Bookmark 01/2023

Rip-Roaring Releases
Discover the best new reads of the season.
Text by Christine Modafferi
8 9
RIP-ROARING RELEASES
“Melissa Coss Aquino's debut is a tear-inducing,
emotional look at female friendships.”
© Kooshgraphics
CECILIA RABESS
EVERYTHING'S FINE
CHF 29.90, Picador
Everything's Fine is the debut novel that
has divided TikTok and the Internet even
before its release, catapulting readers back
to the US elections of 2016, which ultimately
ended in Trump's victory and left many
with nothing but a profound sense of uncertainty.
Jess is a Black female analyst at
Goldman Sachs. Josh is her white boyfriend
who went to her same Ivy League college.
Jess is a democrat. Josh is conservative.
The two are a couple. And just like the strawberries
Jess is allergic to but loves to eat,
Josh and his views often make her uncomfortable,
as he idealises political concepts
but fails to grasp that his and Jess's realities
are very different. The book explores
themes of internalised racism, unconscious
bias, emotional labour, self-dilution to
appease others and gaslighting – all while
digging deep into the complicated nuances
of romantic relationships between people
with polar opposite lived experiences.
JAMES HYNES
SPARROW
CHF 29.90, Picador
Sparrows have had different metaphorical
meanings over time: they are a bad
omen but also a sign of love. Representative
of passion and pleasure but also a symbol
of peasants in the Middle Ages. Jacob, who
takes on the identity and new name of
Sparrow, seems to encapsulate all of these
meanings in one. He is a slave on the Spanish
coast of the Roman Empire with no family
but for a group of sex workers that have
taken him under their wing. Together with
them, he navigates the brutality of life
as an orphan slave surviving in the ancient
Roman city, and tells his story to the best
of his memory as an old man, sparing no
detail or crudity of the abuse he has endured
throughout his childhood. History buffs
will love walking through the markets,
eating in lowly tav erns and exploring the
rich mansions of the ancient world perfectly
researched and crafted by James Hynes.
For readers who love unreliable characters,
Sparrow is the book that will break you,
horrify you and tug at each of your heartstrings.
“Sparrow is the
book that
will break you,
horrify you
and tug at each
of your
heartstrings.”
© Steve Pomeroy
LUNA MCNAMARA
PSYCHE AND EROS
CHF 26.90,
HarperCollins Publishers US
There have been many retellings of mythology,
but how many myths have actually
been reimagined? The brilliant Luna Mc-
Namara, through a dual point of view narration,
shows us Psyche and Eros like we've
never seen or imagined them before. Psyche,
a mortal princess, is ambitious, strong and
will not give into patriarchal ideals. Eros,
the ancient Greek god of desire, is sassy,
confident and full of personality. And the
two will find themselves inextricably
linked by one single curse: Eros accidentally
pricks himself with an arrow that dooms
its victim to fall in love with someone who,
upon their first exchange of looks, they
will lose forever. And when Eros sets his
heart on Psyche, they will have to prove that
love can truly conquer all. Set against the
backdrop of the Trojan War, Psyche and Eros
will have readers swooning over the romantic
duo that has inspired artists around the
world over centuries, while showcasing the
cast of the heroic cycle through accessible
language and fantastic world building.
© Caroline Lohrey
THAO THAI
BANYAN MOON
CHF 29.90, Quercus,
Release Date: 27 June 2023
Thao Thai's novel Banyan Moon is a love
letter to grandmothers, the true glue of
families, and maternal relationships. This
multigenerational story, told through three
different point of views and at different
times in history, unfolds the family drama
and tumultuous past of Minh, Huong
and Ann. Minh and Ann have a unique
grandmother-granddaughter bond, a bond
that Ann's estranged mother Huong does
not understand and resents. And when
Minh passes away and leaves her Florida
home to her daughter and granddaughter,
they will have to face – and hopefully
heal – the ghosts of their past to reconnect.
This is a story of grief, complicated relationships
and the strength, but also the trauma,
that is passed on through generations. At
times, this book will feel like a hug in paper
form, while at others, it will bring you to
tears with its raw depiction of the Vietnam
war, family life and life-changing events
that flip the characters' trajectories.
