Poolside Reads
07.18.18
Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang: Centered on a community of immigrants who have traded their endangered lives as artists in China and Taiwan for the constant struggle of life at the poverty line in 1990s New York City, Zhang’s exhilarating collection examines the many ways that family and history can weigh us down and also lift us up. From the young woman coming to terms with her grandmother’s role in the Cultural Revolution to the daughter struggling to understand where her family ends and she begins, to the girl discovering the power of her body to inspire and destroy, these seven vibrant stories illuminate the complex and messy inner lives of girls struggling to define themselves. Fueled by Zhang’s singular voice and sly humor, this collection introduces Zhang as a bright and devastating force in literary fiction.
Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan: Nicholas Young’s grandmother Su Yi is on her deathbed. While he rushes to be by her bedside, he’s not the only one. The entire Shang-Young clan has convened from all corners of the globe to stake claim on their matriarch’s massive fortune. With all parties vying to inherit a trophy estate in the heart of Singapore, Nicholas’s childhood home turns into a hotbed of sabotage and scandal. A sweeping novel that takes us from elegantly appointed mansions in Manila to secluded private islands in the Sulu Sea, from a kidnapping at Hong Kong’s most elite private school to a surprise marriage proposal at an Indian palace, caught on camera by the telephoto lenses of paparazzi, Kevin Kwan’s gloriously wicked new novel reveals the long-buried secrets of Asia’s most privileged families and their rich people problems.
The Idiot by Elif Batuman: With superlative emotional and intellectual sensitivity, mordant wit, and pitch-perfect style, Batuman dramatizes the uncertainty of life on the cusp of adulthood. Her prose is a rare and inimitable combination of tenderness and wisdom; its logic as natural and inscrutable as that of memory itself. The Idiotis a heroic yet self-effacing reckoning with the terror and joy of becoming a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disquieting. Batuman’s fiction is unguarded against both life’s affronts and its beauty—and has at its command the complete range of thinking and feeling which they entail.
The Force by Don Winslow: All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop. He’s the king of Manhattan North, a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of “Da Force.” Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, and the baddest. What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash. Now Malone is being squeezed by the feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, and trying to survive while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.
The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty: Imagine your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not only the life you have built together but the lives of others as well. And then imagine that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive…
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