Like all of Natalia Ginzburg’s excellent works, The Road to the City feels like something so fresh, tender, and intimate, you can barely breathe until it’s done and can barely believe it could ever be over.
The Road to the City by Natalia Ginzburg, (List Price: 17.95, New Directions, 9780811234757, July 2023)
Reviewed by Emily Tarr, Emily Tarr, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama
I just tried to be honest. When I’m honest in my life, about my life, it tends to make others honest about theirs and suddenly we all relate to each other and our lives in a more meaningful way. I don’t know whether it’s been years of therapy or what, but I find I’m generally an optimistic person. Even in sad or heavy situations I can usually find something sweet or helpful or humorous. ― Byron Lane, Interview, The Nerd Daily
What booksellers are saying about Big Gay Wedding
About Byron Lane
Byron Laneis author of A Star Is Bored, hailed by the New York Times Book Review as “wildly funny and irreverent.” He’s a playwright, screenwriter, Emmy Award–winning journalist, and former assistant to actress Carrie Fisher. He’s originally from New Orleans and lives in Palm Springs, California, with his husband, author Steven Rowley, and their rescue dogs, Raindrop and Shirley.
Out of necessity, Laura has chosen to live a simpler, yet, courageous life in a secluded, rustic cabin in the woods on the outskirts of an Italian village. Necessity turns into a reorganization of priorities, which I wholly admire, as Laura shares her thoughts with the reader on living with nature, interacting with others, and what it means to survive. Beautiful.
At the Edge of the Woods by Kathryn Bromwich, (List Price: 26, Two Dollar Radio, 9781953387318, June 2023)
Reviewed by Jill Naylor, Novel. in Memphis, Tennessee
“I went through a divorce at a young age myself, and it was quite isolating — most of my peer group wasn’t even married yet, so I didn’t have anyone around me who could relate to what I was going through, and I became desperate to read or watch something about the experience. While there’s no paucity of divorce art in the world, I couldn’t find anything that summed up how specifically ridiculous going through it all at 28 in the late 2010s felt. I also wanted something that didn’t take the whole thing too seriously — a lot of heartbreak art is quite heavy, when it really is one of life’s funnier circumstances. I also knew that I didn’t want to write a memoir — partly because every divorce is two stories, and it didn’t feel fair to commit only mine to print, and mostly because I didn’t think I could be funny about my real-life situation. So I invented Maggie and Jon, and tore up their life plans instead.” ―Monica Heisey, Interview, Entertainment Weekly
What booksellers are saying about Really Good, Actually
About Monica Heisey
Monica Heisey is a writer and comedian from Toronto. She has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, The Guardian, Glamour, New York magazine, and VICE, among others. She has written for television shows like Schitt’s Creek, Workin’ Moms, Baroness von Sketch Show, and more. She currently lives in London. This is her first novel.
I’ve never finished a book and immediately started rereading it, but this is how I read Edie Richter is Not Alone. I’m dazzled by the way Rebecca Handler channels so much noticing and emotion into her carefully curated (sometimes sparse) prose. Handler has written Edie’s interior monologue so that seeing a spider in a church, hearing possums on a roof, or regarding a cockroach in the grass makes you inhabit Edie’s brain. This is a book about the loss of a parent to Alzheimer’s disease that is funny and sad and extremely entertaining.
Edie Richter is Not Alone by Rebecca Handler (List Price: $23, The Unnamed Press, 9781951213176, 3/9/2021)
Reviewed by Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
A Spring 2021 Read This Next! Title
Secrets of Happiness by Joan Silber
Counterpoint, May
The characters in Joan Silber’s big-hearted new novel find happiness in mostly small and incremental ways that feel entirely true and resonate with the quiet power of relationship. I was immediately invested in the lives of this extended family-of-sorts, starting and ending with Ethan, a gay lawyer whose father is discovered to have a second family, acquired during his business travels to Asia. In between we meet people whose lives loosely intersect as they travel, figuratively and literally, towards their own versions of joy. Silber’s craft in linking her characters and her themes—connection, openheartedness, money—is seamless, but it’s her great gift for empathy that is sure to make this one of my favorite reads of this year.
– Clara Boza from Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, NC
