Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2020 Book Preview
Well. It’s been quite a year. There’s probably no need to belabor just what kind of a year it has been. Suffice it to say that for the purposes of The Millions Preview, it has made things crowded and strange. A number of books you see below also appeared on the last preview, but have had their publication dates moved as a consequence of the general disarray of world affairs. We are still not sure about some pub dates, so please let us know if you know something that we don’t. There are a *lot* of books coming out, and there’s just no way to feature them all, so as always, we will continue showcasing new books in our monthly previews as well. Jump into the comments to let us know what you’re looking forward to. Wash your hands, wear your mask, keep a safe distance from others, and pick out a book. There are so many here to keep you company.
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July
Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford: Called “electrifying,” “spellbinding,” and “a stunner” by Booklist, Shelf Awareness, and Publishers Weekly respectively, Crooked Hallelujah tells the story of four generations of Cherokee women. Whether living in Indian Country in Oklahoma or working to navigate life outside their community in 1980s Texas, they’re faced with forces of nature, class, religion, and family. Ford is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and this is her first novel. (Janet)
Want by Lynn Steger Strong: A gorgeous meditation on work, motherhood, daughterhood, friendship, and the frayed patchwork of American life, told from the perspective of a woman who is going through a bankruptcy while trying to keep her family afloat. The L.A. Times raved, “Want, like our current crisis, exposes a system on the verge of collapse. . . but it’s also powerful proof that novels, and novelists, can still speak undeniable truths.” (Lydia)
The Son of Good Fortune by Lysley Tenorio: The story of a mother and son, undocumented Filipino-Americans trying to make it work via methods conventional and less so–working in a pizza shop and doing scams, respectively. The novel concludes with a road trip to a desert hippie town and, possibly, a chance to start anew. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls Tenorio’s debut novel “Mordant and moving…. Written with great empathy and sly humor…. This is a wonderful achievement.” (Lydia)
Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson: After two award-winning YA novels, Johnson is back with her first adult novel in eight years. In Trouble the Saints, Phyllis, a young, light-skinned Black woman from Harlem, has become an impossibly skilled assassin working for a Russian mob boss in Manhattan. Her boyfriend’s hands can sense danger; a friend has an oracular gift; the world they live in is steeped in violence, overt and otherwise. Ten years later, Phyllis given up everything. Kirkus called it “A sad, lovely, and blood-soaked song of a book.” (Kaulie)
Scorpionfish by Natalie Bakopoulos: A grieving young woman returns to her childhood home of Athens and gets swept up in the lives of her friends and neighbors. Claire Vaye Watkins calls this “a riveting, elegant novel keenly observed in the manner of Elena Ferrante and Rachel Cusk. A divine, chiseled stunner.” (Lydia)
Sensation Machines by Adam Wilson: Adam Wilson’s timely satire of digital and consumer culture mines humor from herd mentality, crypto-currency and video game addiction. In near-future New York, the marriage of Wendy and Michael Mixner is riven first by a stillbirth and then by, of all things, a Universal Basic Income program. Wendy is hired to work on an anti-UBI data-mining project which, in a nice nod to the Nazis, results in the tagline #WorkWillSetYouFree. Michael, meanwhile, is reeling from the murder of his best friend and the loss of his fortune through bad investments. This is a dark snapshot of our cultural moment and where it’s taking us. (Bill)
Alice Knott by Blake Butler. Eight paintings belonging to a reclusive heiress are stolen and destroyed, with their destruction captured on video that goes viral, leading to copycat crimes as well as an international investigation of the heiress herself in Blake Butler’s fourth novel, Alice Knott. Butler is a master of the American dystopic, language-driven novel, and here returns with his penchant for mining the unsettling national psyche, delving so deeply into its unconscious that the resulting delirium is uncannily close to truth. Witness: within are acts of art-terror, a pandemic, and a contagious delirium infecting the US president. (Anne)
Antkind by Charlie Kaufman: The screenwriter of Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and more has written a novel, and it won’t come as a surprise that it’s knotty, weird, and postmodern. Starring the unhappy film critic B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, the novel follows Rosenberg as he finds a long-lost movie, which he becomes convinced might be the best film ever made. But when his copy — the only copy in existence — is destroyed except for one frame, he has no choice but to recreate the rest of it from memory. (Thom)
The Color of Air by Gail Tsukiyama: An historical novel set in 1930s Hawaii, when sugar plantations lured workers from across the globe only to exploit them, The Color of Air centers on Daniel Abe’s return to the islands just as Mauna Loa erupts. In this setting, as lava gushes and flows, the Dr. Abe confronts old secrets – not just his own, but those uncovered by his family, and scores of “ghost voices” and “island voices” alike. (Nick M.)
F*ckface: And Other Stories by Leah Hampton: A debut collection of stories taking place in post-coal Appalachia, featuring dead humans, dead honeybees, told with humor and heart. Rachel Heng writes, “These stories take you apart slowly, piece by piece, and by the time you realize what’s happening, it’s already too late. The stories are in your blood now. They live in you, with all their strangeness and decay, isolation and comfort, hellscapes and moments of grace.” (Lydia)
Mother Daughter Widow Wife by Robin Wasserman: Wendy Doe, found on a bus to Philadelphia, has no money, ID, or memory. Suffering from dissociative fugue, she becomes a body to be experimented on to some, a source of fascination and wonder for others. But who is Wendy Doe, really? Untethered from obligations and history, who can she become? The novel follows on the success of Wasserman’s first book, Girls on Fire. Leslie Jamison praises it as “not only an investigation of how female intimacy plays out across landscapes shaped by male power and desire, but an exploration of identity itself.” (Jacqueline)
Natural History by Carlos Fonseca (translated by Megan McDowell): A postmodern archival mystery about art, fashion, the natural world, family histories, religion, and climate change. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly writes, “Fonseca’s inventive, complex tale reads like a literary onion, constantly revealing new narratives and layers of meaning . . .The various characters’ perspectives blur the line between memory and fantasy, and their charm will keep readers along for the very intricate ride. Fonseca’s innovative puzzle box of a novel packs a powerful punch.” (Lydia)
by : To some degree all of Lacey’s fiction focuses on ontology and states of being, conveying the intimacy of relationships, as well as their built-in claustrophobia and desire to flee. Lacey has a way of articulating this in a way that’s both beautiful and delightfully jarring. It seems this counterbalance of delightful and jarring will also hold true in her third novel, (what a name, even), which depicts the itinerancy of a person shuffled between homes during a Forgiveness Festival, and who is nicknamed such
