Back-to-school season is upon us and with it comes all kinds of exciting book launches. This fall, sink your teeth into new memoirs from playwright Sarah Ruhl, model Emily Ratajkowski, and you might just destroy Michaela Coel; Get down to business with the latest novels from Colm Tóibín, Colson Whitehead, and Dave Eggers; or discover something completely different – you’ll be spoiled for choice.
Here are some highlights from the upcoming season, as reviewed by the vogue staff.
You are reading: Best books fall 2021
michaela coel misfits (september)
is there anything michaela coel can’t do? The 33-year-old writer/director/producer/actress has not only brought two brilliant shows to life (the hysterical bubble gum and the heartbreakingly crude I can destroy you), but is now making her mark on the literary world with her first work of non-fiction. book, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto. Coel covers it all—growing up in London public housing, dealing with trauma, adjusting to the demands of fame—with her trademark wit and wisdom, making it clear that her storytelling power transcends the small screen. Coel is a voice that jumps off the page, and she is one that we are lucky to have applied to whatever story she chooses to tell. —emma specter
the magician of colm tóibín (September)
it’s hard not to speak of colm tóibín’s latest novel, the magician, in the highest terms, as something amazing, dazzling or an achievement. Yet given the book’s epic scope, which offers both a haunting and heartbreakingly intimate portrait of its protagonist, German writer Thomas Mann, and a richly drawn sense of place as he travels through a politically turbulent Europe of early 20th century america and back: these accolades feel deserving. As in Tóibín’s 2004 novel The Master (tracing the life of Henry James), the struggle underpinning Mann’s conflicted inner world is one of sexuality, with Tóibín conveying his unknowability even to those closest to him with a strange and elegiac beauty. Part of the novel’s charm is the forensic approach tóibín takes to his subject, neither condemning him for the sometimes selfish decisions he makes and the distance he keeps from the people who love him nor defining a writer who is clearly a hero of his in purely hagiographic terms. (Indeed, at times the book reads almost like a biography with his eye for detail and considered pacing.) The Wizard is an immersive and intentionally meandering book, but one that always rewards your patience, especially in an unsettling final section that sees Mann look back. in his life and all that he has lost. If he is willing to surrender to the vast and amazingly realized world that Tóibín conjures up around Mann, he will find himself savoring every page. —liam hess
three girls from bronzeville by dawn turner (september)
Three young black women, studious dawn, bold kim, and beautiful debra, are at the heart of these unmissable memoirs, as is the bond that blossoms between them as they navigate the challenging business of growing up in the bronzeville neighborhood of chicago. . Dawn, Kim and Debra are coming of age, slowly but surely and with many mishaps along the way, in the 1970s South Side, directly in the shadow of the Civil Rights movement. Journalist and novelist Turner’s book functions as a kind of living history, allowing the reader a direct and unflinching view of what it’s like to inherit a mixed legacy of continuing freedom and injustice. —ie
i wished by dennis cooper (september)
After a 10-year hiatus, gay fiction’s dire kid Dennis Cooper returns with I Wished, which may be his most surreal, disturbing and vulnerable work yet (which is saying a lot). The book is based once again on the life of Cooper’s late friend George Miles, most famously remembered in the 1990s George Miles Cooper cycle, which spanned five books and 11 years, with whom he had a brief fling. sexual and who finally committed suicide. But Cooper is adamant that this is not a sixth installment, but something more nebulous and open. exploring the darkest corners of desire and transgression with cooper’s heady balance of formal experimentation (the book is variously narrated by nick drake, santa claus, and john wayne gacy jr.) and frank depictions of sex that veer between the wild and the deeply tender, is a strange and sometimes wonderful tribute to his friend, as well as a powerful work of autofiction. —left
joy williams stands (september)
