defies his tyrannical father’s wishes by
turning their corn farm into a horse farm,
where he hopes to turn out thoroughbred
racers. Set around the year 2007, Henry’s
equally headstrong daughter, Henrietta,
defies her father by hiring a black ex-con
named Allmon Shaughnessy to work in
the stables. Raised in Cincinnati by a
well-meaning single mother suffering from
Lupus, Allmon drifted into petty crime at
an early age. Now he is trying to make a
new start at Forge Run Farm, where Henry
and Henrietta have pinned all their hopes
on Hellsmouth, a thoroughbred filly
from an historic bloodline. Henry, having
inherited his father’s belief in the inferiority
of the black race, does everything possible
to stop the growing attraction between
Allmon and his daughter, but fate has a
shocking destiny in store for them. The
novel starts strong out of the gate, with
Henry, Henrietta, and Allmon each get-
ting nearly
100 pages for
his or her own
immersive
backstory, then
blows it in the
backstretch
with a series of
melodramatic
incidents that
undermines the
care with which
Morgan (All the Living ) has created these
larger-than-life characters. However, fans
of Jane Smiley’s Horse Heaven and Jaimy
Gordon’s Lord of Misrule will appreciate
the novel’s authentically pungent shed-row atmosphere, as ultimately satisfying
as a mint julep on Derby Day. (May)
The Lamentations of Zeno
Ilija Trojanow, trans. from the German by
Philip Boehm. Verso (PRH, dist.), $19.95
(176p) ISBN 978-1-78478-219-1
The stark desolation of Antarctica
not available to humanity. The last two
stories are the collection’s best: the
narrator of “The Wedding Stairs” finds
a life’s worth of embarrassments have
manifested as stains on her gown, and in
“Contamination Generation,” a father
wrestles with inadequacy in the shadow
of his neighbor’s mansion. Among the
other stories of wifedom and motherhood,
this final glimpse into the male psyche
offers a feel of the fantastic, of the play-
fulness and discovery that characterizes
the collection as a whole. Agent: Faye Bender,
the Book Group. (May)
The Sport of Kings
C.E. Morgan. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27
(560p) ISBN 978-0-374-28108-3
Morgan’s enjoyable if overwritten novel
about horse racing is, at heart, a story about
parents and children. In 1965, Henry Forge,
scion of a powerful white Kentucky dynasty,
not be note perfect, as Quickman’s novel
is described, but like Quickman’s, it is
unusual and disquieting. (May)
Some Possible Solutions
Helen Phillips. Holt, $26 (240p) ISBN 978-1-
62779-379-7
High concepts and sly emotion animate
this solid collection of allegorical fiction
from the author of And Yet They Were Happy
and The Beautiful Bureaucrat. In “The
Knowers,” a wife learns the precise date
of her death via a kind of morbid ATM,
then reluctantly divulges the information
to her husband. A young mother moves
to a town of eerie look-alikes in “The
Doppelgängers,” where she eventually
breast-feeds a child that bears an uncanny
resemblance to her own. In “The Joined,”
the world watches with envy as astronauts physically fuse with an alien race,
achieving a blissful mind-body symbiosis
; Sergio Y.
Alexandre Vidal Porto, trans. from the Portuguese by Alex Ladd.
Europa (PRH, dist.), $16 trade paper (192p) ISBN 978-1-60945-327-5
Porto’s captivating, impeccably structured novel is a detective story wrapped around a deeper exploration of identity. Armando proclaims himself at the outset o be one of São Paulo’s best doctors, but the case of
a 17-year-old named Sergio haunts him, due to Armando’s
failure to diagnose a critical aspect of the unhappiness Sergio
sought to eradicate through therapy: namely, Sergio’s wish
to become a woman. Even though Sergio insists after discontinuing therapy that Armando helped him realize the
course his life must take, Armando still considers the
treatment a missed opportunity. Only after Sergio’s death does Armando learn
about Sergio’s move to New York City and his path to becoming a woman named
Sandra. Plagued by self-doubt about whether he inadvertently led Sergio to his
death, Armando begins an investigation into Sergio’s journey as well as his own
role in moving Sergio toward his ultimate destiny. The result is a methodical and
deeply layered narrative about the sacrifices we make in the search for happiness.
(May)
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