"Not everything that is faced can be changed," James Baldwin famously explained in 1962, "but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
At the time the late author, who is profiled in a new biography publishing Tuesday, had been talking of a writer's responsibility to grapple with the real, gritty details of life, racial and structural inequities and all. The comment has since transcended its original context as a call to action among activists, but it also could apply to the very nature of fiction writ large. Until characters face the complications that the writer has set before them, there is no conflict, often no story at all.
By extension, the same holds true for readers on the hunt for new books this week. If one were to pick up one of this week's publishing highlights, listed below, it won't be just their protagonist proxies that will need to face down family trauma, real-life climate disaster — even the occasional mix-up between schizophrenia and time travel.
Baldwin: A Love Story, by Nicholas Boggs
Baldwin, who died in 1987, would have turned 101 years old this month. A titan of American letters, whose reflections on race and American history remain vitally relevant, Baldwin was also something rather simpler: a man, whose heart beat like anyone else's, and whose personal relationships helped shape his words on the page. Boggs' deeply researched biography foregrounds those relationships, in crafting a detailed portrait of a gay, black public intellectual whose very identity — not to mention ideas — challenged the stultifying society that sought to contain him.
Dominion, by Addie E. Citchens
Something is rotten in Dominion, Miss. In Citchens' debut novel, the small town is virtually synonymous with the Winfrey family: from the patriarch, a well-respected Baptist reverend and businessman, right down to a scion so widely admired he goes by Wonderboy — unironically, it seems. Of course, things are never as simple as they seem, especially in the kind of history-stricken South that William Faulkner would find familiar. This knotty family drama promises a reckoning for father and son, as well as anyone so incautious as to love them.
Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization, by Bill McKibben
McKibben warned us. And warned us, and warned us, and …. Since his first book in 1989, the writer, environmentalist and activist has been a kind of American Cassandra, incessantly advocating a vigorous response to man-made climate change. It's perhaps an understatement — but no surprise — to note that his prognosis for the slow-motion calamity gripping the world now is not rosy. His latest book, though, is animated by a faint glimmer of hope: solar power, a renewable (and recyclable) energy source that he argues gives humans a realistic alternative path forward — should we choose to embrace it.
The Old Man by the Sea, by Domenico Starnone and translated by Oonagh Stransky
No, Starnone is not Elena Ferrante – or so he says. Despite occasional burbles of speculation, the Italian author has firmly asserted he is not the elusive artist behind the internationally beloved Neapolitan novels. He is, however, an accomplished novelist working under his own name, who has won Italy's top literary prize and earned nominations for the National Book Award and International Booker Prize. His latest novel — brought into English by Stransky, who has translated him before — is a slim, quietly reflective volume that evokes Ernest Hemingway's similarly titled classic, only with a heftier serving of sweetness and self-deprecating humor.
Hemlock & Silver, by T. Kingfisher
By day, mild-mannered Ursula Vernon writes kids' books that feature anthropomorphic animals (and are a delight). But when it's her alter ego on the cover — pen name: T. Kingfisher — the prolific author leads readers down a decidedly darker path. Writing as Kingfisher, she has won a Nebula Award and a handful of Hugos for the kinds of fantasies you could imagine hearing around a campfire, horrors dancing just beyond the firelight. An NPR reviewer, writing about a previous novel, compared Kingfisher to the Brothers Grimm — so it makes sense she's now tackling one of their best-known fairy tales: Snow White. Remember to check expectations at the title page, though: Kingfisher's riff on the perennial story bears little resemblance to the darling Disney films.
The Once and Future Me, by Melissa Pace
Pace's debut novel yanks on readers' brains from about half a dozen different directions with the story of Dorothy, who is either a violent schizophrenic confined to a 1950s psychiatric hospital or a time traveler sent back to prevent a plague-ravaged future. Or both? Neither? Expect twists aplenty as this hybrid thriller hurtles jerkily forward on the destabilizing momentum of its central mystery. Be sure to keep hands and feet inside the ride and beware of whiplash, folks.
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