New on the Shelf

 

The Book of Mother, by Violaine Huisman, translated from the French by Leslie Camhi. This was a recommendation from the great and powerful Joanna Smith Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age. She has a great Instagram feed where she tells us about great new books and she's always right.

The Book of Mother is about growing up with a flamboyant mother. From the publisher's website:

With spectacular ferocity of language, a streak of dark humor, and stunning emotional bravery, The Book of Mother is an exquisitely wrought story of a mother’s dizzying heights and devastating lows, and a daughter who must hold her memory close in order to surrender, and finally move on.

Exalted, by Anna Dorn, came to my attention via Kirkus: "The lives of a struggling millennial astrologer and one of her Gen X fans intersect in a shocking way." I picked up my copy at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Mass., my old workplace. I like astrology, so.