joy williams fiction, both otherworldly and deeply realistic, equally strange and fascinating, inspires a fierce loyalty among those who discover it. and more and more of us are following the overdue publication of the privilege of visiting: new and collected stories in 2015. here was the definitive 500-page collection of williams best short stories, written over a career spanning five decades, that together conjured up a mirror United States of misfits and outcasts, of life lived on the fringes and in psychological extremes. Her hauntingly strange new novel, Harrow, offers an absolutely riveting take on the ecological apocalypse. This is Williams’ first since 2000’s The Quick and the Dead and it’s another coming-of-age story, though Harrow is more fractured and darker than that (great) novel. Teenage Khristen embarks on a dystopian American landscape after she shuts down her boarding school and encounters the insanity of a cult among a community of survivors on the shores of a toxic lake. —taylor antrim
lauren groff matrix (september)
lauren groff’s latest is very different from the (mostly) contemporary set fiction for which she became known in the past. her much-lauded bestseller Fates and Furies delved so deeply into divergent perspectives on a marriage that it felt like snooping through couples counseling, with a delightfully twisted plot that fueled antagonism. The Matrix, however, is so different that it feels like an experiment: the story of a 12th-century teenager, Marie de France, sent from France to be the new prioress of an English abbey. There’s been something of a mini-boom in convent books (see Claire Luchette’s Agatha of Little Neon for another vibrant example) that set adventure and fulfillment within seemingly cloistered confines, and the abbey here also offers Marie de France an amazing save. The Matrix may not appeal to those who have followed Groff, but it marks a bold new direction for the accomplished writer. —chloe schama
the transgender question: an argument for justice by shon faye (September)
See Also: 8 great novels written in the second person – Reading Matters
for anyone who follows lgbtq+ rights around the world, it has been impossible not to notice a rise in transphobia in the uk. in recent years. whether it’s a spike in anti-trans hate crimes, the toxic frenzy of the right-wing media around a possible update to the gender recognition law allowing self-identification, or, most famously, a flood of comments toxic by j.k. rowling, it seems the topic has never been more loaded. enter shon faye. The journalist and former lawyer might have gained a following on Twitter for her tongue-in-cheek humor, but her first book, The Transgender Issue, offers a cold, hard, and most importantly compelling look at the facts surrounding trans rights, both in the past as in the present. as well as a moving and impressively comprehensive account of trans life in britain today. Fueled by Faye’s sharp and brilliant writing style, the book is already attracting a stir in the UK, along with signings from the likes of Judith Butler and Sarah Schulman. As well as being a manifesto of sorts arguing for the benefits of trans liberation for society at large, the transgender issue is a vital resource for readers outside the UK. to understand what is happening there in terms of trans rights and how to bring about a change in the conversation that has been long overdue. —left
Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle (September)
If Whitehead’s most recent novel lacks the masterful weight of his previous two (Pulitzer Prize-winning The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railway), it more than makes up for it in fun. This is a Harlem adventure, set in the 1960s, starring a resourceful and ethically malleable furniture salesman named Ray Carney who becomes involved in a hotel heist led by his cousin Freddie’s. Soon crooks and crooked cops are roaming his (mostly) honest business. Will he be able to get out with his family and his fortune intact? Whitehead is in entertainment mode here, but his plot is meticulously constructed and his hero is someone you root for. —t.a.
a call for charlie barnes by joshua ferris (september)
for those who fell in love with joshua ferris’s debut, then come to the end (me, i did), a call for charlie barnes feels like a return to the comedic-existential themes of that first book: what what is work and why we do it? instead of an office the setting here is charlie barnes basement where he has been camped out for several years trying to get his long floundering money management business off the ground (a fitting transformation of office architecture after of more than one year of wfh ). except that the runway for his wobbly business has been so long it seems he may occupy this perpetual taxi status forever. But then some news: Charlie is dying of cancer, or at least she thinks he probably is, and she begins to reflect on how she has spent the minutes, years, and decades of his life. what follows is a quasi stream of consciousness play through his love affairs and misadventures. —c.s.
