Publishers Weekly - 04.11.2019

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Review_FICTION

with their faiths and the obligations of

their everyday lives. Aboulela’s novel is

empathetic and insightful, offering a

nuanced representation of the three

characters through a blend of Islamic

faith and Scottish folklore. (Feb.)

A Perfect Explanation

Eleanor Anstruther. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,

$24 (320p) ISBN 978-0-35-812085-8

In her splendid debut, Anstruther

portrays an aristocratic woman’s aban-

donment of her husband and three

young children in the 1920s for life in a

British Christian Science retreat, and the

subsequent custody battle that followed.

That this story is based on the author’s

grandmother, Enid Campbell Anstruther,

the first British woman to perform the

pilgrimage to Mecca. After they arrive at

their cabin, they receive spectral visitations:

a healthy young

boy who makes

Moni think of

her son, a

runner Salma

begins to

believe is her

ex, and the

Hoopoe, a

mythical bird,

for Iman. There’s

a not-entirely-

successful vein of magical realism, but

readers will root for Aboulela’s well-

drawn cast as they reconcile their desires

heartbreaking
past to Miller,
building
toward an
unsettling,
unresolved con-
clusion between
the two men.
Wallace’s
inconsistent
emotional states
when he’s in
Miller’s company can be jarring; the
novel is at its best and most powerful
when Wallace is alone and readers witness
his interior solitude in the face of the
racism and loneliness he endures. Taylor’s
perceptive, challenging exploration of
the many kinds of emotional costs will
resonate with readers looking for complex
characters and rich prose. Agent: Meredith
Kaffel Simonoff, DeFiore & Co. (Feb.)

Bird Summons
Leila Aboulela. Black Cat, $16 trade paper
(304p) ISBN 978-0-8021-4915-2
Aboulela’s impressive latest (after
Elsewhere, Home) follows three Muslim
women as they travel through the
Scottish Highlands. Moni, a former
banker, is the mother of Adam, a five-
year-old with severe cerebral palsy. Her
devotion to him has driven a wedge
between her and her husband, Murtada,
who’s pressuring her and Adam to join
him in Saudi Arabia. Iman is on her
third doomed marriage; she was brought
to Britain from war-torn Syria by her
second husband. Having lived her entire
adult life as someone’s wife, she looks up
to independent Salma, the de facto
leader of the group, who’s a successful
massage therapist and has a Scottish
husband and four children. Recent social
media overtures from Salma’s college ex
back in Egypt, meanwhile, have left her
questioning what could have been. The
three women set out on a weeklong trip
to the grave of Lady Evelyn Cobbold,

★ Cesare

Jerome Charyn. Bellevue, $26.99 (368p) ISBN 978-1-942658-50-4

C

haryn’s spectacular latest (after The Perilous Adventures

of the Cowboy King) captures the madness of Nazi

Germany in a fiercely inventive merging of fiction

and fact. Erik Holdermann’s parents both die

before his ninth birthday in 1928, after which he is

raised in a Berlin orphanage. When philanthropist

Wilfrid von Hecht and his daughter, Lisa, make a visit

to the institution, Erik is smitten by Lisa, a “mischling,”

or partially Jewish, teenager a few years his senior. Their

lives diverge when Lisa marries an SS colonel and, at 17,

Erik rescues a seedy-looking man being attacked by

thugs. The man is Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, director of

the Abwehr espionage unit. Canaris has Erik trained in killing and disguise,

nicknaming him “Cesare” after the somnambulist assassin in the film The Cabinet

of Dr. Caligari. Though Erik’s covert work becomes the stuff of whispered legend,

few know that he’s helping Canaris—whose loyalty to Hitler has frayed in the face

of the Führer’s increasingly erratic leadership—to sabotage Nazi attempts to

exterminate Berlin’s Jews. After Erik re-encounters Lisa at a dinner party, the two

begin a fevered affair. When she’s sent to Theresienstadt, where a “Jewish Paradise”

designed by Nazi propagandists hides an Auschwitz way station, Erik risks his life

trying to save her. Charyn’s nuanced depiction of the bond between the eccentric

Canaris and his protégé balances the novel’s many macabre moments, and the searing

ending is a masterpiece of unsentimentalized tenderness. This extraordinary tour

de force showcases the prolific author at the top of his game. (Jan.)

Gilcy Aquino

Chris Barsanti

Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf

Mitzi Brunsdale

Charlene Brusso

Lisa Butts

Donis Casey

Rob Clough

Stephanie Cohen

Stephan Coleson

Hannah DeCamp

Stefan Dziemianowicz

Victoria Fraser

Krystyna Poray Goddu

Daphne Grab

Sara Grochowski

Patricia Guy

Jennifer Laine Gyurisin

Zina Hutton

Jon Jeffryes

Shavonne Johnson

Mary M. Jones

Michael M. Jones

Juliet Kahn

Bridget Keown

Cheryl Klein

Rose LeGrone

Nicholas Litchfield

Sally Lodge

Patty MacDonald

Stephanie Madewell

Chloe Maveal

Sheri Melnick

Elizabeth Morse

Dai Newman

Eric Norton

Devin Overman

Chelle Parker

Hope Perlman

Leonard Picker

Maya Poole

Antonia Saxon

Martha Schulman

Kira Sexton

Erin Talbert

Lelia Taylor

Tonia Thompson

Stacy Woodson

Rona Wilk

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