THEWALLSTREETJOURNAL myself instead turning to the Y.A. magic spun by Sandhya Menon. In THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT SWEETIE, we have at the center Sweetie: a fat Indian girl who isn’t apologetic about who she is or how she looks, despite her mother’s efforts to convince her of the contrary. She goes against her family’s wishes without inhibitions, eventually finding love with Ashish. Together, EDITORS' PICK: The New York Times Book Review, they must figure out how to weigh family expectations against the Outside, The National Book Review, Forbes, and Amazon bliss of young love. Menon’s female characters always feel at once relatable and realistic, making it super easy to root for them. With lighthearted banter and a fierce brown girl at the helm, this book remains one of my top favorites to revisit in these difficult times.

—PRIYA ARORA, SOCIAL EDITOR

4 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 5 50 Years in the OR Letters By Ron Whitchurch labels “one of the supreme Ron Whitchurch wrote ironies of American history.” this wildly entertaining Not at all. Defending a state’s November 2020 popular vote for book to offer a firsthand president is a far cry from what look at what happens Calhoun understood as “states’ rights.” South Carolina — in after patients are which Calhoun was a leading political figure for four decades anesthetized and what — did not even allow its citizens challenges the staff face to vote for president until after the Civil War, long after he died. in keeping them healthy So my Republican legislators and safe. who sought to nullify Pennsylva- nia’s popular vote — some even proposed that the Legislature 50 Years in the OR will give itself choose electors — are Cal- readers an intimate sense of houn’s heirs, not those of us demanding that “every vote what it’s like to be the only counts.” And just as the idea of person in the OR who knows Black people voting would have horrified the racist Calhoun, his the heartbeat-to-heartbeat From the cover of “Harpo Speaks!” heirs today objected above all to status of a surgical patient Philadelphia’s large African- American vote. at any given moment. The Toast of Moscow He was a fascinating, multital- ented man who led an extraordi- ROBERT SHAFFER Available on Amazon.com TO THE EDITOR: nary life. MECHANICSBURG, PA. I was pleased to see Jason Zino- 50yearsintheor.com RICHARD GALLAGHER Who Says man acknowledge “Harpo FISHKILL, N.Y. Speaks!,” by Harpo Marx, as the TO THE EDITOR: gold standard of the comedian Making History In Ibram X. Kendi’s By the Book memoir (Feb. 21). As a teenager interview (Feb. 28), one of the in the early ’60s, I got my hands TO THE EDITOR: questions asks: “How do you on the book and found it to be Discussing Robert Elder’s biog- advise readers to approach thoroughly entertaining. raphy of John C. Calhoun (Feb. books like ‘The Adventures of Particularly enjoyable is the 28), Andrew Delbanco writes Huckleberry Finn,’ books with chapter about Harpo’s trip to that in the wake of the Jan. 6 conflicted or hard-to-parse racial Russia in the fall of 1933. He insurrection, a study of the “ideo- attitudes?” logical father of the Confederacy ended up spending eight weeks There is nothing conflicted or may feel as welcome as an ex- there and put on shows that hard to parse about it. The novel humed corpse.” earned him standing ovations. is an unquestionable indictment But when it comes to official Posters that announced his ap- of racism as well as one of the approbation, Calhoun isn’t even pearances, written in Cyrillic, greatest studies of human nature interred. Go back and watch that spelled his name XAPIIO ever published. man waving the Confederate flag MAPKC. Harpo had no idea how Have we strayed so far that we around the Capitol that day, and to pronounce it, so he called no longer recognize a true classic behind him you’ll see, still occu- himself “Exapno Mapcase, the of American literature? What a pying an honored spot on the Toast of Moscow.” field day Mark Twain would have His trip to Russia ended in wall, a portrait of Calhoun. Was had with that. intrigue. On his last day in Mos- that a smile on his face I de- CORY FRANKLIN cow he met with the U.S. ambas- tected as he looked on? Download the WILMETTE, ILL. New York Times sador, who asked him if he would DAVID MARGOLICK be willing to smuggle some sen- NEW YORK CORRECTION Crossword app. sitive dispatches to America. They were taped to his leg and ♦ Because of an editing error, a nytimes.com/playnow concealed by a sock, and after a review on Feb. 14 about “Let Me nerve-racking ocean voyage he TO THE EDITOR: Tell You What I Mean,” by Joan successfully turned them over to Delbanco concludes his other- Didion, misstated the criminal Secret Service agents in New wise astute portrait of John offenses that Martha Stewart York. Calhoun, that “zealous defender was convicted of in 2004. Though As a performer, Harpo never of slavery,” by characterizing she was investigated for insider spoke a word while in character, those who upheld last year’s vote trading, Stewart was found guilty but as a member of the Algon- counts in states challenged by of other related charges. She was quin Round Table he hobnobbed Donald Trump and his support- not “sentenced to prison for with the likes of George S. Kauf- ers as having adopted Calhoun’s insider trading.” man, Robert Benchley and Doro- states’ rights philosophy — a thy Parker. juxtaposition that Delbanco [email protected]

6 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 By the Book

examined life.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently? Every page of Merlin Sheldrake’s “Entan- gled Life” had something moving and new for me. But my favorite thing was, and I’m paraphrasing, that some fungi may have evolved their psychotropic properties as a way of encouraging and assisting human enlightenment.

Which genres do you especially enjoy Independent publishers and reading? And which do you avoid? authors of not-so-independent I love the essay. My first moment of means receive special wanting to be a nonfiction writer was discounted advertising rates stumbling across an essay by Loren every Sunday in The New York Eiseley called “The Bird and the Ma- Times Book Review. chine.” I thought it was utterly thrilling, what Eiseley did in a few pages — and it For more information, was about humans and birds and science please contact Mark Hiler and the rights of animals to be free of at (212) 556-8452. human interference. So, pretty much a perfect storm for Jo Ann. Reach an influential audience What book might people be surprised to for less. find on your shelves? I have a lot of books about dog training for someone whose dogs aren’t that well NDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2008 trained.

What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most? I read constantly, voraciously, as though I Jo Ann Beard were actively living those lives instead of my own. It was delirious fun, those Satur- The essayist and story writer, whose new collection is ‘Festival Days,’ days my mother would come home from rarely abandons a book she’s reading: ‘Sometimes what seems like a a yard sale with a box of random books for us to consume. In those boxes I even- slog can bring you to a place you wouldn’t expect.’ tually found all of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Mary O’Hara, Jack London, Albert Payson Terhune. Leading to a lifelong What books are on your night stand? What’s your favorite book no one else has love of dogs and horses and rowdy boys. heard of? “Dear Miss Metropolitan,” Carolyn Fer- Disappointing, overrated, just not good: rell’s upcoming novel; “Homeland Ele- “Junkyard Dogs and William Shake- What book did you feel as if you were gies,” by Ayad Akhtar; “The Ocean speare,” by Mark Lamonica. It’s a cu- supposed to like, and didn’t? Do you House,” by Mary-Beth Hughes; “Heav- rated collection of photographs he took of remember the last book you put down enly Questions,” by Gjertrud Schnacken- the dogs guarding the junkyards he vis- without finishing? berg; “At Day’s Close: Night in Times ited as a sculptor over the years, and I tend to finish things, holding out hope. Past,” by A. Roger Ekirch; “Mothers of paired with quotes from Shakespeare. Sometimes what seems like a slog can Sparta,” by Dawn Davies; “Memorial You cannot read it without experiencing bring you to a place you wouldn’t expect, Drive,” by Natasha Trethewey; and the nobility and exaltation of these crea- like stumbling on a clearing. Mostly that “Easy Travel to Other Planets,” by Ted tures — canine and human alike — in doesn’t happen, but when it does, you Mooney. their lonely occupations. have to imagine that it went that way for What’s the last great book you read? What’s your favorite book to assign to the writer too, hacking their way toward something they were glimpsing through “I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes and discuss with your students at Sarah the trees. Subscribe to the With Death,” by Maggie O’Farrell. Lawrence? New York Times Crossword. Because I love my students, I frequently What book are you embarrassed not to nytimes.com/solvenow Are there any classic novels that you only have them read Lynda Barry and David have read yet? recently read for the first time? Sedaris. And because I worry about them “Middlemarch.” Well, I finally finished “To the Light- — about how difficult it is to focus and to write and to interpret the strange “Ma- house” after years of starting and stop- What do you plan to read next? ping. The problem was me, it turns out, trix”-like world we are living in, I’ve been “Middlemarch.” 0 not the book, so I’m glad I stuck with it. having them read Jia Tolentino’s “Trick Mirror” and Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Describe your ideal reading experience. Nothing.” Both books pose their own An expanded version of this interview is End of day, bathtub, novel. powerful, artful arguments for living the available at nytimes.com/books.

ILLUSTRATION BY JILLIAN TAMAKI THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 7 Tourist Attraction A debut novel asks outsiders to empathize with the lives of locals. Taste the World, By ESMERALDA SANTIAGO NOT SO LONG AGO you could travel to other From Home. landscapes, peopled with men, women and children who might not look like you, who A selection of high-quality might not speak your language, who wines are delivered right seemed to have been created just so you to your door. could build memories. When you’re a tour- ist in someone else’s home, you’re there to get away from your own life, to preserve and post images of your adventures and experiences on social media, proof that you’re curious about the world and that you can still have fun. To you those foreign- ers — preferably wearing traditional dress

BROTHER, SISTER, MOTHER, EXPLORER By Jamie Figueroa 225 pp. Catapult. $25.

New Member Offer or an approximation of it, their bodies $59.95 adorned in patterns and textures you find charming but wouldn’t wear yourself once Regular Price $109.95 you touch down at home — are there to fill holes in your life so deep you don’t even see For your first 6-bottle them anymore. shipment inclusive It is you, dear tourists, whom Jamie Fi- gueroa addresses in her debut novel, of shipping with code “Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer.” Her VINE otherwise third-person narration is some- MARLY GALLARDO times spoken directly to you, guiding your gaze with injunctions like “Don’t take your eyes off her,” pointing out what you might All their lives Rosalinda, Rafa and Ru- otherwise either deliberately or subcon- fina have been caught in the maelstrom of White visitors to the town in nytwineclub.com sciously ignore: the performers forced by history, unable to affect it but scarred by this book deem the sadness and 877.698.6841 economic circumstance to amuse you, the events far beyond their ability to control or poverty ‘part of the charm.’ shopkeepers who sell what they can’t af- comprehend. While pregnant with Rafa, © 2021 The New York Times Company and ford to own. The residents of these “exotic” Rosalinda escaped “a country that wanted © 2021 Lot18 Holdings, Inc. Offer applies places know they don’t exist for you unless all of her kind dead,” and made it into this bers him as a multilingual, well-traveled to first ongoing club shipment only and cannot be combined with other promo- they’re right in front of you, in a shady one (which remains unnamed) thanks to worker in N.G.O.s. We don’t know how tions. Subsequent shipments will be billed plaza in a mesa surrounded by mountains, the humanitarian work of the Grandmoth- many of his job-related experiences collide at the standard price. Restrictions apply. waving their arms, singing, strumming, ers to All, a commune of elderly women against his memories of his mother, but we Offer does not apply to existing Wine Club members, one-time Wine Gifts or Wine dancing, begging for your attention. But who “rescue women in need. Because are- can imagine, we can understand why and Shop. Expires 9/30/21. The New York Figueroa — who describes herself as “Bo- n’t women just an extension of the natural how he’s come to the present crossroads. Times, where local law allows, has cho- ricua by way of Ohio,” and now lives in New world?” Safely across the border, she tries His mother’s death is only the most recent sen Lot18 Holdings, Inc., and its panel of experts, to select the wines and operate Mexico — knows those picturesque people to make a life for herself and her children of his sorrows. the clubs on our behalf. The Wine Club is have lives as complex as yours, with fewer — born 20 months apart by different fa- Rufina is also more than the bedraggled operated without the participation of the Times wine critics or other members of resources to help them cope. She sees thers — and to leave behind her pain, with performer, ogled by men, feared by wom- the newsroom. Lot18 Holdings, Inc. uses them. And, be warned, she also sees you. mixed results. Well into adulthood, her en. She too has been traumatized, physi- direct-to-consumer permits and ships in “Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer” children are still trying to make sense of cally and psychologically, but she doesn’t accordance with direct shipping laws for sales to Conn., Ga., Kan., Md., Mass., packs a lot of story into just over 200 pages. her erratic, often disturbing behavior. give up. Her survivor’s spirit is redemp- Nev., N.H., N.D., Pa., Va., W.Va., Wis., The titular siblings, Rafa and Rufina, are in Even once she is gone, Rosalinda’s ghost tive, even though in a sense we learn she’s S.C., N.C., Colo., N.M., Wash., La., Mo., their late 20s and mourning the recent haunts the house, kicking doors, breaking had to give up long before we first meet her, Ohio, Neb., Ore., Tenn., N.Y., Vt., Ill., Ind., Iowa, Mont., Idaho and S.D. For all other death of their mother, Rosalinda. To sup- dishes, rattling cutlery. Rafa, devastated bleating in the dusty plaza. states, ALL ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES PUR- port themselves they dress in colorful cos- by her loss, considers suicide. Rufina can’t A ghost who loves to sit in a rocking CHASED FROM NEW YORK TIMES WINE CLUB ARE SOLD IN THE STATE OF CALI- tumes made by “the Explorer” — the white handle her brother’s break from reality, but chair on the roof, an angel who smokes FORNIA AND TITLE PASSES TO THE BUY- man who invaded their home when they she can’t just let him go. So she challenges cherry-flavored cigarillos, the local ven- ER IN CALIFORNIA. New York Times Wine were children, peddling out their talents him: If they can make enough money over dors Rafa calls the “Original Enduring Club and Lot18 Holdings, Inc. make no representation to the legal rights of any- for his own profit — and pose as living stat- a weekend performing at the plaza, he will Ones” watching, the Grandmothers to All one to ship or import alcoholic beverages ues in the plaza of Ciudad de Tres Her- leave Ciudad de Tres Hermanas and live on protecting: These presences are like char- into any state outside of California. The manas. A basket at their feet receives the an island, where he has always been happi- acters in a fable. Even those of us who re- buyer is solely responsible for the ship- ment of alcoholic beverage products. By crumpled bills of visitors, who ask no ques- est. He agrees, reluctantly, and they return sist magical realism might accept, maybe placing an order, buyer authorizes Lot18 tions about what has brought these brown to the plaza, Rafa playing a guitar without even celebrate it in this beautifully crafted, Holdings, Inc. to act on buyer’s behalf to engage a common carrier to deliver buy- individuals to pretend they’re not human strings, Rufina singing, poorly, about a lost poetic book. er’s order. All credit card payments will be in the plaza dotted with cottonwoods. The baby. A white husband and wife stop to Having read “Brother, Sister, Mother, facilitated by Lot18 Holdings, Inc. Due to tourists do care, though, whether they can watch the performance, Rafa and Rufina’s Explorer,” maybe the next time you travel, state laws, wine can be purchased only by adults 21 years and older. Drinking wine snap a selfie. “earnest seduction,” and deem the sadness you might recall that what you see is not all may increase risk for cancer, and, during and poverty “part of the charm.” there is. You might see yourselves as Jam- pregnancy, can cause birth defects. ESMERALDA SANTIAGO is the author, most re- During the three days we know him, ie Figueroa sees you, apart from and yet a cently, of “Conquistadora.” Rafa is a broken man, but Rufina remem- part of our common human condition. 0

8 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 LISTEN UP / AUDIOBOOKS /BY SEBASTIAN MODAK From 1619 to 3020

