Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children 

There are many reasons why a woman might not have children. In Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children (House of Anansi), these reasons are explored through the stories of fourteen women and their journeys of childlessness. Preconceived notions about this group of people are taken apart as author Nicole Louie interviews women of different nationalities, ages and relationship statuses. The interviews feel like intimate conversations between the reader and the women—a testament to the interviewees’ respect for Louie and the deep connections she made with them. The throughline of Others Like Me is Louie’s own story; she uses the interviews as a way to understand the beliefs and experiences that led her to make the decision to not have children. Through this work of memoir and conversation, Louie bravely bares her sense of womanhood, feelings of emptiness and confusion, connection with her body and complicated relationship with her mother. Diligently researched and thoughtfully organized, Others Like Me is an honest look at the diverse identities and life paths of childless women. —Meredith Poirier 

Bad Houses 

It is probably safe to assume that most people have never lived in a small apartment alongside the rotting corpse of an elephant, or been haunted by a ghost made of mold. However, many have lived with actual mold, or had to navigate a housing situation with a difficult roommate. In their new short story collection Bad Houses (Arsenal Pulp), John Elizabeth Stintzi takes situations that are all too familiar to the tenant class and stretches them to the extreme in a series of absurdist parables. Like the work of influential writers in the tradition—Gogol, Bulgakov, Kafka—Stintzi’s writing has a prescience that cuts through the dreamlike imagery. The distinct features of life as a renter navigating the housing market underlie the absurdity: anxieties about a roommate ducking rent and responsibilities are reflected in a story in which a character lives with a person turning into a mime, while the social struggles of living in a new city are embodied in a narrative in which a character is haunted by mold. Bad Houses uses a formula that makes for good surrealism. —Adam Inniss

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim

In Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim (Book*hug), Jacob Wren uses fiction to navigate the complex terrain of political engagement. The novel’s narrator, an unnamed writer who travels to an ambiguously described war-torn country, seeks to connect with people who might understand his struggles with his own demons. He’s frustrated by his inability to fully grasp the experiences of the people he encounters, and is soon confronted with the overwhelming reality of war. While Wren’s prose is straightforward, the ideas he wrestles with are anything but. When the narrator finds himself on a thin strip of land where almost two million people are attempting to forge a utopia amid conflict, questions are raised about the limits of empathy and the ethics of storytelling. The narrative examines how attempts to understand and represent the suffering of others can oversimplify their realities, exploring the idea that writing can both illuminate and obscure other people’s experiences. Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is an anti-war novel that reminds us of our complicity in global conflicts, while offering a glimpse of the hope that drives resistance. —Ariane Fournier

Opening Ceremony 

The sophomore poetry collection from Laura Marie Marciano feels like treading water without seeing where the pool ends. The speaker of the poems in Opening Ceremony (Metatron) is trapped in a life of seemingly endless striving—to make more money, to get pregnant, even to smell better. Delightfully full of cultural references that TikTok users will be familiar with, the collection presents our consumerist and social desires as shiny layers that mask the anxieties lurking underneath. In “Girl Dinner,” the speaker muses variously about a Versace sample sale and wanting the perfect bite of food, only to conclude with “Too bad I am predisposed to stay poor.” Between references to brands like Brandy Melville and Glossier lie enduring questions about how we’re impacted by our classes, our bodies and our pasts. In “Water Death,” the speaker’s yearning for the freedom of swimming is undercut by the feeling that she shares her mother’s shame about her body, while in “Cream Pie in 2016,” the speaker wonders if an excitable boyish filmmaker bears any resemblance to a narcissistic partner whom she once discovered searching for “chubby girl porn.” Opening Ceremony is Marciano’s attempt to find beauty wherever it appears—even within our never-ending contemporary struggles for survival and self-improvement. —Hannah Carty