How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter’s Memoir by Molly Jong-Fast (Viking). Reviewed by Gretchen Lida. “Jong found celebrity following the publication of her scandalous-for-1973 novel, Fear of Flying, which is still considered an important text for second-wave feminism. She was, for several years, a household name (which didn’t keep her from always chasing after the next exciting man in hopes that, this time, he would save her). But her fame inevitably dimmed, a fact she never really accepted. When your identity was once inflated by the fact that Oprah called on the landline, what do you do when the calls stop? If you’re Erica Jong, you ignore it, you continue living as if you’re famous, and you drink.”

Bodock: Stories by Robert Busby (Hub City Press). Reviewed by John P. Loonam. “We learn that trouble has been endemic to the town since white settlers cheated the local Chickasaw out of the land, held neighbors in slavery, and even sold their own children into indentured servitude. This is not to suggest that Bodock is without moments of connection and happiness. Twin brothers share a bond; a marriage is saved by a tree-limb-tossing contest; a divorced man finds a way to give dignity to his dying father-in-law; and the cable guy brings much more than TV service to an elderly couple. That these rare moments of grace happen in a community deluged by tragedy only makes them more moving.”

Death of a Racehorse: An American Story by Katie Bo Lillis (Simon & Schuster). Reviewed by Charles Caramello. “A complex work, Death of a Racehorse advances multiple narratives and themes in three registers: investigative reporting, cultural critique, and moral allegory. Many readers will deem the book an organic and seamless unity of clearly weighted parts — an ambitious success. Others will judge it a mechanical and unevenly joined assemblage of unweighted parts — an ambitious overreach. The jury, in my view, is still out. Lillis, in any case, calls her book ‘my love song to horse racing.’ Though it seems an odd metaphor for an ambivalent work, the sentiment nicely captures Lillis’ love for the sport despite her despair over the industry it has become.”

If You Love It, Let It Kill You: A Novel by Hannah Pittard (Henry Holt & Co.). Reviewed by Marcie Geffner. “The novel is autofiction, so Hana is, to some extent, Pittard. Both are college professors and authors. Both live with their boyfriend and his young daughter somewhere in Kentucky. (And Pittard’s former real-life husband did put her in one of his novels.) The book’s “is it truth or is it fiction?” parlor-game feel will amuse some readers, and the prose is as smooth as the plot is unsubstantial. In the end, though, it’s never quite clear why we should care about the self-absorbed Hana or her inconsequential problems.”

The Very Heart of It: New York Diaries, 1983-1994 by Thomas Mallon (Knopf). Reviewed by Nick Havey. “Later, while describing a meeting at GQ, Mallon remarks, ‘Art [Cooper, the magazine’s longtime editor] ran a meeting in ten minutes this morning that would have taken 2 hours at Vassar. There’s no rhetorical posturing and no compulsion to make every issue a moral issue.’ What he doesn’t do is acknowledge the reality that when everyone in the room is a white man — and the only gay one is trying his damnedest to preserve the privilege that comes with straight-passing — there are no ‘moral’ dilemmas of the kind that might arise amid a more diverse group.”

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