ON A RECENT sunny winter day, I and the present as a way of show- us human. To listen to his newest drove 40 miles from New Orleans ing just how intact they are. book, A SWIM IN A POND IN THE to a plantation on the southern RAIN: In Which Four Russians Give a banks of the Mississippi. The SORT THROUGH THOSE threads and Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Whitney Plantation, first opened follow one far into an imagined Life (Random House Audio, 14 hours, to the public in 2014, is the only future, and you might end up at 44 minutes), is the closest many of plantation museum in Louisiana THE ONLY LIVING GIRL ON EARTH us will get to sitting in on one of exclusively focused on the history (Scribd Originals, 1 hour, 12 minutes), his fiction writing classes. Using a of enslaved people. While walking by the National Book Award selection of stories from 19th- its grounds I listened to an hour- winner Charles Yu. This short century Russian masters — Che- long audio tour, which seemed to story — itself a collection of free- khov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol conjure ghosts and whispers. I floating but connected fragments — Saunders dives deep (occasion- recognized these as the same — takes place in the year 3020 ally headachingly deep) into what echoes that had been with me the and centers on Jane, who is the makes a story a story. Saunders week prior, in the audiobook I had sole employee of “Earth: The Gift calls the form “a frank, intimate been listening to: FOUR HUNDRED Shop,” which is all that is left on conversation between equals” in SOULS: A Community History of the planet, after “Earth: A Bunch one moment; in the next, “a con- African America, 1619-2019 (Random of Civilizations” became uninhab- tinual system of escalation.” This House Audio, 14 hours, 2 is like one of those lec- minutes), edited by Ibram tures-on-tape your grand- X. Kendi and Keisha N. father used to listen to, Blain. This museum tour of except this time the teach- Black stories was not only er’s voice is joined by a coincidental appendix to narrators like Glenn Close, that book, but also testa- B. D. Wong and Nick Offer- ment to how aural narra- man, who is unsurprisingly tives, for their ability to adept at capturing the unfurl in your mind while personalities that might fill you are taking in the world a rural Russian tavern. around you, can be far more than background. A UNIVERSE IS LARGE. I They can be all-consum- know this because Saun- ing. ders’s book somehow In the book’s introduc- exists in the same “how to” tion, Kendi equates the universe as EVERYBODY HAS project to “a Black choir A PODCAST (EXCEPT YOU): A singing the spiritual into How-To Guide From the First the heavens of history.” It ALLEANNA HARRIS Family of Podcasting (Harper- is at once a song and a Audio, 5 hours, 9 minutes), by continuation of a centuries-old itable and “Earth: A Theme Park” the brothers behind the wildly tradition of oral histories, in the fell into disrepair. Yes, most of the successful series “My Brother, My form of 80 essays and 10 poems, metaphors and parables packed Brother and Me” and “The Ad- all commissioned to chronicle 400 into this story — a grab bag of venture Zone.” This is a course on years of Black life in America. sci-fi tropes highlighting humani- podcasting, except very funny, There are academic essays, thor- ty’s hamster-wheel existence — very current and (as one would oughly reported profiles and are this heavy-handed. But, as a hope) so listenable I devoured it lyrical memoirs side by side, from brief and entertaining thought in a day. Griffin, Travis and Justin voices as disparate as the histori- experiment buoyed by some McElroy — with guest appear- an Nakia D. Parker’s, the writer masterly turns of phrase (a tele- ances from their partners and Kiese Laymon’s and the journalist scope described, for example, as a their father — take turns offering and academic Isabel Wilkerson’s. “needle pointing out into the firsthand experience on every The stories, running chronologi- haystack of empty space”), the step of production, from choosing cally in five-year increments and story will hold your attention, your co-workers (“a great friend read by a full cast, can at first especially in audio form, thanks does not inherently make a great sound disjointed in their different to a skillful narration by the voice co-host”) to how long each approaches, but they have much actor Jesse Vilinsky. episode should be (“I dunno, in common: an urgent mission to probably an hour? Next ques- autopsy history as it’s long been IS A SHORT STORY always the tion”). This is a book for hard- taught in this country, and to pull opposite of the 14-hour historical core fans of the brothers’ growing at the threads between the past epic that swirls around your mind roster, but it is also a thorough for weeks? A snack instead of a resource for anyone remotely SEBASTIAN MODAK, The Times’s 52 meal? Try telling that to George interested in the world of D.I.Y. Places Traveler in 2019, has also Saunders, the kind of writer who podcasting. And that, if my Twit- written for Condé Nast Traveler and talks about literature as if it is ter feed is to be believed, includes The Washington Post. intricately linked to what makes basically everyone. 0

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 9 What the Portal Said Making sense of a life split between virtual and physical worlds.

online culture — the obsession with junk blink, synapse, little space-between was sister is carrying a child with Proteus syn- By MERVE EMRE media; the fragmentary and jerked pre- the only way to make it. Or because, and drome, a condition that causes an over- sentation of content; the mockery, the this was more frightening, it was the way growth of skin and bone — a child who will “THE ONLY SOLUTION to the internet was to snark; the postures, the polemics — into the portal wrote.” likely die soon after she is born. write bad novels with central personages an experience of sublimity. Lockwood The question many people have de- The narrator knows that the internet is who do not appear. grasps one of the most extraordinary manded that the great internet novel an- no place for bereavement; here, there are “The only solution was to write bad nov- tricks of the internet, which is its capacity swer is: What does it feel like to be online? only drive-by mourners, rubberneckers els that mimicked the computer network in to metamorphose billions of short, often For Lockwood, the question of how it feels gawking at the pain of others. Both for the its obsessions with junk media. brutish and haphazard utterances into for one person to be online is indistinguish- sake of plot, what little plot can be sal- “The only solution was to write bad nov- something that feels immensely and sol- able from how the internet would narrate vaged, and for the sake of self-preserva- els that mimicked the network in its irrele- idly real; a single entity, “the internet”; a its own virtual existence — how it would tion, she must withdraw. Though for one so vant and jagged presentation of content.” presence that overwhelms us with both speak, if it could speak, in a single voice, of closely identified with the portal’s con- Jarett Kobek wrote these self-ironizing wonder and despair. How big is the inter- the intense, exhausting accretion of matter sciousness, such withdrawal can only be words in his 2016 novel “I Hate the Inter- net, exactly? Can we ever know all of it? that makes it feel alive, electric with rage partial. The fragments remain but are re- net”; now they could serve as a rubric for This feeling of obscurity used to be the do- and desperation, greedy for attention and purposed for the inchoate work of loving critics asked to review novels about the in- main of nature; what Wordsworth once de- praise, and, as the narrator’s husband then losing. Humor is attempted, but falls ternet and to determine whether these scribed as “a portal in the sky.” Lockwood says, “like a ventriloquist’s dummy,” “just terribly flat, dragged down by sentiment. novels are solemnly, unrepentantly bad or gives us, more simply, “the portal.” totally, totally dead.” Grief is always a slog. good in spite of themselves. “I Hate the In- Yet from this grief emerges grace, a sub- ternet” falls into the latter category, as do limity that is not universal but achingly Dennis Cooper’s “The Sluts” (2004), Tao particular. The baby grows toward death, Lin’s “Taipei” (2013) and Lynne Tillman’s with “a kind of absolutism that was almost joy,” inhabiting a body and a consciousness NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS that is wholly her own. “She only knows By Patricia Lockwood what it is to be herself,” the doctors keep 210 pp. Riverhead Books. $25. repeating. The baby is not a metaphor, the narrator warns us, yet her wild, untram- meled, inscrutable being is everywhere “Men and Apparitions” (2018). The lasting counterpoised by the internet’s similarly achievement of these strange, excellent enigmatic existence. When she dies, her novels is to represent not only the relent- doctors harvest her brain. “As long as peo- lessness with which the internet intrudes ple were looking at that mind, it was still on our perceptions, our consciousness, but active in the world, asking and answering, also the larger and more distant forces that finding out about things, making small allow it to do so. Such novels speak of trolls dear cries of discovery,” the narrator and mobs, of identity and authenticity, in thinks. the same breath with which they whisper Here is the novel’s secondary virtue: its about the overproduction of personal insistence that the shadow forms of living “data,” “the information of existence” and thinking — the life led online amid the (Lin), or how corporations command “the buzz of the hive mind; the life that persists thrill of the new” to create demand for their after death — are, for all their vaporous products (Tillman). They find ways, as the mystery, no less real than the life led by critic Mark McGurl puts it, “to speak back MARK PERNICE you or me. And so, the question the narra- to and against” their own conditions of ex- tor first asked of the portal comes back at istence. the end to strike a consolatory note after The most recent contender in this genre death: “This did not feel like real life ex- is Patricia Lockwood’s “No One Is Talking What is the portal? “A brain, a language, “This did not feel like real life, exactly, actly, but nowadays what did.” About This.” The author of two poetry col- a place, a time?” Lockwood’s unnamed but nowadays what did?” the narrator Something Kobek did not anticipate in lections and a memoir, “Priestdaddy,” narrator asks in what amounts to an exten- wonders. She emerges as a portal for the his rubric for how to solve the problem of Lockwood is a modern word witch, her sion of Lockwood’s essay “The Communal portal’s uncanny consciousness, churning the internet was that people might stop writing splendid and sordid by turns. Her Mind,” published in The London Review of individual thoughts into tweets, tweets writing novels altogether. They might prose rambles from animal gags to dirty Books in 2019. She is a restless narrator, into memes, memes back into the lan- write experimental essays or memoirs; talk to infinitely beautiful meditations on who thinks in beautiful, witty, tidy para- guage of thought, until what belongs to me champion shagginess and shapelessness; the nature of perception that deflate and graphs. She shifts between pronouns and and what belongs to you can no longer be pronounce, as Lockwood did in a recent in- turn absurd before they can turn philo- points of view the way one might cycle be- discerned amid this mute, incessant chat- terview, that the internet has anointed “the sophical. She has honed her craft on the in- tween tabs late at night, half bored, half ter. “What about the stream-of-a-con- fragmentary and the autofictional . . . the ternet, mainly on Twitter. That platform, as elated. There is the all-encompassing “we,” sciousness that is not entirely your own? modes of the times.” Whether or not this is a mistrustful reviewer once complained, magicking itself into existence whenever One that you participate in, but also acts true, one test of the novel in the age of the “rewards her particular talents for com- everyone online seems to agree on some- upon you?” the narrator asks. Perhaps internet is if it offers enough resistance, on pression, provocation, mockery, snark,” in- thing. There is the “you,” a direct message worried about being misunderstood or the level of plot or character, structure or spiring poems like “Search ‘Lizard Vagina’ to the reader, at times solicitous, at times read the wrong way — a persistent fear on- tone, to the very media forms it wants to and You Shall Find,” or “The Father and accusatory. There is the more distracted line, where intent is impossible to fix — the represent. A good novel would not speak in Mother of American Tit-Pics.” “she,” who ignores us as she posts, clicks narrator has an anxious habit of providing the voice of the internet; it would speak “No One Is Talking About This” is, in and scrolls to the point of hallucination, her reader with running commentary, a us- over it, and the clamor it made would allow part, a rebuttal to this vision of the internet disavowing the idea that modern novels, er’s guide to the novel. its critics to hazard a stronger claim for the as enabling a mean and cramped sort of like this one, should accommodate old- value of the novel to our virtual lives. For art. The chief virtue of the novel is how it fashioned analog devices like plot or char- THE CHALLENGE THE novel sets for itself is all the local beauty and humor of “No One transforms all that is ugly and cheap about acter. how to wrench the narrator from the portal Is Talking About This,” it does not feel like a “Why were we all writing like this now?” and into a singular reality. Her release good novel, exactly, because it does not feel MERVE EMRE is an associate professor of Eng- the narrator wonders. “Because a new comes in the novel’s second section, which like a novel at all. But nowadays what lish at the University of Oxford. kind of connection had to be made, and begins when the narrator learns that her does? 0

10 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 Pilgrim Law Seeking a fair trial in early America. “ANAUTOBIOGRAPHYINWHICHWELATIN AMERICANSALLRECOGNIZEOURSELVES.” By FRANCIS J. BREMER —MARIOVARGASLLOSA, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature

IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT the Pilgrims. Even during the pandemic, the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Mayflower has been marked with public events, exhibits and academic conferences in England, the Netherlands and the United Nuestra States. Numerous books have ex- plored new angles on an old story, some of them directing attention to the Native population, the peo- ple who inhabited the land they called Dawnland. In “Terror to the Massasoit with the Pilgrims. América“ TERROR TO THE WICKED pages without encountering some- America’s First Trial by Jury thing that “may have,” “possibly” That Ended a War and Helped to or “likely” happened. John Form a Nation Winthrop, governor of Massachu- “A FAMILY HISTORY LIKE THIS ONE By Tobey Pearl setts, must have been present at the trial and the executions, though ISAMEANSOFCONFRONTING Illustrated. 288 pp. Pantheon Books. there is no evidence that he was. $29. ANDREDEFININGTHE Many pages are devoted to imagin- ing the details of a discussion be- CONCEPTSOFHOMELAND, Wicked,” Tobey Pearl, a lawyer tween Roger Williams and the BELONGING, AND HISTORY.” and educator, focuses on an impor- Wampanoag Massasoit. What — tant episode in the story of colo- sources consider possible, Pearl THENEWYORKER nist-Native relations. presents as certainty. For such sup- “Nuestra América means ‘Our America,’ In the summer of 1638 an English position to be persuasive readers indentured servant in the Plymouth have to be confident in the author’s and that collective pronoun encom- Colony, Arthur Peach, ran away deep knowledge of the times and passes not just Lomnitz’s family but from his master. He was joined by culture, but there are too many fac- multitudes who have wound up on three other servants. As they jour- tual inaccuracies and jumblings of South America’s shores… neyed through the wilderness they chronology to provide that confi- encountered a Native whom they dence in this case. An example is IT IS ABOUT HISTORY, LANGUAGE, attacked and robbed. The Native, the citation of the famous 1670 Eng- IDEAS AND HOW THEY SHAPE, Penowanyanquis, though mortally lish trial of William Penn and wounded, escaped and was able to William Mede that established a ju- IN THE SWEEP OF TIME, OUR tell his tale to Roger Williams in ry’s right to act against a judge’s in- nearby Providence before he died. structions, which Pearl seems to ECCENTRIC INDIVIDUAL LIVES.” While one of the runaways escaped, employ to support the independ- —MICHAELGREENBERG, Peach and two of his fellow perpe- ence of the jury in the 1638 Peach author of Hurry Down Sunshine trators were put on trial in the Plym- trial. outh Colony for murder. The Eng- “Terror to the Wicked” is well “A MASTERPIECE OF HISTORICAL lish jury convicted all three and written and draws upon important they were speedily executed. The new insights into Native culture. AND PERSONAL INVESTIGATION.” story as such is well known and But the underlying arguments that —KIRKUSREVIEWS (starred review) speaks to the willingness of an Eng- this was “America’s first trial by lish jury to provide justice in a case jury” and that it “ended a war” (as where Englishmen murdered a Na- the subtitle has it) are misleading. “RIVETING…Brings to light untold narratives of the Jewish diaspora from Romania to Peru to tive. As for being the first trial by jury, Colombia to Israel to California to Mexico and beyond…Lomnitz’s forebears, vividly portrayed, lived Pearl has not unearthed any Plymouth’s governor William lives of profound political and intellectual engagement.” —CLAIREMESSUD, author of !e Burning Girl facts that have not been previ- Bradford recorded that in 1630 ously reported in many studies of “John Billington the Elder . . . was the Plymouth Colony. She adds arraigned; and both by grand, and “ILOVEDIT…Only someone with the extraordinary gi!s of Claudio Lomnitz as both conjecture to what the sources ac- petty jury found guilty of willful anthropologist and historian could produce a work as this, in which culture and history, family tually tell us, with speculation murder by plain and notorious evi- about what Peach and his associ- dence. And was for the same ac- and individuality, all interact to create a unique kind of autobiography—written, moreover, ates may have been feeling, the cordingly executed.” As for the with tenderness and talent.” —MARSHALLSAHLINS, author of !e Western Illusion of Human Nature possible motivations of major claim that this trial “ended a war,” characters and the supposed the Pequot War was essentially thoughts of the jurors, to mention over; churches in Plymouth and “VITAL, ABSORBING, ELEGIAC, and so finely honed…An extraordinary journey.” just a few examples. other New England colonies had —PHILIPPESANDS, author of !e Ratline and East West Street One can’t go beyond one or two celebrated a day of thanksgiving for their victory 10 months earlier. FRANCIS J. BREMER is the author of The Peach trial was important, but “One Small Candle: The Plymouth Pearl’s reasoning exaggerates how Puritans and the Beginning of Eng- important it was. It was not, as she OTHERPRESS LEARN MORE: otherpress.com/nuestraamerica lish New England.” asserts, “the trial of the century.” 0

IMAGE FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 11 Scenes From the Anthropocene The human efforts to confront a changing natural world — and their unintended consequences.

By HELEN MACDONALD

A FEW YEARS AGO YouTube recommended I watch a video with the word “carpoca- lypse” in its title. I clicked the link — of course I did — and stared in awe at what resembled a mash-up of a video game, na- ture documentary and war movie. I saw a river full of fish leaping from the water like chaotic piscine fireworks and men in speedboats yelling and holding out nets to catch them as if they were wet and weighty butterflies. Fish hitting people in the face, fish landing in boats, fish flapping between people’s feet in a mess of slime and blood. This, the video informed me, was the annu- al Redneck Fishing Tournament in Bath,

UNDER A WHITE SKY The Nature of the Future By Elizabeth Kolbert 234 pp. Crown. $28. Illinois River silver carp leap into the air after being disturbed by sounds of watercraft.

