"It feels fitting, in a way, that so many notable books this week are premised on endings of lives, relationships, eras, even. After all, Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day also known as Veterans Day in the U.S. is Tuesday. The day annually marks the end of one of history's most catastrophic conflicts, World War I. For the most part, the endings that animate many of this week's new novels don't seek such world-historical consequence."
"A long-married couple must prepare for and confront their final weeks together before death comes for one of them. But don't be fooled by the saccharine-sounding summary. As Fresh Air's Maureen Corrigan explained in a review of Packer's previous novel, The Children's Crusade, the author has a knack for turning what might have been "mundane mass-market fiction" into a rich, splintered narrative that "illuminate[s] the unexpected depths of the commonplace.""
Many notable new books center on endings of lives, relationships, and eras, timed around Remembrance Day/Veterans Day that marks the end of World War I. Several novels attend to intimate, neighborhood-scale losses rather than sweeping, world-historical events. Ann Packer's Some Bright Nowhere follows a long-married couple preparing for final weeks together, masking emotional depth beneath a seemingly simple premise. Quiara Alegría Hudes, known for In the Heights and a Pulitzer-winning play, transitions from stage and screen to adult fiction. A nonfiction entry traces the twisty history of currency and suggests endings can be beginnings in disguise.
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