The Immortalistsby Chloe Benjamin
A fortune-teller predicts the exact death dates of four young siblings.
Its consummate rendering of gay men’s interior lives never simplifies, even as death permeates the novel.
What never dies is their love for one another.
Americanahby Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
A much-needed reminder especially now that not all American families areAmerican.
This sweeping novel follows childhood sweethearts forced to separate because of bureaucratic red tape.
Here’s a definitive exploration of inherited trauma, triumphantly reclaiming the humanity of sorrow.
LaRoseby Louise Erdrich
Can anything atone for the death of a child?
What follows is a raw, poignant meditation on the reach and limits of forgiveness.
But his most recent novel,Moonglow, hit much closer to home.
The book grew out of his conversations with his dying grandfather.
“I invented grandparents for myself whom I could know completely,” Chabon says.
“It’s supposed to be painful,” he says of the transition.
“It’s only through making our families that many of us actually find families.”
Sing, Unburied, Singby Jesmyn Ward
Jesmyn Ward’s families are haunted.
(Both won the National Book Award.)
In her lyrical renderings, parents and children come to astonishing life, timeless in their compassion.
“The families I portray in my work reflect my own experience,” she says.
“This is the fabric of my own life and the lives of those around me.”
Resilience has never felt so American.
“There is this question of how much our families shape us,” she says.
“And how much we shape ourselves in opposition to our families.”
“Looking back at my novels, I see I’m thinking about nuclear family,” says Ng.
“Maybe family can mean a link other than blood kinship.”
The satire resonates no less thanBernadette’s beating heart: the love between mother and daughter.