Ill., the object of which was to kill as many has sounded the death knell for our com- was the omission of Black voices in the tal emergency. Asian carp as possible. An invasive species monly held belief that one can meaning- chapter about land loss and environmental In 2014, Kolbert was asked whether she that has spread throughout the Mississippi fully distinguish between nature and hu- disaster in Louisiana. A significant aspect found writing about extinction depressing. basin since its introduction as a “safe” manity. Our world is too much changed for of managing natural systems has to do She said it was, but it had to be looked in agent of biological control in the 1960s, nature to be preserved simply by leaving it with the paternalism of such projects — the face. “I’ve tried to transcend my own Asian carp jump when they feel in danger, alone. “Humans,” she explains, are pro- the question of whether the people most af- feelings,” she explained. There’s good rea- and the sound of boat engines is suffi- ducing “no-analog climates, no-analog fected by these endeavors have a say in son to do so: In such a politically charged ciently alarming to push them en masse ecosystems, a whole no-analog future.” how they are carried out. field, honest sentiment is too often weap- into the air. The systems that support us are now hy- Kolbert repeatedly turns to attempts by onized as evidence of bias and weakness. The video was a startling coincidence of brid human-natural ones, and maintaining humans to recreate the natural world. She Furthermore, the voice of reportage, like science, culture and environmental disas- them increasingly requires us to adopt in- visits large-scale dynamic hydrological the voice of scientific papers, carries enor- ter, and I thought of it often as I read Eliza- ventive strategies to correct for our previ- models; marine tanks in which corals are mous cultural power. It bespeaks objectiv- beth Kolbert’s excellent new book. I did so ous attempts at control, efforts that have subjected to stress to assist their artificial ity. It’s the voice we are told to use when we partly because her opening chapter deals frequently led to highly unfortunate out- evolution into hardier organisms capable want to be taken seriously, when we don’t with the continuing struggle to prevent comes. of coping with our changing seas; the con- want our conclusions to be interpreted as Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes Kolbert has a phenomenal ability to struction of a desert pool in a building that simply being emotional; we’re taught such system, with solutions ranging from elec- communicate complex scientific informa- looks like an industrial warehouse. These things muddy the force of truth. trified water barriers to thrillingly imprac- tion. She explains CRISPR gene-editing spaces, strangely irrigated with both hope Yet the people who toil to stop invasive tical suggestions from members of the and atmospheric physics in prose that is a carp or preserve desert pupfish do so for public to stop them with flying knives. But model of clarity and generosity; she traces reasons that do not exist solely in the realm as I read on, I was reminded of the carp for environmental histories deftly. She moves These spaces remind us that of science. All the conservation biologists I a different reason. They seemed no longer us gracefully across numerous scales, Earth itself is a discrete system know have deep attachments to the crea- just a sign of environmental disaster or a from aerial views of clouds reflected in under stress. tures they study, and it is these passionate ready metaphor for xenophobia. In my Louisiana lakes right down to an individ- motivations that spur their efforts and as- mind they became proxies for us — crea- ual scientist picking aquatic beetles from a sist the continued survival of the creatures tures in mass panic, leaping out of their mesh screen, a fish egg with a visibly beat- and despair, remind us that Earth itself is a in question. I’m reminded of the words of comfort zone, desperate to avoid catastro- ing heart, a single gene. She has a marvel- discrete system under stress, the site of an Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist, writer and phe. ous eye for the quirky, from the plywood experiment in survival we have busily member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, “Under a White Sky” is a fascinating palm tree outside an Arctic research sta- been conducting on ourselves. who maintains that science can be a path to survey of novel attempts to manage natu- tion to the local term for used condoms Though as a writer she has a transport- kinship with other species, and that it ral systems of all sizes, from preserving floating in water (“Chicago River white- ing ability to conjure place and atmos- should be animated by more than simply tiny populations of desert fish to altering fish,” a phrase I will never be able to forget, phere, Kolbert can at times be a strangely pure analysis. the entire atmosphere (the title refers to no matter how hard I try), and she wields elusive presence in her own book. At many Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert the color the sky would turn were solar en- figurative language in truly glorious ways: points, I wanted desperately to know how shows us that it is time to think radically gineers to implement plans to spread min- All the desert pupfish in the world, she ex- she felt about things. When I read her as- about the ways we manage the envi- eral particles in the stratosphere to reflect plains, weigh less than a Filet-O-Fish sand- sessment of the scenery surrounding her ronment; time to work with what we have, sunlight and cut global warming). wich. Isn’t that perfect? in northern Greenland — which “could be using the knowledge we have, with our One of the great science journalists, Kol- All the while, we are introduced to a won- described as bleak, or alternatively, as sub- eyes fully open to the realities of where we bert has for many years been an essential derful cast of people. She interviews scien- lime” — I blinked, curious as to which she are. Rigorous analysis and science journal- voice, a reporter from the front lines of the tists and engineers, coastal geologists, so- preferred. Pointing out this personal reti- ism, the form in which Kolbert truly excels, environmental crisis. Her new book crack- lar geoengineers, tattooed fishermen in cence is not a criticism of her work: “Un- is needed now more than ever. But along- les with the realities of living in an era that gore-smeared overalls, a director of an der a White Sky” is important, necessary, side it, to enrich it, there should be other Arctic institute with an icicle-hung beard urgent and phenomenally interesting. It stories too: tender, careful investigations HELEN MACDONALD is the author, most recently, and a Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw chief liv- has, however, made me muse on the ways into the feelings that drive and shape our of “Vesper Flights.” ing on doomed land. One frustration I had we choose to write about the environmen- efforts to save the world. 0

12 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 + PHOTOGRAPH BY NERISSA MICHAELS/ILLINOIS RIVER BIOLOGICAL STATION, VIA DETROIT FREE PRESS The Squad New books consider the culture of policing in two American cities.

partners callous and cruel — one even calls high-speed car chases.” crime rate and the desperation of Balti- By MAURICE CHAMMAH the residents “animals” — but Brooks also During her training, Brooks notices how more’s leaders to get guns and drugs off shows that the officers are coping with all the students seem obsessed with watch- the streets, no matter the methods. Jenk- IN LATE 2015, I interviewed several young their own despondency. “The main occu- ing videos of officers who briefly let down ins doesn’t go on the record — although he police officers over lunch in the middle of pational hazard of policing is not assault or their guard and end up paying with their denies many of the crimes for which he their patrol shift. We were near St. Louis, injury, but cynicism,” she explains. “Some- lives. Her fellow officers are jumpy, always was convicted — but in some ways this not far from Ferguson, where the year be- times, it seems like everyone you meet is convinced that a woman is reaching for a makes for a better story, as a huge range of fore an officer from a different department crying or yelling.” gun rather than her wallet, or that a man people offer a pointillistic portrait of this had shot and killed Michael Brown, spark- Brooks has an anthropologist’s ear for will pounce if they don’t restrain him. She slippery, somewhat mysterious figure. In a ing protests and a nationwide debate about the language of policing, jumping from the suggests that an exaggerated sense of risk perversion of traditional drug investiga- law enforcement. I asked each officer the reports full of passive-voice bureaucratese too often leads to tragedy, and that the po- tions, Jenkins asked his victims — mostly same question: What do you want to be do- to the darkly humorous, profanity-laden lice should be encouraged to accept more drug dealers whom he knows nobody will ing in 10 years? I assumed one might say shoptalk. She zips from hilarious descrip- risk to themselves. “They’re told they have really see as victims — which other dealers “detective,” another “chief.” tions of going to the bathroom while over- ‘a right to go home safe.’ Too often, they for- they would rob, as a way of finding new tar- Most of them responded with the same loaded with clunky gear to bone-dry obser- get that other people have a right to go gets. We see a young policeman’s desire for word: “tactical.” They wanted to be on a vations: “The ethics lesson was slightly home safe too.” It’s easy to imagine the action allowed to fester toward troubling SWAT team, or something like it, handling less detailed than the guidance on the criticism she’ll get, but her calm, consid- extremes, as Jenkins gets into multiple, shootouts and other high-risk situ- dangerous high-speed chases ev- ations. They were earnest about ery day. wanting to serve the public, but Clearly inspired by “The Wire,” they also seemed a little bored, Fenton populates his narrative with stopping cars and checking them a network of officers, informants for guns and drugs. They were and street dealers, all with different mostly white. All the drivers were motivations and interests. Some of Black. The officers acted politely, these personalities come through more vividly than others, but the overall effect is to capture the disori- TANGLED UP IN BLUE enting, churning quality of a city Policing the American City where the good guys and bad guys By Rosa Brooks aren’t easily distinguished. Fenton 367 pp. Penguin Press. $28. lays out the meticulous work of F.B.I. agents to unravel the corrup- WE OWN THIS CITY tion, and at many moments their A True Story of Crime, Cops, success seems anything but as- and Corruption sured: While this is all playing out, By Justin Fenton Freddie Gray famously dies in Balti- 335 pp. Random House. $28. more police custody, protesters fill the streets and prosecutors fail to get convictions. at least in the presence of a white “Between those who had experi- reporter, but the residents told me enced the abuse and the relatives, they felt harassed and under siege. friends and co-workers who heard Six years later, policing has drifted their stories, people who had even further from a policy dilem- never trusted the cops in the first ma to a full-blown culture war. Be- place became only more contemp- tween the talk of defunding and the Baltimore police officers confronting protesters after the death of Freddie Gray, in 2015. tuous of them,” Fenton writes of “thin blue line” American flags, it’s the task force. “Baltimore’s Black not even clear that we agree what communities have been both over- the problems of policing and crime in proper wearing of uniforms.” Anecdote by ered tone, grounded in experience, is itself policed and underpoliced.” Favoring hard- America actually are, much less how to anecdote, she builds to a cautious analysis an achievement. boiled reporter’s prose, Fenton mostly em- solve them. of how “even normal, careful, lawful polic- Culture and training can lead well-mean- phasizes story over such analysis, but he In “Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the ing often ends up compounding devastat- ing officers toward tragic outcomes. But in shows how, in our zeal to combat crime, we American City,” the Georgetown law pro- ing social inequalities,” even if few officers other cases, departments make it possible have allowed institutions to produce it. fessor Rosa Brooks takes a novel ap- display overt racism. for dishonorable officers to flourish. In “We There will always be a role for adrena- proach, chronicling her experiences over Her style recalls the work of immersion Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops, line junkies among the ranks of emergency the past few years as a volunteer reserve journalists like George Plimpton, Ted and Corruption,” Justin Fenton, a reporter workers, and there will always be moral officer with the Washington, D.C., Metro- Conover and Barbara Ehrenreich — who for The Baltimore Sun, traces the rise and ambiguities when we send people, no mat- politan Police Department. She takes us happens to be Brooks’s mother. Brooks fall of his city’s Gun Trace Task Force, a ter how well trained, into difficult, chaotic into neighborhoods steeped in intergener- makes this part of the story, nesting in a book group of officers who spent years robbing situations. Both Brooks and Fenton implic- ational poverty, addiction and violence. on policing a beautifully written mini-mem- drug dealers, selling drugs themselves, itly question the value of our culture war “When other social goods and services are oir about growing up the daughter of a fa- skimming money from house seizures, over policing, instead offering close obser- absent or scarce,” she writes, “police be- mous activist and writer, who disdains the planting evidence and defrauding taxpayers vations and cautionary tales. They also of- come the default solution to an astonish- police but also values a certain toughness. through overtime claims. Their reign fer glimmers of hope, whether in Fenton’s ingly wide range of problems.” The con- Brooks explores how much this shaped her produced the death of a civilian and numer- admiring portrait of the F.B.I. agents who stant deluge of tragic and avoidable con- own desire to be an officer, and her self- ous wrongful charges and convictions. An- saved Baltimore from its rogue officers, or flict is enough to make some of her patrol awareness gives her insight into the practi- other officer died under mysterious circum- in Brooks’s encounters with decent people cal, adrenaline-hungry tendencies that may stances one day before he was set to testify who are attracted to the profession for the MAURICE CHAMMAH is the author of “Let the attract people to police work. “Mostly, my against members of the task force. right reasons. “I’m worried about getting Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the partners wanted to be somewhere else, do- Fenton weaves the career of his anti- cynical,” a young officer tells Brooks. “I Death Penalty” and a staff writer at The ing something more interesting,” she writes. hero, Wayne Jenkins, the unit’s head, to- don’t want to turn into the kind of cop who Marshall Project. “They wanted shootings, stabbings and gether with accounts of Baltimore’s high just shrugs when someone gets shot.” 0

PHOTOGRAPH BY ROBERT STOLARIK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 13 In Ruins Exploring the fates of four cities lost to time to better understand what leads urban environments to decay.

door but by climbing a ladder to the roof. was about 600 years old. I’m tempted to re- catastrophe, like Pompeii, but seemingly By RUSSELL SHORTO Much of life was lived up there: cooking, peat a number yet again. Think of the set- because it lost its spiritual significance socializing, ambling along sidewalks that tled, structured history Dido could look over time. Its people didn’t perish. The pil- I DON’T KNOW about you, but I find myself, ran across the top of the city. back on. As evidence of her awareness of grims just stopped coming; the local resi- throughout this long slog of pandemic- Let me say that again in case you missed the past, Dido, like everyone else in town, dents merged with other tribes. There is plus-political turmoil, alternating between it: This was 9,000 years ago. In terms of hu- buried her ancestors in her home, beneath linguistic and other evidence that the feelings of warmth and camaraderie for man society, that is just an imponderable her bed. Some were given a special honor: Sioux are their descendants. my fellow human beings — it is so heart- span of time. The oldest of the books of the Their skulls sat in niches in the walls. Dido The theme of how cities die runs as a ening to see millions pulling together in an Hebrew Bible date to roughly 3,000 years could enjoy the comfort of her forebears’ dark undercurrent through the book. urgent situation — and periods of wanting ago; the pyramids of Egypt go back about empty eye sockets following her as she Newitz devotes space to debunking the to punch people’s lights out. Navigating 5,000 years. These were not prehumans or went about her daily chores. In other popular notion that civilizations of the past the pools of disinformation and ignorance near relatives. They were like us: complex, words: not so much like us. “collapse” and become “lost,” pointing in- makes one actually fear for the future of organized, alive to meaning and living at a A thousand years ago, meanwhile, East stead to indications of gradual change. time beyond reckoning. St. Louis, Ill., was the site of an urban sanc- Near the end, Newitz attempts to bring FOUR LOST CITIES Another way of using “Four Lost Cities” tuary that archaeologists today call Caho- the study of the distant past to bear on to- A Secret History of the is as a compendium of archaeological find- kia. With a population of 30,000, it was day: “Globally, we’re in a period of political Urban Age ings on humanity’s urban origins. The au- larger than Paris was at the time. Like instability and authoritarian nationalism. By Annalee Newitz thor bops along with experts from Stan- Paris, with its Eiffel Tower and Notre- Unfortunately, evidence from history 297 pp. W.W. Norton & Company. $26.95. ford, Cambridge, the University of Calgary, Dame, it had distinguishing physical land- shows that this can be a death knell for cit- Middle East Technical University and marks in the form of black earthen pyra- ies.” But while warning that “the combina- other institutions, peppering them with mids. It sprawled across both sides of the tion of climate change and political insta- the human race. And the crises are focus- questions we’d like to ask, and reveling in Mississippi River, beckoning visitors from bility we face in many modern cities sug- ing particular attention on our cities. Idea the occasionally startling answer. (“I love all over the present-day Southern United gests that we’re heading for a period of factories as they are, they would seem to Nero!” a classicist studying Pompeii’s the- States. global urban abandonment,” Newitz notes hold the keys to that future, yet at the same ater declares at one point.) Cahokia seems to have been a place of too that “if we’ve learned anything from time they suddenly seem shockingly vul- At Catalhoyuk, Newitz hangs out with spiritual pilgrimage, which drew diverse history, we know the death of a few cities nerable. Ruth Tringham of the University of Califor- groups of Native American peoples, who doesn’t mean the world will collapse into Though Annalee Newitz began work on nia, Berkeley, who has devoted years to hu- dystopia.” “Four Lost Cities” long before the Covid-19 manizing the remnants of this city of the I suppose we’re to take some comfort pandemic, it’s impossible to read it today dim past by focusing on one skeleton, of a The operative lesson from the from that. The operative lesson from the without periodic is-this-where-we’re- woman she has dubbed Dido. Dido replas- past seems to be that human past, at least from this curated offering of headed? musings. The book functions as a tered her walls regularly, kept her home culture is a plastic thing. former metropolises, seems to be that hu- travel guide to places that no longer exist. swept clean, covered the floor in reed mats man culture is a plastic thing. Rather than As with most any guidebook, I found my- and decorated the place with art: clay fig- lamenting the fragility of our current ur- self drawn to some sites more than others. ures of animals and stylized human fe- ban structures, we might do better figuring The chapters on Pompeii, the volcano-bur- males. In other words: much like us. spoke different languages and worshiped out how to bend and shape society for the ied city in the orbit of ancient Rome, fa- Catalhoyuk was founded by pioneers of in various ways but came to share a rever- future. mous for its exquisitely preserved ruins, urban living. “When the earliest construc- ence for this city and its ceremonial Perhaps looking back 9,000 years can its brothels and taverns and graffiti, and on tion began,” Newitz writes, “many people customs, which included human sacrifice. yield practical guidance on how to move Angkor, a metropolis of medieval Cambo- coming to live at Catalhoyuk were only a Its multiethnic, year-round population ap- forward from where we are. For me, the ef- dia, didn’t fire my imagination so much, generation or two removed from nomad- parently serviced the religious pilgrims fect of reading “Four Lost Cities” was more perhaps because I already knew some- ism.” It was brand-new, this fixed settle- and, in the off-season, went about their meditative. This is a long, long, long ride thing of their histories. ment thing, but it proved remarkably suc- own affairs. we are on. Much is beyond our control. Hu- They still have their charm and their cessful. By the time Dido was born, the city Cahokia died not as a result of sudden manity trundles on. 0 surprises, these sections. I had no idea, for instance, that the Roman emperor Titus, after touring the smoking ruins of Pompeii, initiated a massive and surprisingly mod- ern-seeming project to relocate thousands of survivors to other parts of the empire. Or that Angkor, which reached its height around A.D. 900, had an economy based on a system of debt slavery that sounds much like what middle-class Americans endure today. But the parts of the book devoted to two other “lost” cities, places I had never known existed, filled me with wonder. Nine thousand years ago, the people of Catal- hoyuk, maybe 10,000 of them, lived in cu- boid clay houses packed against one an- other above the Konya Plain of south-cen- tral Turkey. Their dwellings were uniform, suggesting a highly regulated society: one or two rooms, painted in white or with red ocher designs. You exited not via a front