On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Restriction by Maggie Nelson (September)
With their distinctive blend of critical theory and personal insight, maggie nelson’s books, from the haunting collage of poetry and prose tracing her aunt’s 1969 murder that encompassed jane: a murder and the red parts to her gender-defying meditation on the queer family, The Argonauts (2015)—have always evaded easy definition. So, she is surprised to see that her latest book initially appears to be divided into four neat parts as she turns her gaze toward one of the most inescapable and politically charged issues in America today: liberty. however, in typically unconventional style, the first line announces in all caps: “stop here if you want to talk about freedom.” what nelson seeks is to find a new way of talking about the notion of freedom, one that detaches itself from the strong political connotations that have been loaded into the word, examining it through the lenses of art, sex, drugs and climate. As always, Nelson’s inquisitive investigation is on equal footing with her effortlessly flowing prose, moving between first-person anecdotal stories and intense critical examination with maximum readability. Ultimately, Nelson’s approach seeks liberation and transcendence, be it sexual, narcotic, or purely biological, something that palpably radiates from her writing, even as she delves into some of the darkest corners of the human psyche. —left
crossroads by jonathan franzen (october)
jonathan franzen’s pleasure bomb of a new crossroads takes place in a new perspective, an illinois suburb that could be a backdrop for norman rockwell were it not for the rumblings of the women’s liberation movement and the war in vietnam. It’s 1971 and the Hildebrandt family lives in a drafty house that the local church provided to Patriarch Russ, a god-fearing, self-hating associate minister who has not only fallen in love with a pixie widow, but guilt of his wishes to his wife, Marion. . They have four children: Young Judson; Becky, the golden cheerleader who isn’t half as boring as she seems; college-aged Clem, wracked with guilt over unequal recruitment and his lust for a worldly older student; and Perry, whose extraordinary mental wiring leads to the manic episode that is one of the book’s many tours de force. The most operatic and surprising part might belong to Marion, whose obedient baking of Christmas cookies and ghostwriting of her husband’s sermons are insufficient outlets for her pain and brilliance. Unbeknownst to anyone in her family, she visits her “paid friend,” a therapist who works quietly in a dentist’s office. This book draws on novel-length backstories that are as alluring and alive as the scenes set in the novel’s present day, but Marion’s moment in the spotlight is outstanding, a masterpiece in the Nathanael tradition. west and the american grotesque. new perspectives are what keep the narrative so engrossing, each section expanding and deepening the shock of what has come before. Fifty years after the setting of the novel, America’s main story is one of social unrest, but it is personal unrest that dominates Franzen’s fascination and unquestioned talent. the little moments, a look in the mirror, a snub on the bus seat, explode into entertaining vignettes full of secrets and sins that keep us all truly unknown to those we hold closest to. As he has in his previous five novels, Franzen marries the sympathetic and the damning, the serious and the comic, faith and madness. good writers can sustain nuance. few can take human contradiction and make it half as entertaining and intimate as franzen. the more than 500 pages fly by and come together in a magnificent portrait of an American family on the brink of implosion. The first in a planned trilogy, Crossroads is Act I of what is sure to be an American classic. —lauren mechling
sarah ruhl smile (october)
Sarah Ruhl’s memoir begins just before the birth of her twins, a time when her life was full and complete, with a toddler at home and a play at the Lincoln Center. At first, the book seems like a (useful, important) treatise on making a career in theater as a woman and a mother, but it transforms into something more experimental and far-reaching when Ruhl is diagnosed, immediately after the birth of her twins. with Bell’s palsy. a muscle-loosening disorder, bell’s palsy causes her face to tilt unpredictably; little is known about what causes it, and little is known about what she cures. The memoir charts the course of her affliction, circling themes of postpartum life, vanity, ambition, anger, and acceptance, and investigates what we attribute to a face when it comes to our sense of identity and how we define ourselves beyond of the. —c.s.
