All in Contemporary Fiction

The Marriage Portrait

The Marriage Portrait

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Maggie O’Farrell has done it again. She has rendered up a heroine of flesh and blood, whim and heartache, from the annals of European history. O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait (2022) fictionalizes the brief life of Lucrezia de’ Medici who married the Duke of Ferrara (Modeno, and Reggio as well) at age fifteen. As with O’Farrell’s last novel, Hamnet—also historical fiction—The Marriage Plot introduces readers to a vivacious young woman, bound in and restrained by her time, her class, and what everyone deems her destiny. This is novel rich in storytelling and moving prose. It is a masterpiece; one that transports readers to the regal rooms of sixteenth-century Florence and Ferrara.

Babel: An Arcane History

Babel: An Arcane History

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

R. F. Kuang’s Babel: An Arcane History (2022) is a fantasy-inspired, alternate history of 1820 and 30s Britain and its relationship with the world beyond. As one might expect from the time period, Babel centers on themes of empire and colonialism. Oxford is the hub in Babel and not just for the academic study ongoing there. In the fantasy-like world building of Babel, Oxford houses the Tower, the center of colonial Britain’s translators’ world. In Kuang’s clever and moving novel, language and translation claim a power that creeps towards magic and provides the writer an eloquent metaphor through which to deconstruct the colonial project.

Treacle Walker

Treacle Walker

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

I have read through Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker (2021) three times this fall. After reading a good chunk of it the first time through, I discovered that the slight novel (152 pages) begs to be read out loud. The rhythm of the language and the short sections (separated by untitled Roman numerals, eighteen in total) build in a genre-bending enchantment. Narrative becomes glamour becomes something beyond the stars: timeless.

The Lowering Days

The Lowering Days

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Gregory Brown’s debut novel The Lowering Days (2021) weaves together several families' stories who make their home along the Penobscot River just as the river collects many tributaries before it dumps into the sea. Two families, both alike in dignity, make their homes in the rural woods along the Penobscot near its mouth. One, the Creels, with Lyman and Grace at its head rely on the bounty of the sea. Lyman is a decorated war vet and a lobster man. Grace, like her name, walks a gracious path through marriage and maternity even in the face of unspeakable tragedy. The other, the Ames, is the result of a love union between boat-builder and activist journalist, Arnoux and Falon respectively. These neighbors have a deep and tenuous history, like the main branches of a river where it flows into the sea; The Lowering Days follows these many streams upriver to their sources.

A Gentleman In Moscow

A Gentleman In Moscow

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

These majestic surroundings and my freedom to enjoy them are not lost on me as I pull myself out of the story Amor Towles weaves in A Gentleman in Moscow (2016). Towles is a household name and over the course of the past eleven years (since the publication on Rules of Civility in 2011) he has acquired a well-deserved following. This, however, is my first Towles’ novel. I scan the mountains around me as moment by moment they glow deeper purple red a the sun sinks further toward the far western horizon before I return to the Count and the world of Moscow’s grand Metropol hotel; the contrast between his life and my own in this moment could not be more pronounced.

Throne of Glass Series

Throne of Glass Series

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

As anyone familiar with her other works would expect, Sarah J Maas’s Throne of Glass series includes a hefty dose of struggles (both internal and external) among a growing cast of characters who all come together in the hope of making a better world through love and friendship.

The Sorrow Stone

The Sorrow Stone

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Kári Gískason’s The Sorrow Stone (2022) is a beautifully crafted historical fiction set in the 10th century. This novel adds to the growing body of historical fiction that builds on the stories of Nordic culture and the settlement of Iceland. Reading The Sorrow Stone transports the reader back through the centuries to a time of cold and hardship when revenge and duty weighed upon everyone, and when one woman is forced to face her past to save her son’s future.

Bewilderment

Bewilderment

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

In Bewilderment, however, Richard Powers doesn’t limit the reader to life on planet earth; rather, through the first-person voice of his protagonist, astrobiologist Theo Byrne, Powers’ writing wanders the universe in search of life, but always returns home. Layering astronomy, biology, and neuroscience, this novel challenges its reader to think more broadly, to consider alternative truths, and to recognize how little we know about ourselves, our planet, and our universe.

Learwife

Learwife

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

J. R. Thorp’s debut novel, Learwife (2021) is a lyrical, internal monologue of King Lear’s widow during some undefined point in British medieval history. The novel opens as news of Lear’s death, and that of his three daughters, reaches a convent in northern England. Here, amidst the stone walls and industrious lives of the nuns, resides the estranged wife of King Lear who slowly unravels her story while she grieves the family she had already lost. Thus, Thorp’s Learwife begins where Shakespeare’s tragic King Lear concludes and provides the missing queen’s perspective through her memories and her grief.

At the Edge of the Orchard

At the Edge of the Orchard

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Tracy Chevalier has written many an impressive historical fiction (Girl with The Pearl Earring being probably her most famous). I picked up At the Edge of the Orchard (2016) this spring and allowed myself to fall into the historical spaces the book brings to life. This novel is divided into two halves. The first half, set in Ohio’s Black Swamp, in the 1830s alternates perspective between a husband and a wife. The second half follows their youngest son on his meandering journey west (through the 1840s and 50s). In this novel, Chevalier’s sparse writing creates characters who come alive amidst the harsh conditions of nineteenth-century pioneer life.

The Island of the Missing Trees

The Island of the Missing Trees

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

When a Ficus carica, commonly known as the edible fig, takes up a narrative voice in a novel, readers should know they are in for something unique. In the case of The Island of the Missing Trees (2021) by Elif Shafak, the tree narrator, the multiple storylines and settings (contemporary London and twentieth-century Cypress), and the beautiful prose all work to utterly transport the reader.

Still Life

Still Life

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

I recently picked up Sarah Winman’s recent historical fiction novel: Still Life (2021). In addition to its beautiful cover of flowers and parrot, the reference to the world of painting in its title immediately piqued my interest, as did its setting of Florence, Italy.

A Court of Thorns and Roses Series

A Court of Thorns and Roses Series

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

For readers who appreciate a suspenseful fantasy interwoven with a good dose of romance, Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015) and the four books that come after it will delight.

The first in this series, A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015) establishes the divided world in which we find our heroine, Feyre Archeron.

Library at the Edge of the World or Finfarran Peninsula Series

Library at the Edge of the World or Finfarran Peninsula Series

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Sometimes we find our way to delightful novels that transport us to fictional communities full of quirky, loveable characters; Felicity Hayes-McCoy’s Library at the Edge of the World (originally published in the UK in 2016) and the four novels that continue the Finfarran Peninsula series (Summer at the Garden Café, UK published 2017; The Mistletoe Matchmaker, 2017; The Transatlantic Book Club, 2019; and The Month of Borrowed Dreams, 2020) offer their reader precisely that.

Load More