RUSSELL SHORTO is the author of “Amsterdam,” “The Island at the Center of the World” and, most recently, “Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob.” The snow-covered peak of the Mount Vesuvius volcano, seen from the streets of the archaeological site in Pompeii.

14 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY CESARE ABBATE/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK Growing Pains Political revolution and mysticism charge a coming-of-age novel.

By REBECCA MAKKAI

“MAGLYA,” THE ORIGINAL Hungarian title of Gyorgy Dragoman’s novel “The Bone Fire,” means not quite a bonfire but a pyre, a place where one might be burned alive. For the book’s English translation, our word “bonfire” has been broken back down to its etymological roots: the literal fires of bones (and heretics and sinful objects), fa- miliar to speakers of Middle English. That a word we now perceive as benign would have such macabre origins is a reminder that we don’t live terribly far removed from superstition and atavism, either his- torically or psychologically. “The Bone Fire” is Dragoman’s fourth work of fiction and his second to be trans- lated into English, after “The White King” (2005). It achieves, like its English title, a disconcerting juxtaposition of the mun- dane and the primeval. On one level, it’s a real-world coming-of-age story, in which a teenager navigates both post-Communist aftershocks and the more personal issues of menstruation, crushes, friendships and

SOPHY HOLLINGTON THE BONE FIRE By Gyorgy Dragoman tween magical thinking and magic, be- Translated by Ottilie Mulzet after World War I, Transylvania is home to who were complicit in the Securitate’s rein, tween the clarity of adulthood and the fog 471 pp. Mariner Books. Paper, $16.99. most of Romania’s Hungarians, who along but even for the family members left be- of adolescence, between political enlight- with other ethnic minorities were stripped hind, like Emma’s grandmother. “The enment and ancient wisdom. That this slip- bathing suits — and on another, it’s a tale of of liberties under decades of Communist more dead people there are,” as Emma bit- pery narration — a risky choice — not only magic, ghosts and ancient memory. rule. The secret police, the notorious Secu- terly understands the calculus, “the more propels the story forward but also res- Thirteen-year-old Emma, whose dissi- ritate, undertook mass surveillance, truth there will be.” onates with the book’s themes of instability dent parents have died in a car accident, quashed public dissent and committed hu- Everything about Emma’s life is liminal, and skewed perception is a testament to has spent six months at an orphanage man rights abuses. (Most of my own fam- upheaved — adolescence, regime change, Dragoman’s powers. He reaches back to when an old, recently widowed woman ily, like Dragoman’s, left Transylvania dur- a new city, a new home — and it’s in such folklore but also speaks to this artistic mo- shows up to claim her, insisting she’s the ing this period, joining relatives in Buda- shaky times that foundational supersti- ment, in which genre and its ancestral grandmother Emma never knew. The pest or the United States.) tions rise more easily to the surface, mak- roots permute and enrich highly regarded woman convinces the headmistress easily “The Bone Fire” is set in the aftermath of ing the ordinary seem extraordinary and capital-l Literature. enough, and perhaps hypnotizes Emma, a revolution similar to the one that ended vice versa. The result is not so much a And “The Bone Fire” has certainly won who moves with her to a new city. That a Romanian Communism: In December work of traditional magical realism as a acclaim since its original publication in librarian at her new school sees a family 1989, a week of riots and violence over- 471-page object lesson in the uncanny. 2014 — it was a finalist for major prizes in resemblance, having known Emma’s turned the government, led to President France and Italy — before landing in the mother, is about the only evidence we get Nicolae Ceausescu’s Christmas Day exe- capable hands of Ottilie Mulzet, the trans- of blood ties, but readers seeking definitive cution, and suddenly transformed the It’s in shaky times that lator who has notably brought us the resolution will soon realize it’s a moot country. At the novel’s start, Emma’s foundational superstitions rise works of Laszlo Krasznahorkai. The tim- point. Both widow and orphan have been school term at the orphanage has already more easily to the surface. ing is perfect: The novel reaches an Ameri- alone and now have each other, and the folk included the gleeful removal of pictures of can audience at a moment when we’re feel- wisdom and witchcraft the grandmother the former comrade general. Supermar- ing not only the seismic shifts of historical passes down (love spells, golems, how to kets are opening for the first time, with “ev- Dragoman depicts the prosaic (the de- change, and the hard reckoning after a lie) become a stronger lineage than genet- erything that exists under the sun, every- struction of an ant colony, the yield of a wal- strongman’s fall, but also the ways magical ics. thing, but really everything, 30 different nut tree, the eating of sardines) with a me- thinking, conspiracy and rumor seep While no actual country or city is named kinds of toothpaste, eight different kinds of ticulous pacing normally reserved for the through the cracks during times of turmoil. here, Dragoman has indicated in inter- butter, 15 different kinds of cheese.” In her eerie or the ominous, adopting the obses- Whether this novel will find the same views that “The Bone Fire,” as well as “The grandmother’s city, Emma’s fellow stu- sive focus of a director’s eye on, say, some- success in the United States that it has White King” and a third novel that will dents are reeling from an uprising in which one unlocking a forbidden attic door. found elsewhere depends perhaps on the round out a loose trilogy, is set in a fiction- some were killed, some took on gang alle- Meanwhile, what might be genuinely mag- extent to which American readers will sur- alized version of Transylvania. Indeed, giances, some followed the lead of a fire- ical (divination, a grandfather’s ghost, ants render themselves, as Emma has, to the “The Bone Fire” hews closely to the his- brand art teacher and some are still caught and foxes that act with folkloric logic) is in- whims of a skilled but inscrutable ab- tory of this region of Romania, where up in lingering accusations of complicity. dulged with no sharper a lens, so that it be- ductor. Like the mysterious grandmother, Dragoman himself grew up before moving Emma’s dead grandfather, for one, may comes disorientingly unclear what is nor- Dragoman seems to have our best inter- to Budapest in 1988. Carved off Hungary have been a Securitate informer — or per- mal, what is supernatural and what is sim- ests at heart. This is a story, after all, in haps his roles in the regime and the revolu- ply the unstable ground of an adolescence which dreams and phantasms are kinder REBECCA MAKKAI is the author, most recently, of tion were more complicated. flooded with trauma. and more sensical than the random brutal- the novel “The Great Believers,” a finalist for The new order does not mean an easy Structurally, “The Bone Fire” defies a ity of the concrete world. To that end, his the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book peace. Revolution follows revolution, and tidy narrative arc, drifting between scenes telling is not just magic, but enchant- Award. vengeance keeps coming not only for those without much overarching plot, sliding be- ment. 0

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 15 Migration in Reverse Roots of Radicalization A call for Black Northerners to move to the South. This novel goes inside the mind of an Islamic extremist.

tion became Blow’s “proof of concept,” and By TANISHA C. FORD for him, one thing now seems clear: The By HELON HABILA path to lasting Black power is through the LEADING UP TO the 2020 presidential elec- vote. Forming a “contiguous band” of YASMINA KHADRA IS the pen name of the tion, Stacey Abrams, LaTosha Brown and Black voters across the South — Louisi- French-Algerian author Mohammed other grass-roots activists successfully ana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Moulessehoul. In 2001 he outed himself as registered an unprecedented number of South Carolina, in particular — would “up- a former Algerian Army officer, with a stint Black voters in Georgia who had been end America’s political calculus and expo- in counterterrorism, who had been writing stymied in the past by voter-suppression nentially increase” Black citizens’ influ- under his wife’s name to avoid the military tactics. Their work brought key victories to ence in American politics. The weakness in censors. It was a surprise worthy of his Democratic candidates in the state and Blow’s plan is that it requires faith in a po- new novel, “Khalil,” which was published demonstrated the political power of South- litical system that has consistently failed in French (and awarded the Grand Prix of ern Black women. Black Americans at nearly every turn. Literary Associations) in 2018. As with his Georgia’s recent presidential and Senate For Blow, however, the reality that Black earlier novels, including “The Swallows of elections are relevant to the argument of Northerners have no recourse but to leave the New York Times columnist Charles M. is a painful truth that crystallized for him KHALIL Blow in “The Devil You Know: A Black one night in 2015 when he learned that his By Yasmina Khadra Power Manifesto.” There are two Black son, a student at Yale, had been stopped at Translated by John Cullen Americas, he says. One is the world of those gunpoint by a university police officer. 226 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $25.95. who remained in the postslavery South.

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW Kabul” and “The Attack,” the focus of A Black Power Manifesto “Khalil” is on Islamist extremism in partic- By Charles M. Blow ular, and on the inner workings of the radi- 256 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. cal mind in general. What circumstances $26.99. will push a man to forsake family and friends, to sacrifice his and others’ lives, NAÏ ZAKHARIA out of loyalty to an ideology, motivated by The other is inhabited by those who fled the some revered, often distant leader? loses someone even closer to him from an- South for refuge in what he terms “destina- On Nov. 13, 2015, Paris was rocked by a other suicide bombing in Paris, as a result tion cities” across the North and West dur- string of suicide bombings that killed hun- of which he descends into a crisis of belief. ing the Great Migration. But these cities are dreds, and these real-life terrorist attacks Khadra does a great job of guiding us now broken, according to Blow, and the form the backdrop of “Khalil.” The book through the stages of Khalil’s radicaliza- Great Migration has been a “stinging fail- opens as the eponymous protagonist, a 23- tion. Xenophobia, Islamophobia, poverty, ure.” Blow, a son of Louisiana who recently year-old Moroccan man living in Belgium, family dysfunction: All of the usual trig- moved back south — to Atlanta — says is driving from Brussels to Paris, where he gers are examined, but the author goes fur- Black Americans must bridge this divide. plans to carry out a suicide attack on the ther, to show that radicalization is not inev- In what he believes would be “the most Stade de France during a soccer match. itable. Often it is a matter of choice, a way audacious power play by Black America in “There were four of us suicide bombers, to embrace bitterness and anger over ad- the history of the country,” Blow calls for with one mission,” he says on the first aptation and personal accountability. One African-Americans to reverse-migrate page: “to turn the celebration at the Stade of the most powerful moments in the story Campaigning in Georgia. south, to collectively dismantle white su- de France into global mourning.” The rest is the reunion between a disillusioned, pa- premacy by using their ancestral home- of the novel is just as direct and irresistible riahed and suicidal Khalil and the emir land as a political base. He imagines a New Stories like this fuel the book’s searing ac- as this first line — every subsequent sen- who radicalized him. “As I held my emir South where “our trauma history is not our count of police violence, systemic racial tence, in this translation by John Cullen, is close,” he thinks, “it was as though I had total history.” That Black people have been disparities and social unrest in cities like carefully designed to draw you in and lead happiness itself in my arms.” Back in the returning south for at least the past 40 New York, Minneapolis and Portland. This you into the next one. fold, Khalil remembers again why he be- years, he adds, demonstrates that there is is where Blow is at his best. One of the bombers, a fellow Moroccan- came a radical in the first place: “The fertile ground for his idea in the region, in- As a historian, I wish he had spent more Belgian named Driss, is Khalil’s childhood mosque gave visibility and a countenance tellectually and materially. time exploring the nuances of the Black mi- friend; they were raised in the same apart- to the untouchables that we were, Driss His is a familiar argument, revitalized gration framework the book hinges upon. ment building in the slums of Brussels. and I; it took us out of the gutter to display by the South’s recent political develop- Blow’s claim that the Great Migration “hit Driss blows himself up as planned, but us as luxury products in the show windows ments. A genesis for Blow’s Black power the South like a bomb,” causing an intellec- Khalil’s suicide vest proves defective. His of the most beautiful buildings. . . . The proposition could have been the Black Belt tual and cultural brain drain that stunted its handlers have mistakenly given him a mosque gave us back the RESPECT we nation thesis, proposed by Black Commu- growth, rings hollow. It obscures the truth training vest instead of the real thing. In were owed.” After the shame of failure nists in the 1920s, or the agenda of the Re- that the region was an incubator of radical the ensuing manhunt for the terrorists, col- Khalil is eager to prove he is still reliable public of New Afrika in the 1960s. But Blow political activism — often led by its most ored by racial profiling and an anti-immi- and committed to the cause, and plans to instead builds upon the political thought of disenfranchised citizens — during the grant and anti-Muslim hysteria reminis- follow through with another big assign- the freethinking white hippies who moved Great Migration and beyond. The New cent of the atmosphere after 9/11, Khalil ment. But in this novel full of plot twists, to Vermont in the early 1970s with the in- South to which Blow is now beckoning peo- holes up in his older sister’s apartment in the author saves his biggest shock for the tent of transforming the state’s conserva- ple to return was created largely by the the Belgian city of Mons. Here he learns end. tive electoral politics. They succeeded, he Black visionaries and community builders that his cousin was one of those hundreds This novel is both timely and, sadly, says; young Black people today should fol- who remained in the rural and urban South. of people who were killed in the very sui- timeless. In examining the anatomy of rad- low their blueprint. A strength of “The Devil You Know” is cide bombings he helped coordinate in icalism, Khadra shows that all forms of ex- Seeing Georgia flip blue in the 2020 elec- its affirmation of Black Americans as a for- Paris. This is not the only case of an “en- tremism, whether political, religious or midable political bloc with whom the na- giner hoist with his own petard,” as Shake- otherwise, stem from the same source: a TANISHA C. FORD is a professor of history at the tion must reckon. The book is a helpful in- speare would put it; this becomes some- refusal to see things from an opposing Graduate Center of the City University of New troduction for those seeking to make sense thing of a motif in the novel. Later, Khalil point of view. For Khalil and many others York and the author of “Dressed in Dreams: of fractious political debates about race who feel called to commit atrocities in the A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of and voting rights in the South, and the bro- HELON HABILA is the author, most recently, of name of a higher cause, the outcome is Fashion.” ken promises of American democracy. 0 “Travelers.” only tragedy. 0

16 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES In the Mango Orchard A book about India’s rape culture ends up telling a bigger story.