the every by dave eggers (October)
nobody does dystopian fiction like dave eggers, and his streak of brilliance continues with every, an account of what happens when, ahem, the fictional search engine and social networking site the circle (definitely not google, no! sir!) is merging with the world’s largest e-commerce site (couldn’t be amazon!) to become a massive conglomerate. Although the didactic aspect of Eggers’ story is clear, the novel shines brightest when it is dedicated to humanity, specifically that of the former ranger and current employee of Delaney Wells. Delaney is determined to bring down Monopoly from the inside, and following her on her perilous quest to do just that is a thrill ride that will (at the very least) make you think twice about turning on Amazon Prime. —ie
jennifer higgie’s mirror and palette (october)
In her latest book, The Mirror and the Palette, art historian and former frieze editor Jennifer Higgie surveys art history to ask a (seemingly) simple question: How have women seen themselves? women artists? examining self-portraiture by artists as diverse as sofonisba anguissola and artemisia gentileschi (the great italian renaissance and baroque painters), the masterminds of surrealism leonora carrington and frida kahlo, and lesser-known figures such as australian artist nora heysen and her new zealand contemporary rita angus, higgie’s book is a helpful handbook for those seeking to understand the obstacles and challenges faced by women artists throughout the centuries, as well as a timely assessment of what it means to look at women artists in history today. It’s a topic that’s been covered before, but with Higgie’s background in frieze, she is just as connected to contemporary currents in feminist art as she is to her historical context, giving the text an important freshness. And after all, despite a growing curiosity about women artists of the past, it’s really only been for the last five years, notably with the first elisabeth vigée le brun retrospective at the met in 2016 and the first major exhibition de gentileschi at london’s national gallery last year, that this interest has filtered through to major art institutions. For those who want to go beyond biography and learn more about the why and how of women artists’ struggle to make their voices heard, The Mirror and the Palette is an important and brilliantly accessible resource. —left
orwell’s roses by rebecca solnit (october)
Throughout the Trump administration, the Orwellian term was invoked frequently enough to lose all meaning. Now, nearly a year after Trump’s impeachment, comes a new nonfiction work from celebrated author and journalist Rebecca Solnit that reconsiders George Orwell’s legacy once and for all. In Orwell’s Roses, Solnit examines Orwell’s fascination with gardening from every possible direction, tracing her life from her English childhood to her time fighting in the Spanish Civil War and her adult fixation with authoritarianism. And, as she does so, she follows the theme of gardening to several startling conclusions, including dictator Josef Stalin’s obsession with growing lemons and Jamaican novelist Kinkaid’s critique of colonialism in her application to the flower garden. . The task solnit has set for herself in this book is enormous, but she is more than ready as a writer and thinker; no one who reads it will ever think of 1984 in the same way. —ie
i love you but i have chosen the dark by claire vaye watkins (october)
See Also: Chris Bohjalian – Book Series In Order
Claire Vaye Watkins’ first novel, Gold Fame Citrus, was a portrait of the American West. But framed as a post-apocalyptic fever dream and published around the same time as several other novels dealing with themes of the end of the world as we know it (edan lepucki’s california, emily st. john mandel’s station 11), its landscape seemed more like a backdrop. background than a character in his own right. It’s different in its latest version, I love you, but I’ve chosen the dark, where the brutal, barren, electric terrain of remote California and Nevada crackles on almost every page. The story is told by a writer, Claire (several names and details relate to Watkins’s own life), who has returned home to Nevada for light book promotion and medium drug use with college friends who have hooked up. stayed in the state. The trip is an escape from her marriage and her baby and collides with long vignettes and characters from her past: a hippy father who procured nubile teenagers for Charles Manson before he thought better of the whole project and an artist mother who works magic in the desert before succumbing to the opioid plague that has decimated much of the country. the book is mind-boggling and beautiful, slippery and seductive: a unique psychogeography of a region that is integral to the American vision and yet seems to have very few literary chroniclers. —c.s.
