Publishers Weekly - August 28, 2017

Review_FICTION PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ; AUGUST 28, 2017 98

Peter Lovesey and 18 other Soho Crime authors contribute to The Usual Santas, a Christmas-themed crime anthology (reviewed on p. 104).

; The Safe House

Christophe Boltanski, trans. from the French by Laura Marris. Univ. of Chicago, $24 (240p) ISBN 978-0-226-44919-7

As a child, Boltanski lived with his grandparents in what the French call a hôtel particulier, a nobleman’s mansion divided into apartments. But it was particular in the English-language sense as well: individual, specific, utterly nongeneric. Fittingly, Boltanski tells the story in a most particular way in this novel that, according to the translator’s note, “exists in a borderland between truth and fiction.” The book moves through the large apartment room by room. This Perec-esque approach lets him jump in time— sometimes one of the children sleeping on the floor around his grandparents’ bed is his father, sometimes it’s him—but it’s the same room. It allows him to cover events he wasn’t alive for, particularly the way his Jewish grandfather survived WWII by hiding in plain sight. The family functioned as a unit led by Boltanski’s fierce grandmother, who, undaunted by Nazis and polio, hid her husband, homeschooled Boltanski’s father and uncles, and wrote prolifically. Despite (or because of?— Boltanski leaves that for the reader to decide) barely leaving the family home, two of her sons became prominent scholars, and the youngest is the artist Christian Boltanski. Boltanski describes his family as afraid “of everything, of nothing, of others, of ourselves,” but what comes through in this short, smart, funny book is bravery and toughness, especially that of his grandmother, who in a world of imaginary and real terrors kept the family safe and together. (Oct.)

London and the South-East

David Szalay. Graywolf (FSG, dist.), $16 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-55597-793-1

This bleak, devastatingly observant novel
from the Booker Prize finalist follows
English ad salesman Paul Rainey. Stuck on
an underperforming team at a dead-end
sales firm, Paul is thrown a life raft by a
former colleague, Eddy, who promises
him a position at his own thriving sales
company in exchange for a betrayal of
Paul’s current one. Paul goes to pains-
taking, embarrassing lengths to orches-
trate this betrayal, recruiting his fellow
salespeople to jump ship with him to
Eddy’s firm, but the plan backfires spec-
tacularly on Paul, costing him his job,
friends, and purpose. After he fails to
secure employment as a gardener and then
as a street sweeper, Paul’s wife, Heather,
finds him a job stocking shelves overnight
at a supermarket. What minor confidence
boost this affords Paul is swiftly eradicated
by another betrayal, leading Paul to devise
a revenge plan so ill-conceived that it circles
around to profound. Written with intense
psychological acuity and inventive detail,
the author turns a humdrum account of
male malaise into an experience far more
affecting—and universal—than it has any
right to be. (Oct.)

; Smile

Roddy Doyle. Viking, $25 (224p) ISBN 978-0-

7352-2444-5

The latest novel from the Booker Prize– winning author of Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha explores the intricate psychology and history of a failed Irish writer who has recently separated from his famous wife.

Having rented a cheap apartment in the unnamed Irish hometown he’d left behind, Victor Forde passes his bleary nights at Donnelly’s, a nondescript local pub where he soon runs into a forgotten, ornery schoolmate, Fitzpatrick. From there, the book’s structure takes some twists and turns as Fitzpatrick forces Victor through difficult recollections of his Christian Brothers school years, his poignant courtship of his celebrity chef wife, and the controversial pro-choice radio interviews that made him infamous. A revelation brings the relationship between Victor and Fitzpatrick to a violent conclusion, leading to an ambiguous twist ending sure to spark debate in readers. Doyle skillfully depicts the triumphs and tragedies of the everyday, how the aging process humbles and ennobles, and how a single hasty decision made in one’s youth can define and destroy a mind and thus a life. (Oct.)

The Doll’s Alphabet

Camilla Grudova. Coffee House (Consortium, dist.), $15.95 trade paper (176p) ISBN 978-1- 56689-490-6

Women become wolves, men are born spiders, Gothic ornaments conquer an apartment building, and corpses complain in Grudova’s smart, haunting debut collection. Set in worlds that overlap with ours—characters listen to Tchaikovsky, watch Pinocchio, and travel to Europe— these stories nevertheless render familiar tropes deeply strange. In the dystopia of “Rhinoceros,” trains don’t run, food is scarce, but a young couple survives by selling drawings of animals they’ve never seen to a mysterious man in a gray top hat. The society of “Waxy” sanctions an extreme form of couplehood: women must support their men by working in hazardous factories, where they are often maimed, while men study for exams and visit cafés. Many objects and images recur throughout the collection: women remove their skin to reveal their “true” bodies, which resemble sewing machines, in “Unstitching,” and an eight-legged dandy falls in love with a sewing machine in “Notes from a Spider,” hiring seam-stresses to keep the machine running at any cost, even their own lives. A kidnapped mermaid skulks around the house in “The Mermaid,” while a ship’s wooden mermaid figurehead gives birth to a little