caring for small children and the needs of and their friends refuse to let the bodies be By NINA BURLEIGH men. “The women sweated over fires and cut down. Someone — the girls’ uncle, it labored over small errands,” Faleiro turned out — removes the cellphone from IN 2012, a gang of men set upon and horrifi- writes. “There was a button to thread, a Padma’s bra before the police can get to it. cally raped a female student on a bus in broken slipper to twist into a knot, nits to Lalli’s father later admits to destroying it. New Delhi. The crime made international comb out, wicker fans to wipe clean. The Hardly anyone wonders why their slippers news and provoked national protests that men were out, smoking beedis and talking are not “strewn on the ground” beneath led to some changes in the laws. But Indian among themselves.” The women pick up the dangling bodies; instead they are side women with big dreams were on notice the slack. At night, they sleep on dirt while by side, a “precise and delicate placement” anyway. Seven years on, the Indian Na- the men lounge in hammocks. against the base of the tree, “upright as tional Crime Records Bureau logged an av- The MacGuffin in this mystery is the stems of wheat.” erage 88 rape charges a day. iPhone that one of the girls — an orphan The bodies stay up for a day and a night. Sonia Faleiro set out to examine India’s living with relatives — has received as a The crowd surges and wanes. Journalists rape culture, but what she ended up reveal- gift. They hover over its alluring light in arrive with cameras. Politicians come and ing was something even more mundane stolen moments between chores, using it to go, harvesting potential votes. Finally the and terrifying. make plans for after dark, when they bodies are cut down and subjected to a In May 2014, photographs of two sneak off, with the excuse of having to re- post-mortem unlike any ever covered in lit- teenage girls hanging from a tree in a lieve themselves (there are no toilets, so erature: conducted by a former janitor in mango orchard landed in Indian headlines everyone squats in the fields). There in the the ruins of a half-built government build- and on social media. The girls’ deaths were mango orchard, the older one starts hav- ing, with a market-bought butcher knife quickly assumed to have had something to ing sex with a lower-caste boy from a town for a scalpel, rinsed in a bucket of water do with sexual assault. across the field. These assignations are ar- hauled in from an outdoor spigot. Faleiro, who was born in India and lives ranged by cellphone — including a cell- Back home with the girls’ extended fam- in London, drove more than six hours from phone that unbeknown to either of them is ily, misogyny is so deep that Lalli’s griev- the nearest airport to the village of Katra in surreptitiously recording everything, per ing mother is not invited to go to the Hindu the orders of the younger girl’s father. burial ceremony — per custom, she doesn’t THE GOOD GIRLS This story is at heart a tale of stymied even ask. She goes into a semi-catatonic An Ordinary Killing sexuality and buried secrets. It will sur- state in the courtyard, only returning to By Sonia Faleiro prise no one that honor matters among this herself a few years later, revived by a ru- 352 pp. Grove Press. $26. impoverished caste; nor will it surprise mor the two girls have been reincarnated that there were watchers. in a set of identical twins a few villages Times Style. “They shouldn’t be out in public with a over. Presenting the Uttar Pradesh, an agricultural region of In- mobile phone,” one of the watchers, a gov- “The Good Girls” is a puzzle with a sur- contemporary collection dia that abuts Nepal, to find out what hap- ernment teacher and farmer, observes to prise at the end. It’s a riveting, terrible tale, of apparel from pened. one of the girls’ relatives. “Who knows who one all too common, but Faleiro’s gorgeous The New York Times Store. The story she weaves in exquisite lan- they’re talking to?” prose makes it bearable. She concludes, guage is as tragic and ugly as it is engross- “Reputation was skin,” Faleiro writes of “What I had come to learn was this — that ing. the community. while the Delhi bus rape had shown just In life, the tiny girls hanging from the how deadly public places were for women, tree by their colorful scarves had been so THE EVENTS OF the night the girls died are the story of Padma and Lalli revealed inseparable that their families and tiny related by a cast of dubious witnesses, se- something more terrible still — that an In- community elided their names and called cretive family members and drunken and dian woman’s first challenge was surviv- them as one. Because of India’s rape laws, abusive police officers, all of whom Faleiro ing her own home.” their names can’t be published, so Faleiro interviews and brings to life on the page. This feminist document looks straight at uses the pseudonyms Padma and Lalli. One of the lying eyewitnesses, she writes, men’s twisted obsession with controlling “Padma Lalli,” as she calls them, were “was coming apart like overripe fruit” be- female sexuality. From Saudi Arabia to cousins, “alike as two grains of rice,” who fore dawn broke over the hanging tree. Washington, D.C., where brutal enforce- spent all day in the fields before coming When the girls are found, the villagers ment is veiled only by wealth and privi- home to sleep in the compound of their ex- overrun the crime scene. Female relatives lege, the story remains the same. 0 tended family. Their grandmother is “whispers and bones in a widow’s white sari.” The girls are hard workers. Every morn- ing, as the sun climbs in the sky, they rise to a day of chores: tending the family hearths, lighting dung cakes. They heat oil and knead dough and cook rotis, then trudge in noonday heat into the mint fields to feed family members. They come home and scrub dishes with soap made of wood ash. They go off with the goats and return to milk the buffalo. They pump water to fill buckets. They sweep the dusty courtyard over and over and over again. Their mothers are also tireless laborers,

NINA BURLEIGH is an author, journalist, lecturer and feminist cultural critic. Her next book is “Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hi- store.nytimes.com jacking of America’s Response to the Pan- 800.671.4332 demic.” People gather at the mango tree where victims were found hanging in 2014.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BURHAAN KINU/HINDUSTAN TIMES, VIA GETTY IMAGES + THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 17 Feeding Frenzy A sweeping history of our sources of food, tracking the shift from agriculture to agribusiness.

standardized monoculture was that scien- By TED GENOWAYS tists and researchers became allied not with farmers but with bankers, equipment MARK BITTMAN’S LATEST book arrives at a manufacturers, and sellers of seeds and Now momentous time. In the opening weeks of chemicals.” his term, President Biden has not only re- This is a keen insight — and it points to Read joined the Paris climate accord, announced what may be Bittman’s greatest strength. new emissions reduction targets, and can- He doesn’t lapse into the polemic of some celed permits to build the Keystone XL policy wonks who too often want to make This pipeline and drill in the Arctic National every error seem foreseeable or the prod- Wildlife Refuge, but also made climate uct of some unforgivable flaw. His careful change an essential consideration in for- delineation of the difference between the eign policy and national security, directed ignorant and ruthlessly statist food poli- federal agencies to invest in communities cies of Joseph Stalin and the American- of color that are bearing the brunt of cli- style “laissez-faire attitude toward un- mate change, and promised to address the checked corporatization,” for example, is impact of this crisis on immigration and extremely welcome. Likewise, he recog- A new book the economy. nizes that the development of canned food But there is at least one area where Bi- and later fast food was an outgrowth of the club from PBS den’s climate critics remain skeptical: his increasing importance of women in the NewsHour and approach to reforming the food system. workplace after World War II and the large The New York Tom Vilsack, the nominee to head the De- numbers of middle- and upper-class wom- Times. en who were, for the first time, “doing the ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, JUNK majority of domestic labor themselves.” A History of Food, From These nuances not only allow us to ap- Sustainable to Suicidal proach policy issues with more complexity, By Mark Bittman they also temper our moral certainty. By 384 pp. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. $28. A farmer at work in a potato field. the time Bittman reaches his final section, simply titled “Change,” he has earned the right to damn the evident flaws of our sys- partment of Agriculture, is not just a hold- In particular, his rendering of the early tem. He has the wisdom not to dwell on the over from the era of Barack Obama but a mechanization of the American farm is shortsighted ambition that brought us Clinton-style, pro-corporate moderate. Vil- epic and engrossing. We feel swept up in here but rather to offer an equally even- sack has promised to tap the U.S.D.A.’s the promise and possibility of all that new handed assessment of several failed at- Commodity Credit Corporation to encour- technology, so much so that the turn from tempts to undo our errors. “Humans’ im- age sustainable and climate-conscious agriculture to agribusiness, though we growing methods, but he has said little know it’s coming, still delivers a crushing about how he plans to convince farmers blow. “It wasn’t an entirely cynical ‘You can’t talk about agriculture and ranchers in threadbare and dying ru- process, and some might even call it an in- without talking about the ral communities that now is the time for nocent one,” Bittman writes, but “intended environment.’ big change. or not, the tragic result of the push to So Bittman’s “Animal, Vegetable, Junk,” a comprehensive treatise on humanity’s pact on the environment is often uninten- relationship to food, matches our moment tional and unforeseen,” Bittman writes, — evincing a necessary sense of urgency “but we must still recognize it and act ac- but also making no bones about the chal- cordingly.” In the end, he arrives at a place lenge before us. “You can’t talk about agri- that may be familiar to readers of Michael culture without talking about the envi- Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Raj ronment,” he writes. “You can’t talk about Patel’s “Stuffed and Starved” or Tom animal welfare without talking about the Philpott’s recent “Perilous Bounty” — that welfare of food workers, and you can’t talk the only solution is to focus on sustainabili- Join us every month as about food workers without talking about ty. we choose a book to read income inequality, racism and immigra- Still, I’m freshly persuaded by Bittman’s together as a nation. Tune tion.” Every issue touches another. framing. The food system, he notes, isn’t in to PBS NewsHour to Just recognizing the awe-inspiring scale broken. In fact, it works almost perfectly watch an interview with of the problem has persuaded most writers for large seed and chemical companies, the authors. to take on some narrower slice and go and it “also works well enough for around a deep. But Bittman clearly relishes the mad third of the world’s people, for whom food Find reading worth talking ambition of his undertaking (“perhaps too simply appears, to be eaten at will.” But about — join the club. ambitious,” he says in a sly aside, “you’ll be that means that change will be resisted by nytimes.com/nowreadthis the judge of that”), often buoying the those with the most power and will be in- reader across waves of information with convenient for the majority of Americans the sheer momentum of his narrative. If it too. feels a bit breathless at first, Bittman set- So it’s going to require some poetry in tles into his story soon enough, delivering the early stages of mobilizing the public, a clear and compelling compendium of and then, it’s going to require an equal modern agriculture. measure of bold and sure-footed action. As Bittman clearly shows, we don’t have the TED GENOWAYS is the author, most recently, of luxury of making well-meaning missteps “This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an or settling for half-measures. The time for American Family Farm.” Food in bottles, cans, boxes and bags. big change is now. 0

18 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 PHOTOGRAPHS, FROM TOP: CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/GETTY IMAGES; DANIEL ACKER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES Essay / Heroines of Self-Hate / By Lucinda Rosenfeld What’s with all the female literary characters who can’t stand themselves?

FOR GENERATIONS, Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary and milieus, it’s far less clear why this latest batch of What’s more, the male characters don’t always com- have loomed as the nonpareils of self-loathing literary self-loathers, blessed with social and sexual freedom that ply. Neither the married lover in “Conversations With heroines. For Anna, guilt over having abandoned her would have been unimaginable to their forebears, are so Friends,” nor Marianne’s sensitive boyfriend in “Normal husband and child, paired with a jealous nature, compels racked with self-disgust and hellbent on hurting them- People,” is willing to strike the heroine, despite her re- her to destroy the love she shares with Count Vronsky — selves. quests. And when Marianne’s creepy artist lover admits and head for the train tracks. For Emma, dumped by a Of course, the human condition is a trying business, he has feelings for her, she departs in apparent disgust. conscience-free bachelor with whom she has an extra- regardless of one’s sociological data points. Yet it’s hard So, too, Moshfegh’s emotionally detached narrator marital affair — and unable to repay the debts she ac- not to notice that these protagonists are all young, intel- seems unfazed by the experience of being “used” for sex. crues on account of her shopping addiction — a spoonful ligent, attractive and, with the exception of Edie, white About her ex-boyfriend, she says, “One time he said he of arsenic ultimately beckons. and well off. Readers might be forgiven for wondering was afraid of [expletive] me ‘too passionately’ because Lately, however, Tolstoy and Flaubert have had stiff what the matter is. he didn’t want to break my heart. So he [expletive] me competition on the self-harm front, thanks to women The motives that Rooney ascribes to her alter egos efficiently, selfishly, and when he was done, he’d get novelists intent on exploring their female characters’ range from the ravages of “late capitalism” (Frances) to dressed and check his pager, comb his hair, kiss my propensity to act out their unhappiness on their bodies. familial physical abuse and being a dork in high school forehead and leave.” The 20-something protagonists of Sally Rooney’s two (Marianne). Because none of these ideas are fully devel- It’s as if the protagonists of these novels, faced with novels ask their lovers to hit them in bed. Frances, of oped, none are entirely convincing. Broder posits Ra- the choice between being their own worst enemies or “Conversations With Friends” (2017), a college student chel’s parents as the cause of her eating disorder and men’s victims, have all chosen the former. And it’s not and aspiring poet, also scratches, pinches and gouges cratered self-esteem. When she starves herself to the hard to imagine that the books’ legions of female read- her skin. “I felt that I was a damaged person who de- ers might prefer it that way. For one thing, the stance served nothing,” she muses, describing her body as renders those same men almost beside the point. “It “garbage.” Marianne, in “Normal People” (2019), sabo- turned out that a person could miss someone she had tages the love she shares with a sensitive classmate in never met, except in her imagination,” Andersson writes favor of, first, a rich guy who mistreats her and, later, a of her hyper-aware heroine’s pre-emptively obsessive creepy artist who takes nude pictures of her in degrad- longing for a guy who neither knows her nor (later) ing positions and does “gruesome” things to her during wants her. sex. This is all apparently because Marianne regards The attitude also makes for an interesting contrast herself as “a bad person, corrupted, wrong,” and “all her with that struck by Judith Rossner’s best-selling 1975 efforts to be right, to have the right opinions, to say the novel, “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” another book featuring right things . . . only disguise what is buried inside her, female self-destruction. Loosely based on an actual mur- the evil part of herself.” Similarly, Edie, the self-de- der case, the novel features a Bronx-reared school- scribed “office slut” in Raven Leilani’s debut, “Luster” teacher named Theresa who is burdened with a limp, a (2020), encourages her married lover to shove and complication of childhood polio. Like her contemporary punch her, and sticks a samurai sword into her hand. fictional counterparts, Theresa regards herself as dam- Meanwhile, in Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest aged and therefore unworthy not only of love but of life: and Relaxation” (2018), the unnamed young narrator “How could they not believe it would have been better for abuses her body with sleeping pills and tranquilizers in her to have died the first time she was ill instead of turn- an attempt to spend the bulk of her waking hours — ing into whom she had?” asleep. “Besides sleeping, what do you want out of life?” Theresa’s self-esteem issues become entangled with her best friend asks her during a rare moment of sen- the sexual revolution, which provides justification for her tience. “I chose to ignore her sarcasm,” the narrator fear of being tied down. Her attempts at self-protective reports. “‘I wanted to be an artist, but I had no talent,’ I NAJEEBAH AL-GHADBAN noncommitment go increasingly awry, however, begin- told her.” Soon enough, she falls unconscious again. ning with a humiliating affair with her married college And in Melissa Broder’s “Milk Fed” (2021), Rachel, an professor. Later, Theresa ends up rejecting the kindly underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency, point of no longer menstruating, her mother insists, lawyer who wants to marry her in favor of anonymous goes from starving herself to gorging on junk food. This “Anorexics are much skinnier than you,” adding: “They sexual escapades with unvetted strangers she picks up in transformation is set in motion when Rachel falls in love look like concentration camp victims. They have to be dive bars. As we learn in the novel’s first few pages, one with a plus-size frozen yogurt server — and begins to hospitalized. You aren’t anorexic.” of those strangers is a bona fide psychopath who bludg- release her fear of “spinning out into infinity, a nothing, a In “My Year of Rest and Relaxation,” Moshfegh resists eons her to death. blob, so big I could be seen only in fragments, so un- providing any explanation for her narrator’s desire to But even without the foreshadowing of her violent wieldy I could never be held, just an overwhelming void, slumber away her life. Readers learn details of her com- demise, Theresa seems vulnerable and helpless in male just devastated, just dead.” fortable if unfulfilling existence. But they’re delivered in company in a way that today’s fictional self-loathers do Finally, in the Swedish novel “Willful Disregard” such a deadpan way that the novel reads less as a char- not — maybe because the latter all seem like experts on (2016), by Lena Andersson, Ester, a brainy 30-ish writer acter study than as an absurdist parable about the im- their own dysfunction and therefore in control even when who is not so much self-loathing as self-defeating, leaves possibility of human connection in the modern world. out of control. Rossner depicts Theresa as “dizzy,” “fright- her live-in boyfriend to pursue an arrogant older artist. I wonder whether, in some larger sense, these books ened,” “upset” and “endangered,” yet unable to make Never mind that the artist makes it clear that his amo- reflect discomfort with current liberal-left shibboleths sense of her own tears. What’s changed in 45 years? The rous interests lie elsewhere. Ester’s unanswered texts to regarding “the patriarchy.” Both the hugely successful mainstreaming of “therapy” — a subject played for him are likely to send a chill of pained recognition “Normal People” and “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” laughs in both “Milk Fed” and “My Year of Rest and through any reader who has sacrificed self-respect in came out at the height of the #MeToo movement. Yet the Relaxation” in the form of wacky and unprofessional pursuit of some mirage of love or desirability. flood of news stories depicting powerful men abusing shrinks whom the narrators outwit — may be the deci- But where Anna and Emma can be seen as prisoners their positions to prey on naïve and unsuspecting young sive factor. of the oppressive gender roles of their respective eras women in their employ are a far cry from the sexual In the final pages of “Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” The- worldview of these novels. In both, the young female resa contemplates seeking professional help. In a plot LUCINDA ROSENFELD is the author of five novels, including “What protagonists insist on their agency — even if it’s the point almost unimaginable today, her life is cut short She Saw . . . ” and “Class.” agency to seek out their own debasement. before she ever makes it onto the couch. 0

