Melville House’s new Neversink Library is a winning idea for a collection: the DUMBO publisher is reprinting books which, it feels, should be integrated into contemporary literary discourse. However, the first book of the collection, Irmgard Keun’s After Midnight, is not the most persuasive case for forgotten literature.

The story is set in 1930s Frankfurt, as Nazi Germany moves slowly toward war. Irmgard Keun herself wrote under Nazi rule and at one point was arrested by the Gestapo. She escaped Germany in 1936, only to surreptitiously return after she faked her own death abroad. After Midnight was published in Amsterdam in 1937 while Keun was in exile.

Sanna, the novel’s teenage protagonist, feels merely like a vehicle. Her prescient glimpses into the unfolding Nazi system—the alarming socio-political phenomena, the fate awaiting “mixed-race” people (that is, people of Jewish heritage)—are reported with remarkable detachment, a delivery leaving the reader little emotional purchase.

Few of the satellite characters make a bid for the reader’s investment either. Sanna’s entourage is limited to caricatures: there’s her shrewish, dangerous aunt (a Nazi informant); her brother Algin (a despairing writer uncertain about acquiescing to German censorship regulations); Algin’s journalist friend Heini (a mouthpiece for political opinion). Heini is especially broad: his streams of criticism rant on for paragraphs, and though his speeches are moving, the reader can feel the artifice, the soapbox.

The scenes of community folly and fear exacerbated by the Nazi ascension are effective, however. The reader becomes a bystander to the buildup of paranoia, denunciation, compromise—and the pliability of human character when safety and survival are threatened. Keun is admirable for plainly relating this frantic reality. Nonetheless, a truly effective work would not just report these scenes, but more fully form the individuals 
who endured these trials.

Doubleday
Available Now

Kate Christensen’s Trouble commences with an epiphany at a Christmas party. Emerging lucidly and decisively out of a boozy moment, 40-something Josie has a sudden realization that she wants to divorce her husband. Deciding to start anew, she takes proactive steps to restructure her life.

Her rush of anticipation to meet the future is wonderfully contagious for the reader. The reconsidering of life choices usually consists of bumbling, lengthy agonizing. Instead, it’s inspiring to watch Josie’s way: confident without being untouchable, ponderous without being tiresome. She’s sure that she’s ready to change her life, and proceeds accordingly.
After telling her stolid husband she’s leaving him, Josie accompanies her BFF Raquel on an adventure. Raquel too is attempting a new chapter, albeit a more haunted one. She’s a famous singer who’s fallen on troubled times, namely a very public, over-reported mess of a relationship. In need of escape, the two head to Mexico. The bond between the friends is perfectly felt — nuanced, intimate, believable to the point that you’d go for drinks with them in a heartbeat. Their friendship is the center of the book: witty repartee and I-know-you-better-than-you-know-youself advice.

Lasting but a few days, their trip sustains that indulgent thrill of traveling and of seeing anew. The Mexican specialty foods, historical sites, city topography, and regional art really color the setting. It’s a pleasure for the reader to vacation vicariously with Josie and Raquel’s companionship. When the escapade darkens, it’s a swift and stark change by comparison.

The forty-something woman can be awkward territory, since this age group seems to get all the wrong kinds of attention: ridicule (Real Housewives) or parody (enough, Carrie Bradshaw). It is a testament to Christensen that she has created a stable, intelligent yet lighthearted character. Christensen honors the phrase “ageing gracefully” — while flat-out ignoring the stuffy sense of decorum implied — by creating someone who is unwaveringly poised. While older characters tend to bask in regret and nostalgia, Josie lets her needs (sexual, psychological) play out more vibrantly than ever.

Scribner
Available now

Kate Walbert’s latest, A Short History of Women, may sound like a breezily reductive examination of the finer sex but, in fact, it’s a splendid, enrapturing novel with womanhood at its epicenter. The title is actually intended to undercut the condescension of “the woman question,” as it’s dismissively referred to at the turn of the 20th century.

Dorothy Trevor Townsend, an intelligent and revolutionary suffragette, is the entry point into this heritage story. A family tree diagram on page one acts as the literary map key, a useful reference tool for the reader, since the chapters shift frequently between different voices. The familial trickle down includes her daughter, Evelyn, an eventual science professor at Columbia University, and Evelyn’s niece, Dorothy, a mother of three, whose own daughters Caroline and Liz must deal with navigating motherhood and identity. As the narrative moves between generations, memories, thoughts, and conversations conflate and overlap. Initially a bit confusing to keep track of, the nuance with which the author has crafted each voice soon clarifies any muddle.

