The best new books for April

Lately I’ve had a word stuck in my head. It’s not a good word. It’s not even a real word: “satistroyed,” an inelegant portmanteau of satisfied and destroyed. That’s what I came up with while trying to put a name to that particular feeling that comes over you when you’ve read the last word on the last page of a truly great book.

There’s a sort of push-pull going on in your heart. You’re simultaneously elated by what you’d read and devastated that it’s over. Your curiosity is sated, your emotions have been stirred and then soothed, and the story you were so invested in seems to have ended the only way it could have. You’re different for having read it and re-reading it won’t rekindle the magic. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and you are completely, utterly satistroyed. (Terrible word. I do apologize.)

And here’s another use for it, related but different: the feeling you get when you’ve read all there is to read by a beloved (but dead) author.

This is a rarer, more acute type of satistruction (ugh, so bad), and we probably see it coming a mile away. How many more Toni Morrison novels are on my checklist? How long till I crack open that last posthumous Vonnegut story collection?

I see the end coming for another favorite author, Izumi Suzuki. After dropping out of high school to become a model and actress, she evolved into a countercultural icon and a trailblazer in Japanese science fiction in the 1970s and ‘80s. (That’s the story anyway; there’s not much info online about Suzuki, at least in English.)

In 2021, Verso Books published a marvelous collection called *Terminal Boredom — the first time Suzuki’s works had appeared in English — and this month, follows it up with the equally entertaining *Hit Parade of Tears (Verso, $19.95, April 11). These stories are deeply, persistently, wonderfully odd, full of humor, irony, heartache and aliens. Suzuki wrote for only about 10 years before she took her own life at the age of 36, and while she was prolific during that time, there are only so many more books waiting to be translated and published. And when that happens, I will be satistroyed.

And now, here is this month’s literary hit parade:

In the six years since 2016′s Get in Trouble, short-story master Kelly Link has picked up a Pulitzer nomination, a MacArthur Genius Grant, and a World Fantasy Award. The new one is another winner. The seven strange tales in White Cat, Black Dog all share some DNA with somewhat obscure fairy tales, be they sequels, retellings, and so forth. “The Game of Smash and Recovery” is a dark, far-future fantasy, while “The White Cat’s Divorce” reads like a deranged fable in search of a moral. “The White Road” takes a cue or two from Station 11, before carving its own path through a post-pandemic wasteland. This is extra-strength Link: funny, bizarre and wild, but never reckless. (Random House, $27, out now)

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A charming village in post-WWII France is driven to distraction by the arrival of the ambassador and his toothsome wife in this novel bursting with lust, mystery and murder. Elodie, the baker’s wife, is especially smitten by the newcomers, though her wallflower crush soon threatens to become a ravenous, risk-it-all infatuation. Slim and swift, Cursed Bread is laced with wit and small-town menace from the get-go — “our priest used to glare at me on the street, like I was his competition” — but a large-scale, true-history horror looms on the horizon. (Doubleday, $27, April 4)

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One of the great torchbearers of Afrofuturism and Black horror, Tananarive Due has recently spent a lot of time in the screenwriting world — including an episode of Jordan Peele’s Twilight Zone — so it was a welcome surprise to discover that a new collection was about to drop. For Due, horror is situational and philosophical, a bubbling cauldron of terrible irony, systemic breakdowns, and worldwide devastation. In the dystopian “Shopping Day,” some well-meaning neighbors could be kidnappers looking to trade children for rations. The title tract in Wishing Pool, meanwhile, is a pitch-perfect, careful-what-you-wish-for tale that leaves readers pondering memory, identity and the meaning of happiness. (Akashic Books, $29.95, April 18)

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In her stand-up routine and on TV — especially on the righteous and canceled-too-soon true crime series Indefensible — Jena Friedman seems to aim for the laughs of the “nervous” variety. The ex-Daily Show producer (and Haddonfield native) utilizes a sneaky, deadpan delivery to confront everyday misogyny, racism and privilege. This new collection of essays offers a window into Friedman’s mind as she recalls a career of snarky, uncomfortable truth-telling. Example: The 2016 election night special when she told a national audience to “get your abortions now.” (Atria/One Signal, $27.99, April 18)

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Hilarious and heartbreaking and full of surprises, Stephen Buoro’s debut novel puts us inside the head of the titular teenager, a charming, nervous Nigerian kid who is curious about the world but convinced that he lives on a cursed continent. It’s a fun and harrowing place to be: Andy loves his mother, his droogs, poetry and math. And blondes. At the start of this warts-and-all coming-of-age story, he’s never even seen somebody with blond hair IRL, but his infatuation and good fortune lead him to the platinum-haired niece of a preacher man. Meanwhile, religious and political unrest is sprouting up all around them. (Bloomsbury Publishing, $28, April 18)

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Also out this month:

Where Rick & Morty uses the multiverse concept to exalt in flippant nihilism, Carey (author of The Girl with All the Gifts and lots of big-name comic books) weaves a high-stakes sci-fi thriller about artificial intelligence and climate catastrophe. (Hachette, $18.99, out now)

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Hyde follows up last year’s environmentalist satire Eleutheria with a new collection of brisk and somewhat upbeat speculative stories about a girl with a unicorn horn, foster husbands looking for forever homes, and more. (Vintage, $17, out now)

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Globe-trotting biologist Gracia recounts a season spent alongside a colony of chinstrap penguins in one of the most remote, challenging and stunning environments on Earth. (Scribner, $27.99, April 4)

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The best-selling author of The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon returns with another nonfiction historical page-turner that’s already slated for a Scorsese/DiCaprio adaptation. Grann stops by the Free Library’s main branch on April 19. (Doubleday, $30, April 18)

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Dederer expands on the premise of her viral Paris Review essay “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” exploring, among other things, the ways #MeToo-type revelations can change the way we experience the works of awful people. (Knopf, $28, April 25)

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