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April may well be "the cruelest month," as T.S. Eliot famously opined — and even a five-minute doomscroll makes it tough to deny that cruelty is riding at anything but record levels lately. But remember you 

 have an alternative to doomscrolling, one that's been around much longer: cracking open a book — or doomflipping, I suppose you could call it.

Don't get me wrong: The books expected this month don't exactly radiate escapist good vibes, riddled as they are with anxiety, corruption, unfulfilled desire — even the occasional direct challenge to our notions of reality itself. 

But they do offer the opportunity to step into someone else's shoes and get to know their own particular view of our shared world — and sometimes that's consolation enough. Which is nice, because it may have to be this month.

The jacket copy of Lerner's novella is basically a journalist's stress dream: Commissioned to write what may be the final profile of his mentor, an aging literary icon, Lerner's narrator fries his only recording device just minutes before the interview by dropping his phone in the sink. 

What follows is a meditation on memory, art and fatherhood, expressed in a handful of conversations that we've got plenty of cause to find unreliable, given the circumstances. As in his previous novels, 

,” Lerner centers some version of himself in this strangely captivating blend of fiction, memoir and critical essay, shot through with humor and anxiety.

‘American Fantasy,’ by Emma Straub (4/7)

Speaking of premises that read like one of my nightmares: Straub's novel portrays the American Fantasy cruise ship and its themed voyage dedicated to an aging boyband and their loyal superfans — at this point, mostly middle-aged women addled with nostalgia and the looming terrors of menopause. 

The book bounces between the perspectives of a reluctant attendee, a band member and the boat's hypercompetent event director, who really doesn't deserve this. It's infused with a blend of bemused humor and abiding sympathy familiar to readers of Straub's previous novels, “

‘London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth,’ by Patrick Radden Keefe (4/7)

In Keefe's previous book “Say Nothing,” the veteran reporter took hold of a single loose thread — 

 — and pulled with such tenacity that the history of an entire tumultuous era raveled into view. 

Here, Keefe applies a similar approach — only this time, instead of Northern Ireland's Troubles, the context of his latest book is modern London's obliging relationship with the international financial elite. But as before, there's an intimately human tragedy at the heart of Keefe's investigation: 

a young man's fatal plunge into the Thames

 and all the uncomfortable questions British authorities appear reluctant to pursue.

‘The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry and the Cosmic Dream Boogie,’ by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein (4/7)

"You too can have your mind altered — no drugs necessary." This, from the book's introduction, offers something of a promise — which Prescod-Weinstein keeps with gusto, in this jaunty affront to just about everything our senses tell us about the world. 

The University of New Hampshire physicist's follow-up to 

her lauded debut, “The Disordered Cosmos

,” draws from just about every intellectual nook and cranny — from Bantu linguistics and 

, to hip-hop and gender theory — to weave an idiosyncratic illustration of the universe as physicists understand it today. 

It's an accessible take on a flabbergasting subject which, to put it mildly, offers a rather different view of reality than the one I remember learning in school.

‘My Dear You: Stories,’ by Rachel Khong (4/7)

This is Khong's third book of fiction and her first short story collection. In it, she shows off the kind of range suggested by her previous novel, the tripartite “Real Americans” 

Here, in the new collection, heavy subjects such as race and grief coexist with conjured spirits and a psychic cat, extraterrestrials and a God who has reconsidered the whole "human" thing — and given everyone a deadline by which they'll need to decide what other species they'd like to be instead. Understandably, given the givens so far.

. Semple is best known for funny, deceptively poignant portraits of mothers in midlife crisis — see: “

. The star of her newest novel is Adora Hazzard, a divorced philosopher with a sullen teenage daughter, a job teaching morals to rich kids and a growing "coven" of friends living nearby. 

Hold on tight, though — this one's plot has twists and turns in abundance, as Hazzard certainly earns her last name in a series of, dare I say, 

, animated always by a subtle, irrepressible 

‘On the Calculation of Volume, Book IV,’ by Solveig Balle, translated from the Danish by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell (4/14)

 This unassuming date has detained Balle's narrator for three novels already, and is likely to continue doing so for another three after this one. I hesitate to relate any more details about where the plot of the planned septology stands at this point, for fear of spoiling it for folks who still intend to catch up. 

 afoot at this point for our timelocked narrator, who may not be nearly as alone in her plight as she had initially thought.

‘Last Night in Brooklyn,’ by Xochitl Gonzalez (4/21)

Gonzalez stays close to home with her third novel. A dyed-in-the-wool Brooklynite, born and bred, the author of 

So the departure in her latest book is less in space than time, as her latest novel deposits readers in Brooklyn in 2007, on the cusp of global financial freefall, for a story of class, race, dangerous aspirations and the looming death of a heady era, which bears unmistakable echoes of “

‘American Men,’ by Jordan Ritter Conn (4/21)

The American men referred to in the grandly sweeping title of Conn's sophomore book of narrative journalism, in fact, number just four. Each of these men bears the mantle of masculinity differently, grappling differently with all the pressures that the label entails, but each one has also bared his experiences and innermost thoughts to Conn with equally thorough candor. 

From these four interspersed stories Conn does not produce any sociological claims, still less a polemic, so much as a portrait of four lives so disarmingly frank, it can be difficult to look away — and maybe we shouldn't.

‘Small Town Girls: A Memoir,’ by Jayne Anne Phillips (4/21)

 for her last book, “Night Watch,” a wrenching portrayal of trauma and recovery set in a West Virginia mental asylum following the Civil War. Now, Phillips (

"one of our greatest living writers," according to Michael Chabon

, one of that year's Pulitzer jurors) is returning to the Allegheny Mountains of West Virginia, not in historical fiction but in personal retrospect. 

It's where Phillips grew up, where she has come to set most of fiction, and her new memoir is not so much about her life alone as it is her lifelong relationship with this place she "can never truly leave."

‘The Story of Birds: A New History from Their Dinosaur Origins to Today,’ by Steve Brusatte (4/28)

Brusatte could not be any clearer about this, folks: Birds. Are. Dinosaurs. The American paleontologist underlines the idea, which is apparently a century and a half old, early and often in “The Story of Birds.” This expansive history of our fine-feathered neighbors, as scientists understand them today, traces an evolutionary thread that leads directly from landbound behemoths like the triceratops to the airborne raptors that patrol our own skies. 

As he has done in his previous books — which covered dinosaurs and mammals, respectively — Brusatte offers a lively, loving introduction to his topic that's as comprehensive as it is accessible.

Arts and Culture

The Thread® - Books and Literary News

Colin Dwyer

Author

The books we’re spotlighting this month don’t exactly radiate escapist good vibes — but they do offer the opportunity to step into someone else's life and get to know their view of our shared world.

11 new books in April offer a chance to step inside someone else’s world

Go Deeper.

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