There’s so much great fiction coming out in May that it’s hard to know where to begin. If only this column could take a hint from Florence Knapp’s debut novel, The Names (Pamela Dorman/Viking, May 6), and go down three different paths. I’ve always been a fan of novels that explore alternate lives for their characters resulting from a single decision, such as Carol Anshaw’s Aquamarine (1992), which follows an Olympic swimmer through three possible lives after losing the gold medal.
In Knapp’s novel, the future of Cora and her family hinges on the name she chooses to give her new baby: Will it be Gordon, her husband’s name, as he wishes; Julian, the one she prefers; or Bear, as her 9-year-old daughter suggests? Gordon is a tyrant, and going against his wishes will have consequences—but so will acceding to them. Rather than dividing the book into just three sections, as Anshaw does, Knapp creates a complex structure of chapters that each jump ahead by seven years until Cora’s son is 35; within each chapter are three sections, one for each name. As our starred review says, “the boldness and thoughtfulness of Knapp’s plotting add complexity and a welcome unpredictability…inviting the reader to think about not just the ripple effects of a single decision and the workings of an abusive family but also about a profound and classic concern of fiction: How things we can predict and/or control in life interact with things we could never have seen coming.”
There are fascinating characters to meet in many of this month’s releases, beginning with Alison Bechdel, protagonist of the autofictional Spent (Mariner, May 20). While Bechdel’s earlier books Fun Home (2006) and Are You My Mother (2012) were billed as memoirs, this one is fiction and stars a version of the author who’s running a pygmy goat sanctuary in Vermont. (Is Bechdel actually doing that? Alas, no.) “Alison and her friends are beautiful and ridiculous…and Bechdel is…a master of her craft,” says our starred review.
Genevieve, the narrator of Jemimah Wei’s The Original Daughter (Doubleday, May 6), defines herself against her sister, Arin, who’s the product of their grandfather’s secret second family. They were close as children but have been estranged for years, and Genevieve wonders if it’s that very distance that has allowed Arin to become a successful actor. “Wei’s novel glistens with often profound insights about the complicated relationship between a person’s identity and the dynamic forces of family and friendship,” according to our review. “A moving debut novel about sisterhood, ambition, and the quest to become one’s true self.”
We meet two fascinating women in Susanna Kwan’s debut novel, Awake in the Floating City (Pantheon, May 13): There’s Bo, an artist whose family is urging her to leave the flooded dystopia of San Francisco, and Mia, her “supercentenarian” neighbor—she’s about 130 years old—whom Bo stays to care for. Our starred review calls it “a marvelously graceful debut [that] looks to the future with an arc of emotions ranging from existential panic to quiet moments of hope.”
Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.
