BY JENNY COMITA
‘Small Rain’
By Garth Greenwell
“It was a dreary room made drearier by its own blankness, she hadn’t done anything yet to make it her own, the metal bookcases were empty, the off-white walls bare. The only personal touch was a lamp she had placed on her desk, a shawl draped across it to filter the light. …”
In the early days of the pandemic, a young and previously healthy poet finds himself in the I.C.U., overcome by inexplicable pain. While experiencing both the dysfunction and the disorienting intimacy of life in an American hospital, he thinks about art, mortality and the sometimes clarifying nature of crisis. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on September 3.
‘The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan’
By Domenico Starnone, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky
“The lessons were no doubt excellent, but I got distracted easily. One morning while he was explaining just how difficult it was to unroll those archaeological finds, I started reflecting on the dangers of Vesuvius and eruptions in general. …”
A writer recounts his childhood obsession with a young girl whom he watched dancing precariously on the balcony opposite his Naples apartment. Her sudden death awakens his sense of mortality, while his grandmother’s macabre tales of the underworld lead him to vivid imaginings of the afterlife. To be published by Europa Editions on October 15.
‘Clean’
By Alia Trabucco Zéran, translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes
“On the island, as a child, I would spend my days alone. Actually, cross that out. I spent my days with the cows, the ducks, the dogs, the sheep. And of course that can’t be called solitude.”
Estela arrives from the countryside to work as a housekeeper for a wealthy family just before the birth of their daughter. Seven years later, the girl is dead, and Estela — who has kept the family’s possibly lethal secrets — recounts what she has seen. To be published by Riverhead Books on October 15.
About the artist: A self-taught painter from Thibodaux, La., Jammie Holmes, 40, is best known for his large-scale acrylics on canvas depicting contemporary Black life in the American South. Though his works most often feature people, he considers himself “not really a figurative painter but more of a narrative painter.” For his second solo exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, which opens on Oct. 10, he decided to, in his words, “throw a curve ball,” telling stories through florals rather than purely human subjects. Still, says the Dallas-based Holmes, who worked in the oil fields for 15 years before devoting himself to art full time, “you can feel the people in the flowers.”