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 19 You Reap What You Sow The Book Review Podcast

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 the course of 360 pages, the constant re- in the real world, be it by the shores of West turns to this collective voice become a bit Africa or in the sinking oil country of south- We speak its wildly unlikely but inspiring defeat. cumbersome. Describing individuals ern Louisiana. So authentically does Mbue I was wrong. What carries Mbue’s dec- within their group, the children use the render the plain hypocrisy of corporate to the books ades-spanning fable of power and corrup- awkward phrase “our age-mate” so often double-speak that it sometimes becomes tion is something much less clear-cut, and that eventually I couldn’t not notice it. At difficult to tell whether even Pexton’s own that speak what starts as a David-and-Goliath story times, the individual and collective narra- employees believe any of the things slowly transforms into a nuanced explora- tors seem to step on each other’s toes, cov- they’re saying. At one point in the novel, to you. tion of self-interest, of what it means to ering the same events and recollections in after an American activist group decides to want in the age of capitalism and colonial- a manner more repetitive than it is illumi- sue the oil company in order to force it to ism — these machines of malicious, insa- nating. clean up Kosawa’s land and water, a Pex- tiable wanting. But these are minor quibbles, and easily ton executive comes to visit the village Not long after the villagers of Kosawa overlooked given the novel’s incisive ap- with an offer. The company, he says, has kidnap Pexton’s representatives, a group peal to the reader’s empathy. Mbue is mas- decided to give the villagers a share of the of national soldiers show up asking ques- terly at shading in the spaces where greed profits it makes off their land, though he tions about their whereabouts. It’s one of and guilt intermingle: the loneliness that can’t quite say what the exact percentage the narrative’s first — and least violent — follows a spouse’s early death, and on its will be. “You have to remember, Pexton confrontations between the state and the heels the secret desire to be touched again; has a lot of people who want its money,” he village, and an introduction to the myriad the wavering between whether to fight the says. “The government in America wants ways in which Kosawa’s residents must Americans or take their money. Like Car- some of it. The government here wants scheme in order to avoid the wrath of their share. All the people who work a government that would think noth- for Pexton, they need their monthly ing of wiping them out altogether. In salaries. But your share is also very the months and years that follow, the important, because together we in- villagers try everything they can habit this valley, and we must do so think of to get the oil company off peacefully.” The executive then says their land. They meet with an Ameri- his employer would be happy to offer can journalist, hoping that an article the villagers advice on what to do with might change public (i.e., Western) their newfound wealth, such as use it sentiment in their favor; they travel to move somewhere else. to the capital to plead with the na- In her widely acclaimed 2016 debut, Hosted by Pamela Paul. tional government; they consider “Behold the Dreamers,” Mbue teth- taking up arms. ered the story of Cameroonian immi- “The Book Review” In Kosawa, Mbue has created a grants to a specific time and place podcast leads the place and a people alive with emo- (the 2008 recession in New York conversation on tional range. There is no consensus City). “How Beautiful We Were” has noteworthy books among the villagers about what to do few such anchors. America in general, — whether to free their Pexton hos- and New York specifically, appear and the authors who tages after one falls severely ill; both up close and from a great dis- write them. whether to lie to the soldiers; tance (the children of Kosawa learn The praise, the whether to take the oilmen’s money; from their teacher that America is a whether to buy guns. The central Imbolo Mbue place where people live in brick disagreements, the moral and philosophical conflict of houses and mash their potatoes be- protests, the prizes. this novel boils down to one between fore eating them with things called Join us for the latest those willing to trust Pexton to do what’s olina de Robertis’s “Cantoras” or Huzama “ferks”). But for the most part the novel in criticism and right, those who want to solicit the support Habayeb’s “Velvet,” “How Beautiful We takes place in an invented setting, and al- of well-meaning American activists and Were” charts the ways repression, be it at though it begins in 1980, time becomes in- discussion, featuring those who see no difference between the the hands of a government or a corporation creasingly malleable as the narrative goes Times editors and the two. “Someday, when you’re old, you’ll see or a society, can turn the most basic human on. biggest authors in the that the ones who came to kill us and the needs into radical and radicalizing acts. In There are a lot of structural elements to literary world today. ones who’ll run to save us are the same,” one of the novel’s more understated and keep track of, and to her credit, Mbue does Konga says. “No matter their pretenses, moving sections, Thula’s grandmother, more than just duct-tape them together. It they all arrive here believing they have the now nearing the end of her life, admits her is profoundly affecting to watch the surviv- power to take from us or give to us what- one regret about her marriage is having ing children who were present for the first ever will satisfy their endless wants.” adopted her husband’s predilection for sor- meeting with Pexton grow older over the The story unfolds in the alternating row; she wishes she’d laughed more. “Why decades, until they become parents and points of view of individual villagers — the did this world become amusing,” she asks, then grandparents, relating stories about most fully realized of whom is Thula, a “only when I realized I was about to leave what the village used to be. The elegiac young girl who eventually becomes a it?” register that runs through the entire narra- guide for Kosawa’s resistance movement Indifferent to these appeals to humanity, tive finds its best fit here in this wider arc, — and a chorus of children. At their best, to the human consequences of its actions in charting the negative spaces of these lives, the choral chapters have an impact similar and around Kosawa, the oil conglomerate, all the things the children could have been to the collective voice of the seaborne Pexton, becomes another of Mbue’s and done were they not engaged in a life- brides in Julie Otsuka’s “The Buddha in the sharply drawn characters. The way that long battle to keep a foreigner from split- Attic,” a sense of hardship dispensed en indifference clashes so jarringly against ting open their land for profit. In this way masse yet suffered individually. But over Pexton’s public-relations offensive — its the novel can be seen as a meditation on a Download now at: many hollow declarations of support for question one villager asks toward the end, nytimes.com/TBRpodcast OMAR EL-AKKAD is the author of “American the village and the loved ones of the dead a question that might just contain its own War.” His next novel, “What Strange Para- — will ring instantly familiar to anyone answer: “Why do humans fight when we dise,” will be published in July. who’s ever witnessed these machinations all want the same things?” 0

20 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 PHOTOGRAPH BY KIRIKO SANO Private Transit Insignificant Others In North Carolina, fates change because of a busing initiative. Short stories about casual relationships and life’s tensions.

bad skin populate the stories. Sometimes By BRANDON TAYLOR it’s to useful effect, as in “Over Boy,” when the narrator reflects: “For him, who had MICHAEL LOWENTHAL’S NEW story col- been a young beauty, beauty was youth, lection, “Sex With Strangers,” is nimble in and as he drifted farther from his own its particulars. The stories take place in ideal, he felt doomed.” But just as often, gay clubs, on cruises, along beautiful Lowenthal’s narrators linger on the beaches and in humble small-town burned skin and the “sauerkraut hair” and kitchens. His characters are men and tacky makeup of the secondary and tertia- women, gay and straight, at home and ry characters, as though a lack of remark- abroad, beautiful and less beautiful than able beauty were a moral failing. I found they once were. There’s an ease to his sto- myself thinking while reading these rytelling, too. Nothing feels strained, and stories, “OK, he’s not hot, but he still has to the stories slow down and speed up until get up in the morning.” And the women their climaxes arrive with a weirdly dead- fare worse than the men, with descriptions ening ambivalence. like “the skin below her eyes looks like This is a collection about relationships, dough that’s risen and been punched with ourselves and with others. The open- down.” ing story, “Over Boy,” takes us into the fa- In the early 2000s, there was something miliar bump-and-grind of a gay club as a particularly fatalistic about the onset of THERRIOUS DAVIS man, partying on his 29th birthday, grap- one’s 30s for gay men. It seemed to per- ples with the angst of growing older. In the vade much of queer popular culture, that to long and mildly enervating “You Are turn 30 marked the sharp drop in one’s val- them.” At its heart, “What’s Mine and Here,” a newly ordained priest, Father By LAUREN FRANCIS-SHARMA Yours” is a coming-of-age story — one that, Tim, spends his first weeks on the job sta- in its foreground, examines the unraveling tioned on a cruise ship and finds himself at IT IS 1992 WHEN Naima Coster’s sophomore of marriages, complexities of siblinghood odds with his role in the clergy when he en- novel, “What’s Mine and Yours,” opens in and reckonings with parents. Beneath it all the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina. Two lie tragedy and myriad loves that are SEX WITH STRANGERS men, smoking cigarettes outside an empty tender and rich and fraught. Stories cafe, share the stories of their families. At times, with its shifting points of view, By Michael Lowenthal Though their chat seems little more than this multigenerational saga can become 149 pp. University of Wisconsin Press. Paper, “15 minutes of smoking and standing to- somewhat unwieldy. There are few sur- $17.95. gether,” it is through this brief but candid prises. And yet, in this predictability — exchange that we come to share two fa- where the narration depicts the unavoidable thers’ dreams for four children who will be messiness of adolescence — Coster portrays counters an old flame while also trying to brought together by the impending misfor- her characters’ worlds with startling vitality. counsel a married woman through a queer tunes of these very men. As the children fall in lust and love, grapple awakening. There’s the off-kilter kitchen After a harrowing and gut-wrenching with angst and battle the tides of New South drama “Uncle Kent,” in which a woman opening chapter, we discover Gee, a con- politics, Coster’s writing shines. Its witty and worries her young daughter might be templative and grieving Black boy living cutting dialogue is reminiscent of an early drawing the lascivious attention of the titu- with two steely women who have chosen to Gloria Naylor, and the dynamics of sis- lar Kent, a family friend and father figure. terhood are not unlike the works of Julia Al- Then we have a handful of lukewarm set- Michael Lowenthal WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS varez. Sentences slice through the story’s in- piece stories, including the tepid By Naima Coster efficiencies to offer us lushness like: “She “Thieves,” which takes place at a resort as 352 pp. Grand Central Publishing. $28. was all muscle and fat, gray haired, her face a middle-aged gay man in an open mar- painted in a different palette of bright colors riage thinks reproachful thoughts about ue on the meat market. Youth and beauty love him despite not loving each other. Gee every morning. She brought in with her the his own body. had a kind of moral force. This theme domi- masturbates compulsively — and the com- scent of perfume and hair oil, a pair of shears The stories are studded with memorable nates the stories in “Sex With Strangers,” pulsion only worsens when he finds him- sticking out of her purse.” flashes of brilliant writing and stunning sometimes successfully, as in “Over Boy,” self in the midst of a school busing dispute It is 2018 when the four children come to- details. A scene of a character’s night out, which seems keenly aware of the limita- where he will be emotionally terrorized, gether again in North Carolina. Though Gee for instance, offers this meditation on the tions of such a vision of the world. But more not only by new classmates and their par- and Noelle now inhabit the same upper-mid- nature of club culture: “The generations of often than not, Lowenthal’s gaze seems to ents, but by his own mother, who pushes in dle-class world, the gulf created by child- club kids succeeded themselves as rapidly delight scornfully in his characters’ physi- all the wrong ways. hoods marked by both loss and the wear of a as lab mice.” There are also moments of cal flaws. On the other side of town, Gee’s class- daunting double-consciousness seems too genuine human connection, such as when Then there’s the back-story issue. These mate Noelle, a biracial Latina who passes wide for any of them to risk crossing, even Father Tim wrestles with his responsibility stories are absolutely bloated with flash- for white, has been forced into a home with for love. It is in this space between them to a new charge: “Can he condemn her backs. Some of the stories are little more her mother’s new lover. The relationships where Coster, who writes with unflinching thrill in a change he, too, has felt? She’s just than underdeveloped vignettes swimming between her mother and the two men she romance, wills us to examine all the ways we described — better than he’s ever man- in oceans of backfill. Lowenthal spends recklessly and unequally loves shape the come to unlove our beloveds, our families aged to — the centripetal force of opening pages establishing the starting conditions dysfunction that develops between Noelle and ourselves. One might be tempted, in the himself to God, when suddenly he started of his stories. It almost feels like an epiph- and her sisters. If Noelle isn’t careful, it face of such examination, to believe in the living at life’s hub.” any until you realize that what the reader could infect all her relationships. power of redemption and the possibility of an Lowenthal is a sensitive chronicler of has just learned has been known by the Oscar Wilde once wrote, “Children begin enduring home. the tensions that animate a life. But there’s characters all along. It has the hollow thrill by loving their parents; as they grow older In the closing half of Coster’s story, one also a mean streak running through the of close-up magic, and it’s frustrating be- they judge them; sometimes they forgive of the children returns home to a waiting book. Sagging bodies and limp hair and cause Lowenthal is clearly such a skilled mother who refuses to “loosen her hold,” and sensitive storyteller. One wishes he LAUREN FRANCIS-SHARMA is the author of “’Til and one can’t help wondering if Wilde had BRANDON TAYLOR is the author of “Real Life” had used his considerable gifts to develop the Well Runs Dry” and “Book of the Little it wrong — if perhaps children can both be- and the upcoming story collection “Filthy his conflicts rather than spend his time Axe.” gin and end with loving their parents. 0 Animals.” clearing his throat and setting them up. 0

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL SALERNO THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 21 Children’s Books / Greek Mythology Ancient Souls A spoiled girl and an enslaved boy share an immutable connection.