miss dior: a story of courage and haute couture by justine picardie (october)
on paper, catherine dior is an unusual heroine. Born into the prosperous Dior family in 1917, the youngest of five children, she seemed destined for a decorative existence. but when the family’s fortunes suddenly vanished due to failed real estate ventures, a life of leisure seemed much less inevitable. In 1935, teenage Catherine moved from the family’s stately home to a dilapidated country house in Provence. She soon ran away to live with her older brother, Christian, in Paris, selling accessories for a fashion house while he sold her sketches. When World War II broke out, Ella Caro, as she was known, joined the resistance and was eventually imprisoned in a concentration camp. she survived and rarely spoke of her struggles, living a quiet life, helping her brother and selling flowers. despite having avoided the spotlight while she was alive, she catherine is now being driven to him. Picardie’s book celebrates an unsung hero at a time when long-overlooked female influences are gaining new acclaim. —laird borrelli-person
silverview by john le carré (october)
what a gift to have a posthumous novel by john le carré, a writer who gave us a world of intricate spies, government deception, and corrupt capitalist overlords that was as unromantic as it was engaging and captivating. silverview is le carré’s 26th novel and it is a familiar tune played in a minor key, a mild but elegant story of western collapse, of an espionage service (mi6) struggling to justify itself and intent on eradicating those who questioning his dubious victories julian lawndsley, 33, is a familiar protagonist in late le carré, a well-intentioned, if somewhat limited, man of scant means who, in this case, has abandoned a life of finance to open a bookstore in a small English town. the opening scenes are tense and funny at the same time: a hallmark of le carré: edward avon, an important pensioner who appears to be a polish swan, walks into the bookstore and recruits julian to do some more of his little business, suggests a literary republic, a gathering place for book lovers in the community. Of course, Avon is not what he seems and this novel patiently recounts his backstory as a MI6 agent who has not been as loyal to the service as he would like. Silverview’s twists and turns won’t surprise any Le Carré devotees, but it’s a nice coda to an unforgettable race. —t.a.
my body of emily ratajkowski (November)
This irresistibly titled debut from supermodel-turned-writer Emily Ratajkowski completes part of the story of how Ratajkowski came to be one of the world’s most famous faces. but more than that, the book is dedicated to probing what it means to be in possession of such a face. my body is a memory, but it is also, like sweetbitter or in the land of men, a slow and complicated indictment of a profession and the people who drive it. Ratajkowski doesn’t blame a particular person or organization so much, but rather paints a personal picture of what it was like for her to be young, naive, ambitious and intelligent, and to feel reduced, all too often, to a collection of body parts. the book will appeal to anyone who wants to know what it was like to dance in robin thicke’s “blurred lines” (the embarrassing video that made ratajkowski a household name) or what it was like to act opposite ben affleck in lost girl, but it will offer a more nuanced portrayal and insight into what those who come to him with such superficial interests might expect. —c.s.
These Precious Days: Ann Patchett Essays (November)
“All I think about is how other people live,” Patchett writes in the exquisite title essay for her new collection, These Precious Days, which became a minor sensation when it was published by Harper Magazine in January. “Curiosity is the rock on which fiction is built.” It’s something that runs through all of Patchett’s powerful but unassuming work, which is difficult to summarize neatly, mainly because what Patchett writes is just that: his boundless interest in the lives of ordinary people. in her fiction, they could be people with frayed family ties, people with the revealing joy of a new friendship, or people who find themselves in highly unlikely situations, as in her award-winning 2001 novel, Bel Canto. but in these precious days, her first nonfiction work in eight years, patchett looks back not only at herself but also at the relationships she has forged throughout her writing career, in essays that vary in length but which perfectly balance Patchett’s penetrating soulful and emotional sentiment. Intellectual insights with a cozy charm. Still, the justified centerpiece of the collection is the title essay, which traces his unlikely friendship with Tom Hanks’s assistant, Sooki Raphael, during quarantine, after Hanks recorded the audiobook of Patchett’s earlier novel, The Dutch House (Pulitzer Prize Finalist). Thrilled by Raphael’s perspective on life and her skills as a painter, Patchett documents their journey together in the most intimate terms as Raphael deals with a terminal cancer diagnosis. is an unforgettable portrait of love, loss, and the wonders of friendship that will leave you both devastated and amazed. —left
five tuesdays in winter by lily king (november)
there is a character in lily king’s new collection of short stories, five winter tuesdays, who feels “a new fullness in his chest” after a powerful communion with another person: “words and feelings… all jumbled inside of him, meeting like lost parts of an atom.” It would be a bit of an exaggeration to say that this is the feeling every time you read one of King’s stories, but it’s not far off. King doesn’t shy away from big emotions, but expresses them with tenderness, precision, and unsentimentality. These are stories of strangers who They find their people, from new perspectives, and place King, already one of our most poignant and moving contemporary novelists, between Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, and Mary Gaitskill as one of our great short story writers as well. . —c.s.
