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Reality may feel heavy these days, but the publishing world has no shortage of new and old literature to carry us through the rest of the year. If you are looking for fresh distractions, April’s must-reads include a prescient sci-fi debut and blasts from the past that include a rereleased cult classic.
‘Boat Baby’ by Vicky Nguyen
NBC News anchor Vicky Nguyen’s debut memoir is a “love letter to her refugee parents,” said Time. “Boat Baby” traces Nguyen’s family’s 1979 journey from communist Vietnam to the U.S. when she was a baby. The tumultuous trip includes a run-in with pirates and a stay at a Malaysian refugee camp, where they waited to resettle in California. She details how her search for “her place in an unfamiliar country as the daughter of immigrant parents” inspired her path into journalism. Nguyen was moved by her parents’ sacrifices and the “2 million boat people who fled Vietnam between 1975 and 1992,” which is a “really important story to document,” she said to Today. (out now, $27, Amazon, $30, Simon & Schuster)
‘The Ephemera Collector’ by Stacy Nathaniel Jackson
This “exciting Afrofuturist debut” from Stacy Nathaniel Jackson sadly “doesn’t sound too far off from reality,” Book Riot said. Set in 2035, the story follows librarian Xandria Anastasia Brown, who works alongside AI helper bots to curate the African American Ephemera collection and American Historical Manuscripts of a Los Angeles library. Meanwhile, the effects of long Covid are taking their toll on her and creating lapses in her memory. Her health concerns are only compounded by the “hostile corporate takeover attempt threatening the library.” When the library is forced into an emergency lockdown, Xandria realizes all the history she has painstakingly collected is under attack. An “ambitious homage to Octavia Butler,” Jackson’s “stunning near-future mosaic novel” melds “prose, poetry, memos, advertisements and dream journal doodles,” said Publisher’s Weekly. (out now $28, Amazon, $30, W. W. Norton & Company)
‘Fish Tales’ by Nettie Jones
Part of a trend of long out of print books being propelled from obscurity, Nettie Jones’ 1983 debut, “Fish Tales,” has developed a newfound cult classic status. The soon-to-be reissued novel “feels just as edgy as it did when it was first released more than 40 years ago,” Time said. The short novel, one of many edited by the late Toni Morrison during her stint in publishing, was loosely inspired by Jones’ own life. It follows a party girl through nights out in “1970s Detroit and disco-fueled Manhattan,” with “copious amounts of cocaine and sexual encounters both outlandish and, at times, demoralizing,” said The Atlantic. The current edition promises to bring new audiences to “Jones’ sharp, fast-paced look at the highs and lows of the human heart.” (April 15, $27, Amazon, $27, Macmillan Publishers)
‘Vanishing World’ by Sayaka Murata; trans. by Ginny Tapley Takemori
Sayaka Murata, the Japanese novelist behind “Convenience Store Woman,” imagines a “dystopian world where the human race reproduces only via artificial insemination, dramatically shifting cultural attitudes toward sex and family,” said The New York Times. When the protagonist Amane finds out she was conceived naturally, the “revelation sets her down a path of sexual discovery, which ultimately leads to an experimental commune.”
Murata delivers an “intimate and disturbing speculative tale in which social isolation and population control are taken to extremes,” said Publishers Weekly. Vanishing World is a “nightmarish fable” that is “impossible to shake.” (April 15, $27, Amazon, $28, Grove Atlantic)
‘Notes to John’ by Joan Didion
A posthumous collection of diaries offers an intimate look into the mind of the late Joan Didion. The previously private collection, from when she began seeing a psychiatrist in 1999, features Didion’s post-therapy notes that were addressed to her late husband, John Gregory Dunne. The entries address several delicate “delicate personal issues” including “alcoholism, depression, anxiety, guilt and her complicated relationship with her daughter, Quintana,” whose death was the focus of Didion’s 2011 memoir, “Blue Nights.” (April 22, $34, Amazon, $32, Penguin Random House)