Rhaskos are soon connected in a way they clean the body after exercise), some By NATALIE HAYNES don’t realize: Unbeknown to Rhaskos, his painted vases. They’re accompanied by mother has been sold to Melisto’s family museum exhibit cards, to give the reader THE AMBER IN Laura Amy Schlitz’s confi- and become her nurse. information about what they depict. dent, playful historical novel is Melisto, a Both children are powerless about their Schlitz ably conveys children’s wordless girl born in fifth-century B.C. Athens to a futures — Melisto because she is young emotions, like the feeling of not really rich father who adores her and a mother and female, Rhaskos because he is en- wanting to do something destructive but who does not. The clay is Rhaskos, a Thra- slaved. Melisto is chosen to leave home not being able to stop yourself. When cian boy whose mother is enslaved and and serve the goddess Artemis; Rhaskos Melisto smashes her new terracotta doll who therefore is enslaved himself. Once, is sold without warning to a potter in because she is angry with her mother, her when he was a small child, she sneaked Athens when his master, Menon, grows rage is palpable: “She was bad even to her- him into a storeroom and opened a jar of weary of him. They each experience terri- self. She crooked her elbow over her face fying physical violence: Melisto has and sobbed.” Later, she finds herself the AMBER & CLAY clumps of her hair torn out and is pushed friend and protector of an irritating young- Then lightning strikes as she dances with a By Laura Amy Schlitz down a flight of stairs by her mother; er girl, who wants to share a riddle with bear she’s freed from sacrifice and her Illustrated by Julia Iredale Rhaskos has his nose broken twice by their other friends. Melisto refuses: “Elpis nurse sets in motion a chain of events that 544 pp. Candlewick. $22.99. Menon. was a nuisance; Melisto had accepted that, will tie together Melisto’s and Rhaskos’s (Ages 10 to 14) Schlitz (“The Hired Girl”) is a Newbery but she wasn’t about to share her.” story lines at last. Medal winner, and hops from one style to The Acropolis acts as compass and in- Curious typographical decisions mean another with tremendous skill. The story is spiration to Rhaskos and Melisto, as they that some Greek words are printed in the honey for him to taste. “My time with my told partly in verse and partly in prose; the lead their separate lives, amid the noise Greek alphabet, some names are translit- mother was like that,” he notes, “golden voice alternates between first person and and stench of Athens. Rhaskos even man- erated (Akhilleus for Achilles) and others and secret / and over too soon.” third person, with the gods — Hermes in ages to befriend Socrates. Schlitz reveals are given in their usual English form Although they live in very different particular — stepping in as occasional what her keenest Platonist readers might (Apollo). Oddly, one is shifted into Angli- worlds and haven’t met, Melisto and choruses to the action. already have guessed: Rhaskos is the cized modern Greek: The town of Laurium The text is complemented by Julia slave with whom Socrates discusses geom- becomes Lavrion. NATALIE HAYNES is the author of “Pandora’s Iredale’s delightful illustrations of imagi- etry in Plato’s “Meno” dialogue. But this shouldn’t deter Schlitz’s readers Jar: Women in the Greek Myths,” as well as nary archaeological finds: an ostracon (or When Melisto leaves the city to join the from time-traveling to ancient Athens and three Greek-themed novels. pottery shard), a strigil (or scraper used to Artemis cult, the pace of the novel slows. joining her adventure. 0 Hanging With the Mythbusters Being mortal at Mount Olympus Junior High is easier if you get to sit at the cool kids’ table.

this dream job isn’t local. She’s going to en realizes Zed is none other than Zeus, By GEORGE O’CONNOR have to relocate for a while, which means king of the gods, and she herself by exten- Karen will need to stay with her father. sion is a demigoddess. The Mythbusters, FAMILIES CAN BE a tricky business. Just “You want me to go live with Zed?!” Kar- by the way, turn out to be actual Olympian ask Karen, the protagonist of “Oh My en screams, clearly not thrilled. Karen’s gods — immortality lasts a loooong time, Gods!,” the new graphic novel by Steph- dad, it turns out, hasn’t been a steady pres- so to alleviate boredom the gods choose to anie Cooke, Insha Fitzpatrick and Juliana ence in her life. He visits only on holidays, be reborn periodically as kids. Moon. On the surface, Karen is pretty and even then only weird ones no one has The rest of the plot hinges on which much a typical 13-year-old girl: She plays heard of, like Panathena. But Karen is a mythological creature is turning students sweet kid, so she soon finds herself on a to stone. In this era of Percy Jackson, most OH MY GODS! trans-Atlantic flight from New Jersey to readers will be able to see the major twists Written by Stephanie Cooke Mount Olympus, in Greece. from a mile away, but there are still lots of and Insha Fitzpatrick If you think you know where this is head- smaller details to parse out. Illustrated by Juliana Moon ing, you’re not wrong. Karen, however, And there is a lot to recommend in “Oh 208 pp. Etch/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. stays blissfully, improbably unaware. The Hera runs the main office and a barely dis- My Gods!” The dialogue and characteriza- $24.99. clues are subtle at first — did that flight at- guised Zed is the principal. In a clever cafe- tions are spot on and snappy. Kudos also to (Ages 8 to 12) tendant have ram’s horns? — but credulity teria scene we meet the school’s various Juliana Moon’s cartooning. Her artwork is is thoroughly strained when Zed meets his cliques: the jocks (the Titans), the mean immensely engaging — filled with expres- daughter at the airport in a chariot pulled girls (the Fates), even Jeff (“Wait, who’s sive, appealing faces and a wide variety of video games, texts constantly and is close by winged horses. “Whatever you paid for Jeff?” “He’s, like, super into pancakes”). body shapes and sizes. to her mother. Speaking of which, Karen’s these horse costumes is too much!” Karen It’s here that Karen finds her own crew, the While the mystery may be slight, read- mom has just been asked to curate a tells a visibly confused Zed. Mythbusters: compassionate Dita, studi- ers will be happy to know the Mount Olym- gallery show, and to contribute a piece of The weirdness continues at her new ous Tina, cute guy Pol and his twin, the no- pus Junior High world building hasn’t been artwork. The only downside is that, well, school, Mount Olympus Junior High. A stu- nonsense archer Artemis. for naught. On the last page, a lost student dent named Hermes takes Karen on a tour. If “Oh My Gods!” has a fault, it’s that its discovers a maze guarded by a bullheaded GEORGE O’CONNOR’S many graphic novels “We’re like one big happy family!” he says, lead character ventures a bit too far into man in the school’s basement. I think we all include the Olympians series, a retelling of moving so quickly he seems to be in multi- Amelia Bedelia obtuseness. It’s not until know where that’s going, but when the classic Greek myths in comics form. ple places at once. The Muses are teachers, nearly halfway through the book that Kar- journey is this fun, why knock it? 0

22 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 For the complete best-seller lists, visit Best Sellers nytimes.com/books/best-sellers

COMBINED PRINT AND E-BOOK BEST SELLERS SALES PERIOD OF FEBRUARY 21-27

THIS LAST WEEKS THIS LAST WEEKS WEEK WEEK Fiction ON LIST WEEK WEEK Nonfiction ON LIST 1 2 THE FOUR WINDS, by Kristin Hannah. (St. Martin’s) As dust storms roll during the Great 4 1 1 HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER, by Bill Gates. (Knopf) A prescription for what 2 Depression, Elsa must choose between saving the family and farm or heading West. business, governments and individuals can do to work toward zero emissions.

2 3 FIREFLY LANE, by Kristin Hannah. (St. Martin’s Griffin) A friendship between two women 6 2 10 THINK AGAIN, by Adam Grant. (Viking) An examination of the cognitive skills of rethinking 4 in the Pacific Northwest endures for more than three decades. and unlearning that could be used to adapt to a rapidly changing world.

3 THE KAISER’S WEB, by Steve Berry. (Minotaur) The 16th book in the Cotton Malone 1 3 8 GREENLIGHTS, by Matthew McConaughey. (Crown) The Academy Award-winning actor 19 series. A newly discovered dossier from World War II might change the course of shares snippets from the diaries he kept over the last 35 years. Germany’s upcoming elections. 4 5 CASTE, by Isabel Wilkerson. (Random House) The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist 30 4 1 A COURT OF SILVER FLAMES, by Sarah J. Maas. (Bloomsbury) The fifth book in A Court 2 examines aspects of caste systems across civilizations and reveals a rigid hierarchy in of Thorns and Roses series. America today.

5 5 THE DUKE AND I, by Julia Quinn. (Avon) Daphne Bridgerton’s reputation soars when she 9 5 4 WALK IN MY COMBAT BOOTS, by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann with Chris 3 colludes with the Duke of Hastings. The basis of the Netflix series “Bridgerton.” Mooney. (Little, Brown) A collection of interviews with troops who fought overseas.

6 7 THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY, by Matt Haig. (Viking) Nora Seed finds a library beyond the 13 6 2 JUST AS I AM, by Cicely Tyson with Michelle Burford. (HarperCollins) The late iconic 5 edge of the universe that contains books with multiple possibilities of the lives one could actress describes how she worked to change perceptions of Black women through her have lived. career choices.

7 KINGDOM OF SHADOW AND LIGHT, by Karen Marie Moning. (Delacorte) The 11th book 1 7 3 THE SUM OF US, by Heather McGhee. (One World) The chair of the board of the racial 2 in the Fever series. justice organization Color of Change analyzes the impact of racism on the economy.

8 11 THE VISCOUNT WHO LOVED ME, by Julia Quinn. (Avon) The second book in the 9 8 6 A PROMISED LAND, by Barack Obama. (Crown) In the first volume of his presidential 15 Bridgerton series. memoirs, Barack Obama offers personal reflections on his formative years and pivotal moments through his first term. 9 8 THE VANISHING HALF, by Brit Bennett. (Riverhead) The lives of twin sisters who run away 39 from a Southern Black community at age 16 diverge but their fates intertwine. 9 9 UNTAMED, by Glennon Doyle. (Dial) The activist and public speaker describes her journey 51 of listening to her inner voice. 10 9 THE SANATORIUM, by Sarah Pearse. (Pamela Dorman) Elin Warner must find her 4 estranged brother’s fiancée, who goes missing as a storm approaches a hotel that was 10 NOMADLAND, by Jessica Bruder. (Norton) A look at an expanding low-cost labor pool, 1 once a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. which largely consists of transient older adults, and what this might portend. 22 The New York Times best sellers are compiled and archived by the best-sellers-lists desk of the New York Times news department, and are separate from the editorial, culture, advertising and business sides of The New York Times Company. Rankings reflect unit sales reported on a confidential basis by vendors offering a wide range of general interest titles published in the United States. ONLINE: For complete lists and a full explanation of our methodology, visit www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers.

Editors’ Choice / Staff Picks From the Book Review

KLARA AND THE SUN, by Kazuo Ishiguro. (Knopf, $28.) CONSENT: A Memoir, by Vanessa Springora. (Harper- DRESS CODES: How the Laws of Fashion Made Klara, the solar-powered humanoid who narrates Via/HarperCollins, $27.99.) When Springora was 14, History, by Richard Thompson Ford. (Simon & Schus- the Nobelist Ishiguro’s powerful eighth novel, is an she was seduced by a 50-year-old who was a cele- ter, $30.) Taking readers around the world from the “Artificial Friend,” purchased as a companion to a brated writer. Now a prominent French publisher, 1200s to today, Ford embarks on an ambitious and sickly teenage girl. Through the robot’s eyes, and she has triggered a cultural reckoning with this comprehensive exploration of how fashion has been haunting mechanical voice, we encounter a near devastating memoir of the two years they spent used by people both with and without money and future in which technology, ominously, has begun to together. power. render humans themselves obsolete. THIS IS THE VOICE, by John Colapinto. (Simon & Schus- MIKE NICHOLS: A Life, by Mark Harris. (Penguin Press, GLADIUS: The World of the Roman Soldier, by Guy ter, $28.) Colapinto makes the case that our larynx $35.) This gleaming, teeming biography of the de la Bédoyère. (University of Chicago, $30.) This — the human voice box — may be the most impor- legendary director — undertaken with the blessing comprehensive account about what it was like to be tant boost evolution bestowed. His exploration of Nichols’s widow, Diane Sawyer, and fortified with in the Roman military offers many surprises about charges off in consistently fascinating directions, interviews that turn the acknowledgments into a the lives of ordinary soldiers 2,000 years ago, including the delightful, data-based revelation that red carpet roll call — is nothing less than a midcen- among them the fact of widespread literacy and humans can reliably hear a smile. tury fairy tale. record-keeping in the troops. BLINDFOLD: A Memoir of Capture, Torture, and CONCRETE ROSE, by Angie Thomas. (Balzer + Bray, LANDSLIDE, by Susan Conley. (Knopf, $26.95.) In this Enlightenment, by Theo Padnos. (Scribner, $27.) $19.99.) This Y.A. novel, a prequel to the popular enveloping novel, a mother of teenage boys tries to Padnos, a freelance American reporter who “The Hate U Give,” follows its 17-year-old hero as he find her footing in coastal Maine after her husband dreamed of covering the war in Syria, ended up learns he’s going to become a father, considers is injured in a fishing accident. Little cracks have getting kidnapped and held hostage there instead. leaving his gang and envisions his family legacy. sprouted in every inch of the fortification around His account of his nearly two-year ordeal is sensi- this family’s life, and Conley shows their battle to tive, insightful and often wry, not least about his The full reviews of these and other recent books keep vulnerability at bay. own naïve and misguided impulses. are online: nytimes.com/books

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 23 Inside the List PRINT | HARDCOVER BEST SELLERS SALES PERIOD OF FEBRUARY 21-27 ELISABETH EGAN

...... THIS LAST WEEKS THIS LAST WEEKS WEEK WEEK Fiction ON LIST WEEK WEEK Nonfiction ON LIST

Dive In Like most authors, Heather 2 4 1 2 1 THE FOUR WINDS, by Kristin Hannah. (St. Martin’s) As dust 1 HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER, by Bill Gates. McGhee had strong opinions about what storms roll during the Great Depression, Elsa must choose (Knopf) A prescription for what business, governments and her book’s cover should look like. This between saving the family and farm or heading West. individuals can do to work toward zero emissions. former president of Demos, a progres- sive think tank, was well aware that 2 1 A COURT OF SILVER FLAMES, by Sarah J. Maas. 2 2 2 JUST AS I AM, by Cicely Tyson with Michelle Burford. 5 “The Sum of Us,” her (Bloomsbury) The fifth book in A Court of Thorns and Roses (HarperCollins) The late iconic actress describes how she exploration of the series. worked to change perceptions of Black women through her economics of racism, career choices. had the potential to be 3 3 THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY, by Matt Haig. (Viking) Nora Seed 13 packaged in a dry, finds a library beyond the edge of the universe that contains 3 11 THINK AGAIN, by Adam Grant. (Viking) An examination of 4 boring way that would books with multiple possibilities of the lives one could have the cognitive skills of rethinking and unlearning that could be appeal to a narrow lived. used to adapt to a rapidly changing world. audience. So she created two 4 5 THE SANATORIUM, by Sarah Pearse. (Pamela Dorman) 4 4 7 GREENLIGHTS, by Matthew McConaughey. (Crown) The 19 ‘I talked to Pinterest boards: one Elin Warner must find her estranged brother’s fiancée, who Academy Award-winning actor shares snippets from the hundreds of consisting of covers goes missing as a storm approaches a hotel that was once a diaries he kept over the last 35 years. people and she liked, and the sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. they all other of covers she did 5 4 WALK IN MY COMBAT BOOTS, by James Patterson and Matt 3 shared their not like — jackets with 5 4 THE VANISHING HALF, by Brit Bennett. (Riverhead) The 39 Eversmann with Chris Mooney. (Little, Brown) A collection of America.’ primary colors and lives of twin sisters who run away from a Southern Black interviews with troops who fought overseas. lots of text, loudly community at age 16 diverge as one returns and the other telegraphing, “This is going to make you takes on a different racial identity but their fates intertwine. 6 6 CASTE, by Isabel Wilkerson. (Random House) The Pulitzer 30 smarter.” In a phone interview con- Prize-winning journalist examines aspects of caste systems ducted shortly after she learned that her 6 6 THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE, by V. E. Schwab. (Tor/ 18 across civilizations and reveals a rigid hierarchy in America book had debuted at No. 3 on the hard- Forge) A Faustian bargain comes with a curse that affects today. cover nonfiction list, McGhee explained, the adventure Addie LaRue has across centuries. “I wanted my cover to be an invitation. I 7 5 A PROMISED LAND, by Barack Obama. (Crown) In the first 15 wanted people to have an emotional 7 7 WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING, by Delia Owens. (Putnam) 130 volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama offers response; for it to look more like a book In a quiet town on the North Carolina coast in 1969, a young personal reflections on his formative years and pivotal of literary fiction than a book about the woman who survived alone in the marsh becomes a murder moments through his first term. suspect. economy.” Stories of individual Americans are 3 THE SUM OF US, by Heather McGhee. (One World) The 2 1 8 what propelled McGhee to write “The 8 THE KAISER’S WEB, by Steve Berry. (Minotaur) The 16th chair of the board of the racial justice organization Color of Change analyzes the impact of racism on the economy. Sum of Us,” so she was pleased to see book in the Cotton Malone series. A newly discovered dossier from World War II might change the course of humanity on her cover, which was creat- Germany’s upcoming elections. 9 51 ed by the Random House senior de- 9 UNTAMED, by Glennon Doyle. (Dial) The activist and signer Rachel Ake. In a painting by public speaker describes her journey of listening to her 9 FAITHLESS IN DEATH, by J. D. Robb. (St. Martin’s) The 52nd 3 inner voice. David McConochie, we see a white boy 9 book of the In Death series. taking a flying leap into a swimming 10 4 pool while, just below him, a Black girl FOUR HUNDRED SOULS, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and 8 5 10 grips a bright red ladder with one hand. 10 THE RUSSIAN, by James Patterson and James O. Born. Keisha N. Blain. (One World) A compendium featuring 90 (Little, Brown) The 13th book in the Michael Bennett series. writers covering 400 years of African-American history. The image seems to pose a question that speaks to McGhee’s subtitle: “What An asterisk (*) indicates that a book’s sales are barely distinguishable from those of the book above. A dagger (†) indicates that some bookstores report receiving bulk orders. Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.” McGhee was pleased with the result — and has been “agog” at the response Paperback Row / BY JENNIFER KRAUSS to the book, which is the result of a three-year series of trips from her home in New York City to Maine, Mississippi THE YELLOW BIRD SINGS, by Jennifer THE DEPOSITIONS: New and Se- 28 SUMMERS, by Elin Hilderbrand. and California, among other states. Rosner. (Flatiron, 304 pp., $16.99.) A lected Essays on Being and Ceas- (Back Bay, 448 pp., $17.99.) Back ing to Be, by Thomas Lynch. (Nor- on Nantucket, “where Hilderbrand “I talked to hundreds of people and 5-year-old music prodigy who must ton, 352 pp., $17.95.) Some of the fans feel like locals even if they’ve they all shared their America with me,” be quiet while hiding with her mother in a hayloft in World War II “finest, wryest and most stylish” never had the pleasure of visiting,” she said. “Each one thinks of their lives Poland, after the rest of their essays by the poet and funeral a dying schoolteacher asks her son as a series of choices they made, but you family has been murdered, takes director appear here, where they to notify a man with whom, it turns can find all the doors that were open or comfort in the trill of a bird she “light up the dark details” of what out, she’s had a secret rendezvous closed because of decisions we’ve made grasps in her hands. Rosner’s our reviewer, Scott Simon, referred every Labor Day weekend for as a country. The closer you get to the novel, which our reviewer, Mary to as “the one demographic to almost three decades. Our re- inside of any individual’s story, the more Beth Keane, called “exquisite” and which we will all belong.” viewer, Elisabeth Egan, crowned the collective is revealed — the more the “heartrending,” was a 2020 Na- this “sweeping love story” the novelist’s “best ever.” policy is apparent.” tional Jewish Book Award finalist. DIRT: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Above all, McGhee wanted to deliver Sleuth Looking for the Secret of THE NIGHT WATCHMAN, by Louise a message of hope to readers. It’s a THE GIRL WITH THE LOUDING VOICE, by Abi Daré. (Dutton, 400 pp., $17.) French Cooking, by Bill Buford. Erdrich. (Harper Perennial, 464 pp., realistic, roll-up-our-sleeves note of This coming-of-age story, narrated (Vintage, 432 pp., $17.) Our re- $18.) “High drama, low comedy, optimism, and the feeling is there, front in pidgin by a “sassy, strong-willed” viewer, Lisa Abend, declared the ghost stories, mystical visions, and center, beginning with the cover. “I Nigerian girl who wants to be a New Yorker writer’s second food family and tribal lore . . . mix with tried to include stories of people who are teacher, opens with her father memoir “a delightful, highly idio- political fervor,” according to our living in the America we want for every- marrying her off to a polygamous, syncratic exploration” of how a reviewer, Luis Alberto Urrea, in one,” McGhee said. “Even when the abusive taxi driver. Our reviewer, dish is arrived at by discovering, as this “magisterial epic” inspired by book tells a very hard truth about rac- Tsitsi Dangarembga, found Daré’s Buford puts it, “everything about the letters Erdrich’s grandfather it: the behavior of its ingredients, sent to politicians in Washington in ism, I want people to see the world we “brave, fresh voice,” which articu- lates “a resounding anger” toward its history and a quality that some the 1950s to save his Native Ameri- might have.” 0 Africa’s patriarchy, “unforgettable.” chefs think of as its soul.” can tribe from termination.

