10 books to add to your reading list in April
Book reviews
Bethanne Patrick April 1, 2024 Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fiction and nonfiction, to consider for your April reading list.
Aprils book releases cover some difficult topics, including Salman Rushdie discussing his 2022 maiming, Leigh Bardugos fiction about the dark arts and Ada Limns poetry anthology about our fragile world. However, like April, there is also sunshine: Leif Engers wild Great Lakes love story, Helen Tworkovs beautiful memoir of Buddhism and a collection of the inimitable Maggie Nelsons essays. Happy reading, happy spring!
FICTION
By Leif Enger
Grove Press: 336 pages, $28
(April 2)
An unusual and meaningful surprise awaits readers of Engers latest, which takes place largely on Lake Superior, as a man named Rainy tries to reunite with his beloved wife, Lark. While the world around this couple, a dystopian near-future American where billionaires control everything, could not be bleaker, the authors retelling of the myth of Orpheus (who went to the underworld to rescue his wife) contains the authentic hope of a born optimist.
By Leigh Bardugo
Flatiron Books: 400 pages, $30
(April 9)
Bardugo departs from novels of dark academia in a standalone to make the hairs on your neck stand up, set in 16th century Spain. A hidden Sephardic Jew and scullery maid named Luzia Cotado matches wits with fellow servant Guilln Santngel. Luzia discovers a secret of Guillns, but shes already fallen in love with him. And because he knows hers, too, they might both avoid the Spanish Inquisition. Its a gorgeous tale of enchantments both supernatural and earthly.
By Scarlett Thomas
Simon & Schuster: 304 pages, $28
(April 9)
A couple honeymoons at a Greek resort. What could go wrong? In Thomas hands, plenty especially as the author has never written a comfortable story; her books, from PopCo
to Oligarchy, crackle with unreliable characters, as well as big philosophical ideas. In this case, the new marriages breakdown is chronicled through letters between the spouses, and sometimes bits of ephemera, that ultimately untangle a dark mystery relating to the title.
By Clare Beams
Doubleday: 304 pages, $28
(April 10)
Few novels of literary fiction are written as well as The Garden, let alone given its sadly relevant retro setting, a 1940s country-estate obstetrical program. Irene Willard walks through its gates having endured five miscarriages; pregnant again, she and her war-veteran husband George desperately hope for a live birth. But as Irene discovers more about the woman who controls all here, Dr. Bishop, she fears carrying to term as much as she once feared pregnancy loss.
By Justin Taylor
Pantheon: 304 pages, $28
(April 23)
David Crader, former teen TV heartthrob, just wants to reboot his career when his old show Rev Beach has a moment. His life has devolved through substance abuse, divorce and underemployment. But when he and colleagues launch a remake, devolution continues: The protagonists struggles are mirrored by climate-change issues, from flooding to wildfires. Despite that darkness, Taylors gift for satire might make this a must-read for 2024 beach bags.
NONFICTION
You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World
By Ada Limn (Editor)
Milkweed Editions: 176 pages, $25
(April 2)
A wondrous artist herself, Limn is currently poet laureate of the United States, and this anthology is part of her signature project, You Are Here, which will also feature poetry as public art in seven national parks. Released in conjunction with the Library of Congress, the collection features 50 previously unpublished poems by luminaries including Jericho Brown, Joy Harjo, Carl Phillips and Diane Seuss, each focusing on a piece of regional landscape.
Like Love: Essays and Conversations
By Maggie Nelson
Graywolf Press: 336 pages, $32
(April 2)
While all of the pieces in Nelsons new book have previously been published elsewhere, theyre made fresh here both through being collected and through their chronological placement. Readers can practically watch Nelsons incisive mind growing and changing as she speaks with colleagues such as Hilton Als and Judith Butler, or as she writes about queerness, motherhood, violence, the lyrics of Prince and the devastating loss of a friend.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
By Salman Rushdie
Random House: 204 pages, $28
(April 16)
On Aug. 12, 2022, the author Salman Rushdie was speaking at upstate New Yorks Chautauqua festival when a man rushed the stage and attempted to murder him. Rushdie, a target of Iranian religious leaders since 1989, was permanently injured. In this book, he shares his experience for the first time, having said that this was essential for him to write. In this way, he answers violence with art, once again reminding us all that freedom of expression must be protected.
Lotus Girl: My Life at the Crossroads of Buddhism and America
By Helen Tworkov
St. Martins Essentials: 336 pages, $29
(April 16)
D T
workov, founder of the magazine Tricycle, chronicles her move from a 1960s young-adult interest in Buddhism to travels through Asia and deep study in the United States of the different strands that follow the Buddhas teachings. Tworkov mentions luminaries such as the artist Richard Serra, the composer Charles Mingus and the Dalai Lama, but shes not name
–
dropping. Instead, shes strewing fragrant petals from her singular path to mindfulness that may help us find ours.
The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War
By Erik Larson
Crown: 592 pages, $35
(April 30)
Even diehard Civil War aficionados will learn from Larsons look at the six months between Lincolns 1860 election and the surrender of Union troops under Maj. Robert Anderson at Charlestons Ft. Sumter. Larson details Andersons secret Christmas redeployment and explores this individuals contradictions as a former slave owner who loyally follows Lincolns orders. The author also shares first-person perspective from the famous diaries of the upper-class Southerner Mary Chesnut. All together, the book provides a riveting reexamination of a nation in tumult.
