Sleep Donation
by Karen Russell (Atavist Books)
A new work from Russell (“Swamplandia!”) is alway welcome, even if we have to settle for a novella. Russell delivers a future America in which hundreds of thousands of people have lost the ability to sleep. Narrator Trish Edgewater — whose sister is felled by sleeplessness — is a recruiter for Slumber Corp., an NGO that exhorts healthy dreamers to donate their rest to a sleep bank. As conditions spiral downward, sleep from the young becomes more valuable (the Supreme Court rules that babies can be donors).
Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker 1914-1918
by Louis Barthas (Yale University Press)
With the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI, these reports from the trenches — translated to English for the first time — should relieve readers of any notion of the glory of war. Drafted at 35, the French soldier spent four years in near constant combat at Flanders, Verdun, the Argonne and other deadly battlefronts. An example of what went on: “Lapeyre was badly wounded in the leg. A shell fragment had sliced off, as neatly as a pastry slicer, a piece of his calf as big as a chestnut, and the blood poured out like a fountain.”
A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred
by George F. Will (Crown Archetype)
Required Reading roots for the Mets, so we can identify with Will’s longtime fandom of the Cubs. Of course, while the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908, the Amazin’s did it in 1986. In recounting the history of the splendid Wrigley Field and his own attachment to its team (he became a fan at 7, noting, “The Catholic Church thinks 7-year-olds have reached an age of reasoning. The church might want to rethink that.”), Will quotes both poets and statisticians and offers a wider context for the mystery that is the Cubs fan.
The Intern’s Handbook
by Shane Kuhn (Simon & Schuster)
Maybe Condé Nast had a hidden agenda when it abolished its intern program after a lawsuit over it. In Kuhn’s delightfully diabolical dark-comic novel, John Lago is an intern at a top Manhattan law firm — or he poses as one. But he’s really working for HR, Inc., an elite placement agency that’s an association of assassins for hire, setting its sights on high-profile targets. Naturally, Lago falls for an entry-level lawyer, Alice, who may have her own secrets.
The Word Exchange
by Alena Graedon (Doubleday)
If you’re reading this column in the newspaper, you may be terrified by Graedon’s 22nd-century-set novel. The death of print is a reality, and most people are glued to their handheld Memes, something like a mashup of Google, Suri and the NSA — they can even predict what you might want next (Chinese, pizza?). Doug Johnson is working on the last printed North American Dictionary of the English Language, along with daughter Anna, when he disappears, leaving one written clue: “Alice.” It’s up to Anna to find out what’s happened.