24 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 AUDIO MONTHLY BEST SELLERS SALES PERIOD OF JANUARY 31-FEBRUARY 27

THIS MONTHS THIS MONTHS MONTH Audio Fiction ON LIST MONTH Audio Nonfiction ON LIST

THE FOUR WINDS, by Kristin Hannah. (Macmillan 1 GREENLIGHTS, by Matthew McConaughey. 5 1 Audio) As dust storms roll during the Great 1 (Random House Audio) The Academy Award- Depression, Elsa must choose between saving the winning actor shares snippets from the diaries he family and farm or heading West. Read by Julia kept over the last 35 years. Read by the author. 6 Whelan. 15 hours, 2 minutes unabridged. hours, 42 minutes unabridged.

FIREFLY LANE, by Kristin Hannah. (Brilliance 1 A PROMISED LAND, by Barack Obama. (Random 4 2 Audio) A friendship between two women in the 2 House Audio) In the first volume of his presidential Pacific Northwest endures for more than three memoirs, Barack Obama offers personal reflections decades. Read by Susan Ericksen. 17 hours, 54 on his formative years and pivotal moments minutes unabridged. through his first term. Read by the author. 29 hours, 10 minutes unabridged. FAITHLESS IN DEATH, by J. D. Robb. (Macmillan 1 3 Audio) The 52nd book of the In Death series. Eve THINK AGAIN, by Adam Grant. (Penguin Audio) An 1 Dallas investigates the murder of a young sculptor 3 examination of the cognitive skills of rethinking and in the West Village. Read by Susan Ericksen. 13 unlearning that could be used to adapt to a rapidly hours, 42 minutes unabridged. changing world. Read by the author. 6 hours, 40 minutes unabridged. THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY, by Matt Haig. (Penguin 3 4 Audio) Nora Seed finds a library beyond the edge CASTE, by Isabel Wilkerson. (Penguin Audio) The 7 of the universe that contains books with multiple 4 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist reveals a rigid possibilities of the lives one could have lived. Read hierarchy in America today. Read by Robin Miles. by Carey Mulligan. 8 hours, 50 minutes unabridged. 14 hours, 26 minutes unabridged.

A COURT OF SILVER FLAMES, by Sarah J. Maas. 1 HOW TO AVOID A CLIMATE DISASTER, by Bill 1 5 (Recorded Books) The fifth book in A Court of 5 Gates. (Random House Audio) A prescription for Thorns and Roses series. Nesta Archeron is forced what business, governments and individuals can into close quarters with a warrior. Read by Stina do to work toward zero emissions. Read by Wil Nielsen. 26 hours, 5 minutes unabridged. Wheaton and the author. 7 hours, 11 minutes unabridged. 6 READY PLAYER TWO, by Ernest Cline. (Random 4 House Audio) In a sequel to “Ready Player One,” 6 JUST AS I AM, by Cicely Tyson with Michelle 2 Wade Watts discovers a technological advancement Burford. (HarperAudio) The late iconic actress Make prep time and goes on a new quest. Read by Wil Wheaton. 13 describes how she worked to change perceptions hours, 46 minutes unabridged. of Black women through her career choices. Read by Cicely Tyson, Viola Davis and Robin Miles. 16 the new playtime. 7 THE VISCOUNT WHO LOVED ME, by Julia Quinn. 2 hours, 9 minutes unabridged. (Recorded Books) The second book in the Explore curated collections like Bridgerton series. Read by Rosalyn Landor. 12 7 FOUR HUNDRED SOULS, edited by Ibram X. Kendi 1 hours, 23 minutes unabridged. and Keisha N. Blain. (Random House Audio) A Recipes to Cook With Your Kids. compendium featuring 90 writers covering 400 THE SANATORIUM, by Sarah Pearse. (Penguin 1 years of African-American history. Read by a full 8 Audio) Elin Warner must find her estranged cast. 14 hours, 2 minutes unabridged. brother’s fiancée, who goes missing as a storm nytcooking.com approaches a hotel that was once a sanatorium in UNTAMED, by Glennon Doyle. (Random House 12 the Swiss Alps. Read by Elizabeth Knowelden. 11 8 Audio) The activist and public speaker describes hours, 58 minutes unabridged. her journey of listening to her inner voice. Read by the author. 8 hours, 22 minutes unabridged. THE VANISHING HALF, by Brit Bennett. (Penguin 8 9 Audio) The lives of twin sisters who run away from BECOMING, by Michelle Obama. (Random House 28 a Southern Black community at age 16 diverge but 9 Audio) The former first lady describes how she their fates intertwine. Read by Shayna Small. 11 balanced work, family and her husband’s political hours, 34 minutes unabridged. ascent. Read by the author. 19 hours, 3 minutes unabridged. THE DUKE AND I, by Julia Quinn. (Recorded Books) 3 10 Daphne Bridgerton’s reputation soars when she THE SUM OF US, by Heather McGhee. (Random 1 colludes with the Duke of Hastings. The basis of the 10 House Audio) The chair of the board of the racial Netflix series “Bridgerton.” Read by Rosalyn Landor. justice organization Color of Change analyzes the 12 hours, 9 minutes unabridged. impact of racism on the economy. Read by the author. 11 hours, 8 minutes unabridged. ROMANCING MISTER BRIDGERTON, by Julia 2 11 Quinn. (Recorded Books) The fourth book in the EXTREME OWNERSHIP, by Jocko Willink and Leif 32 Bridgerton series. Read by Rosalyn Landor. 13 11 Babin. (Macmillan Audio) Applying the principles of hours, 17 minutes unabridged. Navy SEALs leadership training to any organization. Read by the authors. 8 hours, 15 minutes AN OFFER FROM A GENTLEMAN, by Julia Quinn. 2 unabridged. 12 (Recorded Books) The third book in the Bridgerton series. Read by Rosalyn Landor. 12 hours, 22 TALKING TO STRANGERS, by Malcolm 17 minutes unabridged. 12 Gladwell. (Hachette Audio) Famous examples of miscommunication serve as the backdrop to THE GUEST LIST, by Lucy Foley. (HarperAudio) 9 explain potential conflicts. Read by the author. 8 13 A wedding between a TV star and a magazine hours, 42 minutes unabridged. publisher on an island off the coast of Ireland turns deadly. Read by Jot Davies, Chloe Massey, Olivia BORN A CRIME, by Trevor Noah. (Audible Studios) 35 Dowd, et al. 9 hours, 54 minutes unabridged. 13 A memoir about growing up in South Africa by the host of “The Daily Show.” Read by the author. 8 RELENTLESS, by Mark Greaney. (Audible Studios) 1 hours, 50 minutes unabridged. 14 The 10th book in the Gray Man series. Assassins go after Court Gentry as he attempts to bring back UNMASKED, by Andy Ngo. (Hachette Audio) A 1 an American agent who went missing. Read by Jay 14 former writer for the online magazine Quillette gives Snyder. 15 hours, 39 minutes unabridged. his perspective on the activist movement antifa. Read by Cecil Harold. 9 hours unabridged. THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE, by V. E. 5 15 Schwab. (Macmillan Audio) A Faustian bargain SAPIENS, by Yuval Noah Harari. (Harper Audio) 29 comes with a curse that affects the adventure 15 How Homo sapiens became Earth’s dominant Addie LaRue has across centuries. Read by Julia species. Read by Derek Perkins. 15 hours, 17 Whelan. 17 hours, 10 minutes unabridged. minutes unabridged.

Audiobook rankings are composed of sales in the United States of digital and physical audio products from the previous month. Sales of titles are statistically weighted to represent and accurately reflect all outlets proportionally nationwide. Free-trial or low-cost trial audiobook sales are not eligible for inclusion. Publisher credits for audiobooks are listed under the audiobook publisher name. ONLINE: For more lists and a full explanation of our methodology, visit www.nytimes.com/books/best-sellers. THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 25 The Shortlist / True Crime / By Kate Tuttle

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE CONFIDENT WOMEN THE OFFICER’S DAUGHTER A Murder, a Private Investigator, and Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of A Memoir of Family and Forgiveness Her Search for Justice the Feminine Persuasion By Elle Johnson By Ellen McGarrahan By Tori Telfer 224 pp. Harper. $27.99. 368 pp. Random House. $28. 352 pp. Harper Perennial. $26.99 . Johnson was 16 when her cousin Karen, the “I was totally in favor of the death penalty “There’s no point in denying it; the women same age, was shot and killed during a until I witnessed Jesse Tafero’s execution,” in this book are extremely charming,” writes botched robbery at the Burger King where writes McGarrahan, who watched Tafero die Telfer, an author and podcaster whose beat she worked in the Bronx. Both girls’ fathers in 1990 as a young staff writer for The Mi- is women in crime. In her latest effort, Telfer were Black men in law enforcement, Karen’s ami Herald. In her article, she noted how the profiles those whose misdeeds are more of a homicide detective and Elle’s a parole electric chair malfunctioned, with flames the grifting than the murdering variety. officer. As the family gathered in their grief, and smoke visible above Tafero’s head cov- “Her victims almost never end up dead,” she Johnson overheard her father and the other men plotting ering; soon after that, she quit journalism, worked in writes. “Almost never!” (One of Telfer’s con artists most revenge on those who had killed Karen. In the end, three construction, then became a private investigator. She familiar to New York readers will be Sante Kimes, who teenage boys were convicted of their parts in the crime; found herself drawn back to Tafero’s execution and the started out as a poor kid with an “obsessive and patho- 33 years later, Johnson finds herself pondering whether crime that led him there: a double murder at a highway logical” relationship to money and ended up a mur- to write the court on the occasion of the last remaining rest area in February 1976. Had she witnessed the exe- derer.) defendant’s parole hearing. cution of an innocent man? Collected here are 13 tales, each around the length of a “The Officer’s Daughter” is a slim, immensely moving “Old murder cases are like coffins,” McGarrahan juicy podcast, about women whose relationship to truth book. Johnson, who writes for television (“cop shows writes. “You have to be careful, opening them up.” This and justice was, at best, a bit wobbly. Some are already and crime procedurals,” she tells us), skips back and one is particularly puzzling. A state trooper and a vis- well known — the slew of young women pretending to be forth from her teenage years to the present, telling her iting Canadian constable were shot at close range while Anastasia, the lost czarina, or the Fox sisters, whose story in plain-spoken language and examining her own checking on a Camaro full of sleeping people: Tafero, his hoaxes launched spiritualism into stratospheric popular- reactions to Karen’s murder from both perspectives. “If a girlfriend Sunny Jacobs and her two children, and their ity. Other stories feel newer, like that of Margaret Lydia good girl like Karen could be killed,” she recalls, “then friend Walter Rhodes. There’s a good reason to believe Burton, a midcentury scammer whose antics sparked anything could happen. There seemed to be no point in each of the three is the murderer. Two truckers saw uproar in the polite world of cocker spaniel breeders. listening to your parents, or doing as you were told.” As gunfire explode from the back seat, where Jacobs was. Their relationship to crime ranges from murderers like an adult, she finds herself thinking about the decades the Tafero was apprehended with the murder weapon Kime, to victims like Bonny Lee Bakly, to more spectacu- men have spent in prison: “I wondered what kind of men strapped to his hip. And Rhodes, who had gunshot resi- lar con artists like the 18th-century Frenchwoman they had become behind bars. What kind of men could due on his hands, confessed — before he recanted, con- Jeanne de Saint-Rémy, a rabid social climber who lever- they become, except for prisoners?” fessed again, recanted again, and so on. aged a corrupt cardinal’s desire into a scandal involving As Johnson contemplates asking the parole board to Jacobs wound up being freed, writing a memoir and Marie Antoinette and the “most beautiful diamond neck- keep her cousin’s killer locked up, she finds herself re- participating in a play about her life titled “The Exonerat- lace in the world.” membering different events; on her mind most of all is ed” (although she was not technically exonerated). She The farther away from our own time and place, of her father. “He was controlling yet protective,” she maintained her innocence, presenting herself as “a hippie course, the easier it is to find charm and romance in writes, “and sometimes someone to be protected from.” peace-and-love vegetarian,” but as McGarrahan finds in these tales. Still, Telfer narrates them with great verve, Johnson ponders pain caused by the killer, her father, her investigation, all of them were doing enormous grace and even humor. Whether or not we buy her as- even herself, especially after losing the religious faith amounts of cocaine and dealing even more. They were sertion in the book’s introduction that we want to be like that once provided a framework. When you live in a associated with the so-called Dixie Mafia; their circle the confidence women she profiles (“doesn’t it sound family forever experiencing “the background buzz of included murderers, extortionists and one colorful jewel sort of delicious?”), it can be hard to resist the allure of lifelong mourning,” the only way to peace is to find a thief. their stories. path to forgiveness. McGarrahan’s obsession with rooting out the truth in the case leads her to Florida, Ireland and Australia, where she tracks down any detail that might potentially help her know what happened. It’s not a triumphant story. After all, she writes, “your gut instinct isn’t always right. Sooner or later, I have come to find out, everyone gets fooled.”

KATE TUTTLE is a freelance writer and editor. ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN GALL 26 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021 Graphic Review / Normal People / By Walter Scott Awkward encounters with Sally Rooney’s intense, lovelorn characters.

WALTER SCOTT writes graphic novels and is the author, most recently, of “Wendy, Master of Art.”

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 27 28 SUNDAY, MARCH 14, 2021