If you’d asked me to predict the oddest coincidence among this year’s crop of fiction debuts, I wouldn’t have guessed that Anne Boleyn would come back to life in two separate books. Is there something in the air? That’s the exciting thing about reading and reviewing debuts—you never know what you’re going to discover.
In The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehmann (Crown, March 24), the former queen wakes up post-decapitation, reattaches her head with a stolen sewing kit, and sets out for revenge. Our starred review says, “The version of Anne that Lehmann has created is both familiar and novel: To the willful, passionate, ambitious character depicted in myriad historical and fictional accounts, she adds plenty of utterly original embroidery (this Anne is a bit of an intellectual, and also bi!).…Brilliantly imagined, stylishly written, satisfyingly plotted, full of delicious surprises: all in all, hella fun.”
The Age of Calamities by Senaa Ahmad (Henry Holt, Jan. 13) is a collection of speculative short stories; the opener, which our starred review calls “show-stopping,” has Anne B. coming back to life every time her husband tries to assassinate her, like a Tudor version of Groundhog Day. Other surreal stories feature a group of Napoleons sharing a house and werewolves that turn into men during the full moon. “A debut teeming with strange delights,” according to our review.
In How To Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley (Pantheon, Jan. 20), two Indian American sisters find their lives turned upside down when their uncle and his family move into their Wyoming home in the summer of 1986. Should they kill him? “Though framed like a funny, ferociously allusive grown-up version of a YA whodunit, McConigley’s debut novel carries deeper, knottier mysteries than the curious crime at its center,” says our starred review. “Wittily observant and achingly tender.”
The Disappointment by Scott Broker (Catapult, March 3) also features a dead woman who keeps popping up, though she does stay dead. Randy, a photographer, and his husband, Jack, a former playwright, are vacationing at an Oregon beach house loaned to them by two of Randy’s patrons. Coming along for the journey: a baggie containing the ashes of Randy’s mother. Our starred review says, “a masterful understanding of human nature distinguishes this sexy debut.”
Like This, But Funnier by Hallie Cantor (Simon & Schuster, April 7) is a Hollywood tale about an out-of-work screenwriter who accidentally sells an idea for a TV show—based on an idea she found while snooping in her therapist husband’s patient notes. “This hilarious book also delivers moving insights into the things insecurity can make women think and do,” according to our starred review.
All Them Dogs by Djamel White (Riverhead, May 19) plunges the reader into the world of Dublin drug dealers, where Tony Ward, the narrator, is trying to make his way. “This is a revelation,” according to our starred review, “a mob thriller steeped in the gallows humor of working-class Dublin, yet with notes of tenderness to temper the violence.…White keeps us balanced on a knife-edge, and the novel’s final revelations churn for days.”
Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.
