For the Relief of Unbearable Urges. Nathan Englander (Faber and Faber) This pitch-perfect debut provides glimpses of the lives of Orthodox Jews. In the title story, a Hasidim buys a night with a Tel Aviv prostitute to save his marriage; in “The Wig,” an aging beauty takes drastic steps to recoup her youth. The book’s wit has glimmers of Philip Roth and Saul Bellow; its subtlety recalls James Joyce’s “Dubliners.”
The Leper’s Companions. Julia Blackburn (Jonathan Cape) A mermaid washes up on the shores of a medieval village, leading a group of villagers set out for Jerusalem on a pilgrimage. An enchanting tale.
Happiest Days. Cressida Connelly (Fourth Estate) Happy families may be all alike, but wretched ones, as drawn by Cyril Connelly’s daughter Cressida, are fascinating. The finely drawn stories are chillingly accurate child’s-eye views of adult worlds.
This Is the Beat Generation. James Campbell (Secker & Warburg) Campbell chronicles the antics of hipsters Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs in savvy, stylish prose. Howl for it.
Bruce Chatwin. Nicholas Shakespeare (Jonathan Cape) A decade after the death of the British travel writer Bruce Chatwin, his cult continues to grow. Wandering in Afghanistan with the Pathans or cruising New York’s gay bars with Robert Mapplethorpe, the golden boy-man was the world’s most elegant nomad.
No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton Christopher Hitchens (Verso) Catty, witty and well researched, this book can disillusion even the biggest FOB.
Best American Short Stories of the Century. Edited by John Updike (Houghton Mifflin) Only Updike himself would agree with every one of his choices, but with Fitzgerald, Cheever, Carver, Lorrie Moore and–ahem–John Updike, how badly could he, or you, go wrong?
Home Town. Tracy Kidder (Random House) This profile of Northampton, Mass., gently but astutely probes what we mean when we talk about “home.”
The Bird Catcher. Marie Ponsot (Knopf) Carolyn Kizer calls her “the Couperin of poets,” but she’s tough and funny beneath that formal elegance.
The Hours. Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) The elegant, Pulitzer Prize-winning set of variations on Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway.”
A Clearing in the Distance. Witold Rybczynski (Scribner) The 19th-century polymath Frederick Law Olmsted not only created Central Park. He defined our whole take on nature. This is the latest of many Olmsted bios; there’s none better.
Blues for all the Changes. Nikki Giovanni (Morrow) In a volume that marks her 30th anniversary as a published poet, Giovanni’s rich, often humorous verse surveys everything from fighting with a neighbor over the height of her fence to the beauty of a lover’s smile.
