On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee
Known for his realistic fiction about immigrants in modern America, Lee has decided to go the dystopian fiction route. Here he imagines a future United States where immigrants have come from China because conditions at home have become unlivable. Downtown American cities like Baltimore, where the novel is set, becomes labor settlements of these “New Chinese,” where they fish for food for the wealthy living in communities outside the cities. Fan, a diver, looks for her missing boyfriend and ventures out of the confines (and safety) of her home to the outlaw “outer countries” and to the wealthy enclaves of the “Charters.”
Andrew’s Brain by E.L. Doctorow
Ragtime author Doctorow has written his 12th novel, about a cognitive neuroscientist who we think is his therapist. The novel is a series of conversations that makes it very “Waiting for Godot” like talking about subjects like consciousness, the reliability of memory and existence of free will. The more Andrew talks we learn more about his past and his regrets. It’s a departure both in time and style for this masterful writer.
Alena by Rachel Pastan
Pastan’s third novel is modern day retelling of Daphne Du Maurier’s classic Rebecca. Even echoing the novel’s famous opening lines “Last night I dreamed of Manderlay again.” But this novel is set at a cutting edge art museum on Cape Cod called the “Nauk.” The unnamed narrator is an assistant curator from the Midwest who is visiting the Venice Biennale, where she meets an enigmatic founder of a Massachusetts art museum and gives her the job of the curator. It’s been two years since the tragic death of the beloved former curator Alena and our narrator finds herself in over her head, when the staff stifles her creative vision in favor of honoring Alena’s legacy.