Walbert covers a wide scope — five generations — yet the minutiae of each life are carefully attended to. Her masterful zoom-in is never at the expense of the background. The First World War, Vietnam and gender inequalities are subjects that shape the experiences of the characters, but without eclipsing their rich inner lives. Lyrical, imagistic metaphors — “snow raw as beef,” “my [hair] coiled and hidden within [the hat] as a snake would be” — pepper the tale and give it added beauty.
Though the reader comes to know the various characters, so much remains undisclosed, in what is a brilliant narrative decision that keeps one yearning for more information. The hide-and-seek glimpses allow the reader to be privy to fascinating details yet, as with real life, much remains elusive.

The women presented are smart: they’re thinkers, they pursue knowledge and rigorous education, they’ve struggled without complaining, they have strength without being untouchable. Across a variety of historical circumstances, their melancholy and their disappointments unfailingly pull at the reader’s heartstrings.

Gingko Press
Available Now
Related exhibit on view at Click through August 30.

Store Front is a visually compelling tome filled with photographs of stores that have maintained the I’ve-been-on-this-corner-since-your-ancestors-came-over-from-the-old-country look. Photographers Karla and James Murray intentionally selected places that “look like they’ve been around forever” — though, ironically, the stores may only exist forever in photographic form, since they’re becoming ephemera so quickly. Organized by borough and further subdivided by neighborhood, the book encyclopedically chronicles the shops that have (or had) outlasted the onslaught of aesthetic and commercial homogeneity.

The project, while evoking all kinds of politicized issues about commerce, is ultimately about art. Always interested in fonts, it was in scavenging the city for graffiti that led the Murrays to Storefront. Returning multiple times to a particular neighborhood, the couple noticed how sharp the local turnover was between one trip and the next. Without photography, these marginalized subjects would have faded into the ether, unremembered. It became their quest to counter the vanishing of old-world New York.

Their archival project, carried out with near-exhaustive zeal, is in the vein of Bernd and Hilla Becher (a German couple who photographed neglected industrial architecture from a firmly objective point of view), with an August Sander-level scope. The Murrays shot with a traditional 35mm manual camera, and the old-school apparatus serves as an apt mirror of the time-honored authenticity of the subjects. The un-manipulated approach wholly preserves the vintage aesthetic of the stores.

The extinction list for small businesses is swiftly growing as the contemporary city shifts. A certain manic pursuit was necessary to archeologically capture these venues before they were lost in the constant palimpsest that is New York. The Murrays note in their introduction that a third (a third!) of the businesses photographed no longer exist, which imbues the photos with a mournful feeling.

Small-scale business survival is rooted in endurance, with signs often making proud declarations of longevity (Yonah Shimmel Knish Bakery, original since 1910; Russo’s Fresh Mozzarella & Pasta, since 1908). Embedded in these dates is a confirmation of successfully maintained tradition that is tried and true and unflappable in the face of passing trends. These long-standing guys are the real New Yorkers, with street cred as caked into their reputation as the stains into their decades-old signs. It is they who have witnessed gentrification firsthand — not just of populace, but of branding, of visual grammar. They have refused to wither in the face of trademark. The signs’ missing letters, the rusted corners — they are a badge of individuality. Their ramshackle aesthetic dates them as much as their actual histories, and proudly so.

Commencement, by J. Courtney Sullivan, is a tale of female
experience spliced four ways. Celia, April, Sally and Bree come from
diverse backgrounds and befriend one another the way people often do in
their first year of college: courtesy of dorm-room proximity. Enrolled
at all-girls Smith, their college community is a singular one: it fuses
gleeful summer camp girlishness with cerebral feminist awareness.

The book shifts between the four perspectives, charting how
interpretations of selfhood and womanhood diverge and converge within
the foursome. As they grow from teens to adults, the characters face
the fact that the billowing idealism of their youth rarely translates
to reality. It’s the harsh lesson that recent graduates have to absorb
— a lesson which readers can relate to all too well.

The female cloister of Smith heavily influences and heightens the
analysis of gender roles and sexual orientation. Where other books
often exacerbate clichés or stifle progressive attitudes about
what it means to be a modern femme, here, women’s issues are admirably
woven throughout. And yet, the characters themselves, as embodiments of
female power, can be somewhat disappointing. Among the quartet, some
follow generic paths, and even those who don’t seem to represent
conceptions of womanhood, rather than existing as nuanced
individual characters. The broad strokes, ostensibly trying to be more
inclusive, end up alienating the reader.

Amid references to Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin, Sullivan
herself never musters a truly radical point of view with her writing.
Being cognizant of the complexities of womanhood and being critical and
active against the sexism that still pervades daily life are important
issues to promote and confront. There is no question that it is
satisfying to see this articulated. However, Sullivan hasn’t quite
integrated these issues into a novel format: instead, doctrine and real
life operate as disparate strands — which is a shame, because had
they been melded together more craftily, the book might have really
delivered something powerful.

Sarah Moroz