Summer Books Preview
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
I “FILTHY ANIMALS”
f you look around right now, you might be thinking, “Wow.

Th e weather is amazing, the streets are alive and it’s time
for me to get outside again. Th e worst of the pandemic has
passed, the summer is here and it’s fi nally time for me to safely,
responsibly engage with the people I love. Heck, even the people
I’m not so crazy about!”
A classic mistake. Now, more than ever, it is time to stay
inside with the best new books that our sprawling multinational
publishing conglomerates have to off er. You owe it to yourself,
this paper and, most of all, to me.

Below, we’ve separated the wheat from the literary chaff .

Brandon Taylor (June 22)
Taylor is both a wonderful novelist and a great Twitter follow,
which is rare, because usually it’s one or the other. His 2020 novel,
“Real Life,” was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and if a Bernstein
Prize existed, it would have made my 2020 shortlist as well. I’m
not yet big-time enough to have received a galley of his newest, a
collection of linked short stories about sexy artists called “Filthy
Animals,” but I’m looking forward to checking it out.

“DOUBLE BLIND”
When it comes to a sense of the weird, Galchen stands alone
among the big name, young-ish American Jewish novelists —
Englander, Krauss, Safran Foer, Cohen, etc. Her fi rst novel,
“Atmospheric Disturbances,” is a favorite of mine, the story of
a one Dr. Leo Liebenstein and his “missing” wife. “Everyone
Knows Your Mother Is a Witch” tells the story of Katharina
Kepler, a 17th-century German illiterate widow accused of prac-
ticing witchcraft . Widowed and persecuted, Katharina has to rely
on her son, her few friends and her wits to survive.

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d Giroux
Courtesy of Fa
Rivka Galchen (June 8)
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“EVERYONE KNOWS YOUR MOTHER IS A WITCH”
Courtesy of Fa
St. Aubyn is known for his Patrick Melrose series, fi ve short
novels about British people who are rich, sad, angry and on drugs.

Th ey’re mostly excellent and make you feel like you’re reading
the world’s best-written gossip column, with no blind items. St.

Aubyn’s newest, about three close friends bound together by love,
the pursuit of knowledge and ecology, doesn’t sound quite so dishy
or salacious, but the strength of his past work should be enough to
sell you on this one. Beautiful cover, too.

d Giroux
Edward St. Aubyn (June 1)
“DISTANT FATHERS”
12 JUNE 2021
THIS SUMMER
w Vessel Pres
Courtesy of Ne
Th e rare case where the work of the translator is what got me
interested. Ann Goldstein, a longtime editor at Th e New Yorker,
is best known for her translations of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan
Quartet, which, if you’re pressed for time, you should read
instead of this article. But if you have the wherewithal to soldier
on, check out Goldstein’s translation of Jarre’s memoir. Jarre,
who died in 2016, barely escaped the Latvian iteration of the
Holocaust to become a novelist of the new, forged-in-fi re Europe,
and Goldstein does her work justice in this translation.

s Marina Jarre, translated by Ann Goldstein (June 22)
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