October 1, 2022
In former lawyer/current TV writer Cauley's The Survivalists, perpetually single Black lawyer Aretha is laser-focused on her career until she becomes involved coffee-entrepreneur Aaron and moves in with him and his doomsday roommates, prepping for the end of the world. Mirabella's Brother & Sister Enter the Forest, whose title hints at fairytale or horror (maybe both?), is a queer coming-of-age novel about emotionally shattered Justin and his sister, Willa, who's struggling to care for him--or to leave and claim her own life. Imbued with mythic figures--the ocean-dwelling Mama Dglo, the butcher-hunting Rolling Calf--Palmer's The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter & Other Essential Ghosts plumbs the lives of two Jamaican-Trinidadian sisters in Brooklyn who find themselves at odds even as their parents' marriage becomes untethered. In Wandering Souls, London Writers Award winner Pin depicts three Vietnamese siblings struggling to survive in the UK without their parents, lost in the family's escape from Vietnam after the war (80,000-copy first printing). In Winn's In Memoriam, Henry Gaunt escapes his strong feelings for boarding-school classmate Sidney Ellwood by enlisting during World War I--but then Sidney enlists, too, and they find love amid battle.
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Starred review from January 2, 2023
Winn’s superb debut chronicles a romance between two English boarding school classmates during WWI. Sidney “Elly” Ellwood is in love with Henry Gaunt, but fears his desires are unrequited; the other feels the same, but neither know it. After Henry enlists in the Army, Elly signs up, but their reunion in Flanders is muted and Henry hardly speaks to Elly. Eventually they have a sexual encounter, but Elly wonders what it means for Henry, and whether it’s more than a “convenient addition to their friendship.” Meanwhile, both men grapple with the realities of war, which Winn vividly renders with descriptions of the wounded (blood clings to a soldier’s hair and eyelashes before “dribbling down his chin”) and the “constant indignities clotted the mind,” such as food covered in flies. After one of the lovers goes off to battle and doesn’t return, the other is left to assume the worst. Amid the chaos, Winn stages excellent action scenes: a tense scouting mission, as well as a tunnel-digging episode involving an escape from a German POW camp. The hunger the men feel, as well as their shell shock, is palpable, but it is the men’s love for each other that resonates. This is a remarkable achievement. Agent: Anna Stein, Curtis Brown.
Starred review from January 15, 2023
Love between two young men is tough enough in 1914; the fact that they are both fighting in World War I makes it...tougher. The two moneyed teens, Sidney Ellwood and Henry Gaunt, are boarding school students in England just before the Great War begins. Between them, they harbor enough secrets to propel the plots of several books, and one of the wonderful aspects of Winn's debut is that, just when you think you've settled into a tender literary novel, its revelations and surprises begin to unfurl at an impressive pace that reads more like a thriller. Sidney is Jewish but thoroughly denies it; Henry, or Heinrich, has lived in England for most of his life but is half German, a dangerous fact as the war begins. Winn lovingly re-creates British boarding school life during this era, the camaraderie among the boys but also the snarling viciousness of the place. Sidney and Henry love one another but, perhaps understandably, have little ability to assess each other's feelings, much less possess any insight about how to express their love. To prove their British bonafides and to compensate for the accusation that his uncle is a German traitor, Henry's family encourages him to enlist. Sidney, obsessed with Tennyson's empire-loving verse and enamored with Henry's bravery, also signs up. Neither of them are yet 19, the youngest age England accepts its soldiers. Winn's battle scenes are hair-raising and terrifying, but her portraits of Sidney and Henry are intimate and evocative. They are two very young men who know so little of the world and then suddenly know its deep depravity thanks to the war. Watching them search for each other across a damaged Europe makes for a love story that's hard to forget. A powerful, deeply imagined debut.
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Starred review from February 15, 2023
When Gaunt and Ellwood met as young men at Preshute, their prestigious English boarding school, Ellwood's sparkle and Jewishness had already distinguished him as a charming sort of other, while Gaunt was an enigma to his peers outside and inside the boxing ring he dominated. At the dawning of the Great War, Ellwood, a faithful memorizer of Tennyson, loves his country and waits anxiously to be old enough to enlist. Gaunt, however, a devout student of Thucydides, sees the futility of war and thinks of his German cousins on the other side. Thanks to close third--person narration, readers know what's between these two young men all along, but it will take trench warfare for them to truly discover it. Winn's finely accomplished debut novel is a rare thing, an intoxicating romance and an impossible-to-put-down war story in one, and to say much about its climactic turns would be saying too much. A generation of boys fears the war will end too soon and then, pummeled by senseless inhumanity and loss, runs out of things to fear. Winn captures the war as it looked, sounded, and smelled, but the ultimate death-defying acts here are in literature, and the most breathtaking bravery in love.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.