Fabulous Fiction Firsts #826, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Tue, 06/06/2023 - 7:43pm by muffy

2022 National Book Award finalist, and The New York TImes Book Review Editors’ Choice, All This Could be Different * * * *  by Sarah Thankam Mathews (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook), is a “darkly witty and finely wrought exploration of the struggle to embrace one's identity, this debut also illuminates the hardships of immigrant life, the elusiveness of lasting romantic love - and ultimately the joy and belonging that can come from a 'family' of friends.” (People Magazine) 

During the mid-2000s recession, 22 year-old Indian immigrant Sneha, a recent college graduate, is fortunate to land an entry-level job in Milwaukee, “where she tries on adulthood like an ill-fitting suit.” (Kirkus Reviews)  No longer under the watchful eyes of her traditional parents, Sneha scours online dating apps for other queer women, befriends (An)Tig(one) Clay, a philosophy student, and develops a burning crush on Marina, a beguiling and beautiful older white dancer. 

But before long, trouble arrives - her boss stops paying her, the landlord threatens eviction, and a childhood trauma demands to be reckoned with. It's then that Tig begins to draw up a radical solution to their problems, hoping to save them all.

“Recounting this heady time a decade or so later, Sneha is a magnetic teller of her tale of finding love, growing up, and summoning the power to change--and choose--her life. Kindred to Brandon Taylor's stellar Real Life (2020), this novel burrows deep.” (Booklist)

The Skin and its Girl * *  by Sarah Cypher (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook).

Elspeth Noura Rummani is born in a Pacific Northwest hospital, the very day her Palestinian family’s centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike by the Israeli military. An infant with impossibly cobalt-blue skin, she is refused by the lesbian couple intent on adopting her. 

With her neuroscientist mother, Tashi, emotional fragile and battling mental illness, great-aunt Nuha, the matriarch and keeper of the family lore, raises her as Betty, believing that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love. 

Decades later, Betty returns to Aunt Nuha's gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she's ever known, or should she follow her heart and the woman she loves, perpetuating her family's cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt's complex life and struggle with her own sexuality. The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity, and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us--and wield even the power to restore a broken family.

Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly (also in downloadable eBook and audiobook).  Frustrated artist Dawn Levit works as a conservator/ bookbinder at the Metropolitan Museum of Art while spending most of her time scouting the city’s street art for inspiration. Genderfluid, she presents as female at work and is concerned that her musician boyfriend Lukas increasingly seems to be attracted to her when she's at her most masculine.

Then, one day at work, Dawn finds something hidden behind the endpaper of an old book she is restoring - the torn-off cover of a '50s lesbian pulp novel, Turn Her About, with what appears to be a  love letter in German written on the back.

“The discovery leads to unexpected adventures as she becomes obsessed with tracking down the mysterious note's elusive author even as she questions her own complicated identity. A bookbinder herself, Savran Kelly is also a fine writer, and her debut novel is smooth and involving." (Booklist)

Endpapers will appeal to readers of queer, nonbinary, or trans fiction like Torrey Peters' Detransition, Baby as well as anyone who loves character-driven, setting-rich stories like Tell the Wolves I'm Home or The Immortalists.

* * * * = 4 starred reviews

* * = 2 starred reviews