November Fiction: Six New and Classic Books for Readers
Novelists including Louise Kennedy, Mary Beth Keane, and Daisy Johnson release new works alongside a rediscovered Don DeLillo comedy.
By Jabari Long ·
Six books hit shelves this month, ranging from contemporary fiction to a rediscovered comic novel. The releases offer readers a shift from election coverage to stories of romance, history, and family dynamics.
Louise Kennedy, a Northern Irish author and former chef, releases her second novel, Stations. In a 2022 interview, Kennedy described turning to writing after nearly three decades in the culinary field as "strangely liberating." The new book explores the aftermath of a young love that struggled under family history rather than religious difference.
Mary Beth Keane, an American writer, publishes Whale Harbor. The novel follows an Irish father and his sons across years and continents. Maureen Corrigan, a book critic for Fresh Air, previously compared Keane to Ann Patchett, noting that both authors transform closely observed domestic tales into universal stories.
Matt O'Hara, a history professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, releases The Flying Death. The book examines the history of curare, a poison used in Amazonian blowdarts. O'Hara traces the pursuit of this substance from the 1930s through various continents, highlighting how the search for its medicinal properties impacted local tribes and advanced pharmacology.
Daisy Johnson, a British writer who became the youngest Booker Prize finalist at age 27 in 2018, publishes Long Wave. The novel features spare prose and a foreboding atmosphere. It centers on women carrying family bonds described as broken glass, mixing love with menace.
Tahmima Anam releases Uprising, a novel set on a river island in Bangladesh. The story depicts women trapped in prostitution by a cruel madam while rising waters threaten the region. The narrative is told largely from the perspective of the children fathered by the island's male customers. The arrival of a new girl initiates a change in the community.
Cleo Birdwell's Amazons: An Intimate Memoir by the First Woman Ever to Play in the National Hockey League returns to print. The book was originally published more than four decades ago. The author, known by the pseudonym Cleo Birdwell, was actually American novelist Don DeLillo. DeLillo publicly acknowledged the work in 2020 after it gained a cult following and became difficult to find. He agreed to republication earlier this year with a preface that consists of a business card stating, "I don't want to talk about it."