© Nina Subin
MELISSA COSS AQUINO
CAR MEN & GR ACE
CHF 29.90, Head of Zeus
D.O.D. Daughters of Durka. A female-led
drug cartel. A close-knit group of girls
living on the fringe of society. Belonging to
this group are Carmen and Grace, cousins
by birth, bonded by a neglected and tough
upbringing. Both are rescued by the powerful
Doña Durka at a young age and responsible
to keep the legacy of her underground
drug empire alive once she is dead. But
Carmen and Grace's desires are polar opposites:
Carmen is pregnant and wants to
free herself of the burden of a life in illegality,
while Grace has big plans for their
business. This coming-of-age drama is a
story of hope, growth, despair, grief and
love set in a world of drugs, gangs and
family feuds. Told through a dual point
of view and two timelines, with interjections
in Spanish throughout, Melissa
Coss Aquino's debut is a tear-inducing,
emotional look at female friendships,
chosen family, breaking toxic bonds and
forging new paths far away from violence
and brutality.
STEPHEN BUORO
THE FIVE SORROW-
FUL MYSTERIES
OF ANDY AFRICA
CHF 28.90, Bloomsbury Publishing
An Observer debut of the year, The Five
Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa is
the mesmerising five-act story of an ambitious
teenage boy with a knack for maths,
living in Kontagora in northern Nigeria,
where the consequences of colonialism and
a brutal history of civil wars still haunt
a divided population. Andy Africa is
the fifteen-year-old son of a single mother,
who he shares a complicated relationship
with, mainly due to the secretiveness
surrounding his father. While Andy is
figuring out who he wants to be and where
he comes from, he also goes through
teenage experiences like finding friends,
falling in love, breaking hearts and wanting
to evade and travel to places far away
from home for a better future. This cleverly
crafted book will inspire readers to research
beyond the page, look into animism and
afro-futurism, while they laugh out loud
at the light moments and are brought to
tears with emotion at the darkest points in
Andy's life.
© Desiree Adams
KATIE BISHOP
THE GIRLS
OF SUMMER
CHF 28.90, Penguin
Random House UK
They say you never forget your first love,
but what happens when your memory
of it is far from the truth? Well into her
thirties, Rachel is married, but still has one
person on her mind: Alistair, the man
twenty years her senior, with whom she
had a romantic fling as a teenager, on a
backpacking holiday in Greece with her
girlfriends. And so, when she goes back to
Greece with her husband as an adult, the
idea of meeting with Alistair again rekindles
the same feeling she felt so strongly
sixteen years before. But soon she is hit with
the hard truth that what she thought was
a star-crossed lovers' story was actually the
playing out of grooming and manipulation.
And the truth behind the mysterious death
of her friend on that very trip years ago
may just be connected to the love story that
had her daydreaming all these years. Katie
Bishop explores themes of the #MeToo
movement, memory, perceived reality
and trauma in The Girls of Summer,
with fast-paced prose and a story many
women will relate to.
LAUREN FORRY
THE LAUNCH PARTY
CHF 18.90, Bonnier Books UK
Welcome to the very first hotel on the
moon! Told throughout multiple points of
view and a refreshing take on the murder
mystery locked-in-a-room trope, this is
one of the most interesting premises of
novels we've ever shared. Ten very different
but equally lucky people win the prize of
a lifetime: an exclusive stay during the
grand opening of Hotel Artemis, the very
first hotel on the moon. But as soon as they
arrive, things don't quite add up as no staff
is around and they find themselves orbiting
around Earth alone. And things only get
increasingly unsettling when one of the
guests is found dead. As the remaining
characters search for answers, they will
discover hidden rooms and hallways around
the hotel, unpick secrets and guess who the
murderer is. Lauren A. Forry's The Launch
Party is, quite literally, out of this world.
Are you ready to finally discover the dark
side of the moon with this unputdownable
murder mystery?
“... one of the
most interesting
premises of
novels we've
ever shared.”
BOOKMARK 1/2023 – ORELLFÜSSLI.CH
BOOKMARK 1/2023 – ORELLFÜSSLI.CH