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November 1, 2021
After debuting with the multi-award-finalist Godshot, Bieker returns with stories of Heartbroke characters whose loves and losses unfold in California's sunstruck Central Valley. Former Wallace Stegner Fellow Folk debuts with a collection of absurdist stories, including Out There, a piece published in The New Yorker about a woman whose attempts to use a dating app are disrupted by incredibly handsome yet artificial men deployed by Russian hackers. Acquired in a two-book deal that includes his debut novel, NYU Starworks fellow Friedlander's The Man Who Sold Air in the Holy Land is set in Israel and the Middle East and features outsiders who must contend with past sorrow or future uncertainty. A second collection after Light Lifting, which was short-listed for Giller, Commonwealth, and Frank O'Connor honors, MacLeod's Animal Person explores those moments when one's life is about to change (25,000-copy first printing). From poet Mirosevich, also author of the award-winning nonfiction Pink Harvest, Spell Heaven offers linked stories about a lesbian couple finding happiness in a coastal town. From Newman, whose memoir Still Points North was a finalist for the National Book Critic Circle's John Leonard Prize, Nobody Gets Out Alive highlights women struggling to get by in rugged Alaska (50,000-copy first printing). Witchcraft, blue jaguars, and a California rainforest-set novella starring Maria, Maria and possibly more Marias all feature in this mystical debut from former PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow Rubio.
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
February 15, 2022
A debut short story collection spanning the diverse lives of Israel's inhabitants. In these stories, Israel is brought to life as much more than a nation constantly making headlines for rockets and airstrikes and boycotts and occupation: It is a nation of individuals. From a teenage girl in love with a Bedouin boy to an activist mother who monitors checkpoints in her spare time to a son of shoemakers who climbs buildings at night to the titular luftmensch who tries to make a living selling air, Friedlander shows that Israel's inhabitants and their experiences are anything but monolithic. As with most collections, the pieces here are a bit uneven; some are riveting, while others seem to struggle to get off the ground. Occasionally, the stories suffer from an overdose of sentimentality. Overall, however, the care with which Friedlander treats his subjects makes for richly drawn characters, settings, and scenarios. Empathy pervades these stories; one feels it in Friedlander's attitude toward his characters and cannot help but feel it toward them as well. In addition, Friedlander's skillfully crafted, imagistic prose captivates and soars. With this collection, Friedlander positions himself as poised to join a formidable cadre that includes writers such as David Grossman and Etgar Keret. A well-crafted, if occasionally uneven, debut that promises a bright future for Friedlander.
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Starred review from February 21, 2022
Friedlander debuts with a dynamic story collection set in Israel that probes the challenges faced by Israeli Jews—national security, relations with Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, religious-secular schisms—with sensitivity and compassion. “Checkpoint” is told from the perspective of a grieving mother who monitors potential human rights abuses at a checkpoint between Israel and the occupied territories. She ruminates about sending her son off “to be killed in a war I don’t believe in, fighting for a government I hate.” In “The Sephardi Survivor,” two siblings, envious of their classmates who have family Holocaust stories, try to convince an old man to pose as their grandfather for their school’s Shoah Memorial Day. “Jaffa Oranges” explores a Jewish man’s guilt over betraying a Palestinian friend, and the title story unpacks the fraught relationship between a father and his daughter, who helps him sell “holy” bottled air. Friedlander imbues his characters with a deeply felt humanity, and his finely tuned command of emotional tenor will evoke tears and laughter in equal measure (“I couldn’t study because I was listening to my grandfather’s Shoah story was a common reason for failing a math test”). These superior character portraits make for an auspicious start.