NUVO’s Holiday Book Gift Guide
As the holiday season approaches, here are five book recommendations for both indie gems and new contemporary classics any bibliophile would love to receive.
The latest novel from one of contemporary literature’s most successful and beloved authors, Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo (Faber & Faber) barely needs any introduction. The novel follows two brothers—Peter, a lawyer, and Ivan, a chess prodigy—in the wake of their father’s passing. Ten years apart in age, Peter and Ivan appear to be opposites, down to their romantic conundrums: Peter is pulled between a past partner and a more transactional affair with a student, while Ivan begins a shy romance with an older woman. Ambitious and tender, Intermezzo alternates between high modernist style for Peter’s rolling thoughts and measured but vulnerable third person for Ivan. More than any previous Rooney, Intermezzo cracks the reader open emotionally. A wonderful gift for any and all of your friends who are 500th on their local library’s waiting lists, this is a Rooney to keep and revisit.
All Fours (Riverhead Books) by writer, performance artist, and director Miranda July is one of the most discussed books of the year, with copies passing between friends and reading groups alike—and for good reason. In July’s hilarious and unrepentantly horny romp, an unnamed 40-something artist’s road trip is waylaid when she develops an attraction to Davey, a young garage attendant and aspiring dancer. The narrator’s decision to abandon her trip and luxuriate in her crush/midlife crisis upends every aspect of her life. All Fours is striking not just for its depiction of desire but also for exploring the aftermath. What does it look like to completely rebuild your new life?
Jane Shi’s Echolalia Echolalia (Brick Books) bursts with originality and verve. Shi’s poetry is playful, constantly experimenting with form: punctuation is upended, footnotes reveal childhood secrets, and collages pack an emotional punch. Shi mediates profound emotional questions with contemporary humour. We send texts to the moon over Lex or reach our ancestors through an “incense search engine.” With skill and beauty, Echolalia Echolalia captures the heartbreak of lost friendships—how “barbie vows” subside into silence—and cultivates a mischievous sense of defiance. Deeply creative, this adventurous collection will expand any poetry-lover’s horizons.
No Credit River by Zoe Whittall (Book*hug Press) is, by its own admission, “an unreliable memoir, in prose poetry.” An accomplished writer of fiction and television, Whittall turns to her own life for this genre-blending work of autofiction, recounting a painful but transformative stretch of six years, including an unhealthy long-term partnership and lost pregnancy. Along the way, No Credit River paints a nuanced picture of queer family-building and how these relationships change with age. Whittall confronts the anxieties, heartbreaks, and surprises that emerge from loss with refreshing honesty and precision. Her candid wit turns these acutely observed poems into a memorable page-turner about extending care toward our messiest selves.
Iranian-American poet Cyrus Sham, the fictional protagonist of Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! (Knopf), is recently sober and fixated on death. While he was still an infant, his mother died on Iran Air Flight 655, a commercial flight shot out of the sky by a U.S. navy warship. His father passed away suddenly while Cyrus was in college. His uncle is haunted by the Iran-Iraq War. Akbar is a renowned poet, spotlighted this year in the “Time100” list of the most influential artists, and his debut novel shows his gift for invention. Martyr! is a merry-go-round of fascinating characters and histories, moving restlessly between time and space, the dead and the living, as Cyrus attempts to make sense of the senseless—and how we stay open to the world around us.