our country friends by gary shteyngart (November)
with his kamikaze humor and soft spot for the 1 percent and shlubs (two often overlapping subsets of humanity), gary shteyngart is one of our greatest living satirists. in Our Country Friends, he turns his grotesque gaze on a subject that is decidedly more challenging for the comedy of mine: the pandemic. As a deadly virus spreads, the book’s eight characters retreat 120 miles north of New York City, to an idyllic Hudson Valley estate, where they burrow into an “unconsciously charming” existence consisting of gossip. , gourmet meals and small complaints. A mash-up of Anton Chekhov’s fiery Uncle Vanya and The Terrace House, the meditative Japanese reality show about a bucolic share house, the book sways as the mostly middle-aged players, including a successful app developer, an actor Famous and handsome young essayist whose collection on America’s poor caused a stir before its inevitable cancellation, he reflects on his diminishing relevance in a world whose new values are written as they go. Written in what appears to be real time, this book is not as complete as the author’s previous works. But with its punctual details that capture the absurd side of the dark (the aerobically skittish elbow bumps, a prestige restaurant known for its hand sanitizer), Shteyngart has embarked on a quarantine project more entertaining and enduring than any sourdough bar. . his sketchbook is an often amusing artifact of a ghastly age, testimony to a buzzing mind that refuses to rest in place. —l.m.
Babysitter Dearest: A Novel by Flora Collins (November)
Flora Collins’ novel finds Sue Keller wandering around New York City, living perhaps the most mediocre life the metropolis has to offer. she has been orphaned at the age of twenty and her tragedy has left her rudderless. A chance meeting with a former nanny, a woman who cared for her when she was a little girl, brings back memories of earlier happiness as well as a growing unease: Was Sue’s previous life really bucolic and optimistic? The nanny, Annie, was fiercely devoted to Sue de Ella, becoming a fixture of the household in Sue de Ella’s early years, and as she relives Ella’s relationship, Annie does so with similar intensity. A domestic thriller in which domestic elements are cunningly veiled as the book unfolds, Nanny Dearest is an accomplished thriller debut.—c.s.
state of the sea by tabitha lasley (December)
Tabitha Lasley’s memoir is somewhat amorphous: part investigation of contemporary (British) masculinity, part love story, part journey of self-discovery. Motivated by a breakup with a longtime partner, Lasley decides to move north to the Scottish city of Aberdeen to investigate oil rig culture. she soon falls in love with one of the first men she interviews, and he with her. her romance is intoxicating, ill-advised, a bit voyeuristic; both are alien lands for each other, alien in tastes, interests and occupations. in fact, they seem to have almost nothing in common other than their mutual fascination with each other. what follows is kind of a lesson in how not to report a story if you’re focused on journalistic ethics, but it’s a fascinating piece of work where the reporter is just as invested in the story as the subject of it. —c.s.
See Also: 17 Best James Patterson Books [to Read in 2022] – UpJourney