Most Anticipated: The Great 2023B Book Preview
Before we get into it—and by “it” I mean forthcoming titles by Alexandra Chang, Annie Ernaux, Jon Fosse, Ross Gay, Werner Herzog, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Benjamin Labatut, Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li, John McPhee, Marie NDiaye, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Sigrid Nunez, Joyce Carol Oates, Zadie Smith, Tracy K. Smith, Gay Talese, Jesmyn Ward, Bryan Washington, Colson Whitehead, Diane Williams, Banana Yoshimoto, C Pam Zhang, Babs herself, and many, many more—a quick note.
While we’re highly selective about what makes it into our biannual previews, we know the sheer number of books here (171, to be exact) can be overwhelming, so for our 2023B list we’ve added tags for readers to more quickly distinguish fiction and nonfiction titles. In the future, we can also add more specific tags to distinguish, say, novels and story collections, memoirs and essay collections—if this would be helpful, do let us know!
And though we do our best to strike a balance between being both curated and comprehensive, we’re bound to miss a few books, not to mention the new titles that are being announced every day. We encourage you to check out our monthly previews for the most up-to-date lists of our most-anticipated fiction and nonfiction titles, and if you’re looking for our most-anticipated poetry collections, be sure to check our our quarterly poetry roundups.
Last but not least, if you like what we do, and want us to keep doing it sans paywall, consider making a one-time contribution or becoming a sustaining member today. By some miracle, The Millions has been around for 20 years—we’d like to be around for 20 more (or even just through the end of the year).
Without further ado, it’s my privilege and pleasure to present our Great 2023B Book Preview.
—Sophia Stewart, editor
July
The Light Room by Kate Zambreno [NF]
Zambreno—whose previous books include To Write as If Already Dead, Screen Tests, Drifts, and Heroines, all strange and mesmerizing and very good—chronicles her life as the mother of two young daughters amid the pandemic in her latest. As she teeters between exhaustion and transcendence, she finds inspiration in everything from her children’s toys to the work of Natalia Ginzburg. Annie Ernaux counts herself as a big Zambreno stan—need I say more? —Sophia M. Stewart
How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill, edited by Jericho Brown and Darlene Taylor [NF]
Edited by Pulitzer-winning poet Jericho Brown, this anthology features literary titans (and personal faves) Nikki Giovanni, Natasha Trethewey, Rita Dove, and Jamaica Kincaid, among many, many others, to offer a curated, comprehensive look at what it means to be a Black writer today and how Blackness can inform the craft and practice of writing. —SMS
In the Act by Rachel Ingalls [F]
In this witty, darkly comedic story, a housewife named Helen uncovers a secret her husband keeps locked in the attic. The reveal is too good to spoil, but let’s just say deranged hilarity ensues. No one straddles the line between playful and macabre quite like Ingalls (perhaps best known for her 1982 novel Mrs. Caliban, about a lonely housewife who finds companionship in a sea monster named Larry), who always, in the words of critic Lidija Haas, “leaves readers to wonder, of her spouses and siblings, who might push whom off a cliff.” —SMS
Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths [F]
Griffiths, a decorated poet, debuts as a novelist with this tale of two Black sisters growing up in New England amid the Civil Rights movement. Blurbed by Jacqueline Woodson and Marlon James, who calls it a “magical, magnificent novel,” Promise explores sisterhood, resistance, and everyday acts of heroism with a poetic sensibility. —Lauren Frank
Zero-Sum by Joyce Carol Oates [F]
The prolific author and goated tweeter is back with brutally dark story collection, centering on erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and the lure of self-destruction. The cast of characters include high school girls out for vengeance on sexual predators, a philosophy student bent on seducing her mentor, and a young woman morbidly fascinated by motherhood. Always one to wade into The Discourse, JCO pulls no punches here, touching every nerve she can manage. You can’t help but respect it. —SMS
All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky [F]
Madievsky’s electric debut—pitched as Rachel Kushner meets David Lynch—follows an unnamed narrator who is torn between her obsession with her older sister Debbie and her desire to get clean. When Debbie vanishes, our narrator embarks on a kaleidoscopic journey of sex, power, and mysticism. All-Night Pharmacy counts among its fans Kristen Arnett, Isle McElroy, and Jean Kyoung Frazier, who calls the book “a black hole, a force so lively, unfiltered, and pure that you won’t mind being sucked in headfirst.” —Liv Albright
Thunderclap by Laura Cumming [NF]
Art critic and historian Cumming zeroes in on a decisive moment in art history: a massive explosion at a Dutch gunpowder shop that killed the painter of The Goldfinch and almost killed Johannes Vermeer. Thunderclap blends memoir, biography, and history to explore one of art’s most fertile periods and probe the intersections of art, memory, and desire. —LF
Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson [F]
Reissued by the extremely cool Dalkey Archive, Markson’s 1988 novel—hailed by DFW himself as “a work of genius”—is a philosophical, experimental, and truly wild journey into the mind, narrated by a woman who is convinced that she is the last person on earth. One of the more daunting entries on this list, yes, but also one of the most fascinating. —SMS
Tabula Rasa: Vol. 1 by John McPhee [NF]
McPhee looks back on his seven-decade career by reflecting on all the people, places, and things he had planned to write about but never got around to. As with any retrospective by a literary icon, there’s lots of quality tea in here, from a frosty encounter with Thorton Wilder to how he convinced The New Yorker to publish an entire book on oranges. A curio cabinet of treasures. —SMS
Sucker by Daniel Hornsby [F]
This book was pitched to me as Succession meets Bad Blood meets vampires—a high-risk combination, narratively speaking, but undeniably tempting. Hornsby’s sophomore effort, after the 2020 novel Via Negativa, is undeniably of the moment and sounds like just the sort of biting satire (I’m so sorry) that a lot of us could stand to sink our teeth into (seriously, like, so sorry) right now. —SMS
Elsewhere: Stories by Yan Ge [F]
Over two decades, Ge, a fiction writer who works in both Chinese and English, has written 13 books in Chinese, several of them translated into English. With Elsewhere, she makes her English-language debut. This will be Anglophone readers’ first encounter with Ge as a short-story writer (a form she has lots of experience with; she published her first book—a short story collection—at 17), and if her novels are any indication, we’re in for a treat. —LF
My Husband by Maud Ventura, translated by Emma Ramadan [F]
A woman besotted with an apparently perfect man who does not return her affections—let’s just say this one… resonates. The debut novel from France’s Maud Ventura, this psychological thriller, a la Gillian Flynn, follows a wife whose passion for her husband, and tests of his love for her, threatens to tear her marriage apart. A delicious addition to the relationship-suspense genre. —SMS
After the Funeral by Tessa Hadley [F]
The latest collection from Hadley, a master at capturing the emotional gradations of domestic life, comprises 12 characteristically astute stories about the ties that bind. Colm Tóibín counts himself as a Hadley stan, and Lily King calls this, Hadley’s twelfth book and fourth story collection, “pure magic.” —LF
Strip Tees by Kate Flannery [F]
Flannery’s memoir, set in mid-aughts Los Angeles, centers on the author’s stint at American Apparel at the height of the indie sleaze. A record of a bygone era and a bildungsroman about work and sex, the cover alone has me yearning for the days of skater dresses and disco shorts—were we ever so young? —SMS
Small Worlds by [F]
