You Love an Homage

I have books that reference Dostoyevsky, Christie and the Bard

Hi friends,

Hope your week is off to a great start. Today, I’m doing something a little different. I’m spotlighting three books that are homages — of a sort — to other pieces of literature. I love books that are in conversation with each other. These picks each put a modern spin on a classic tale, and they can all be enjoyed without reading the original (although that definitely adds a layer to them). 

One programming note: My pal Laura Hankin, author of the funny and sharp Happy and You Know It and A Special Place for Women, is subbing for me next week while I visit a friend (hi Casey!) in South Bend, Indiana. Laura’s new book, The Daydreams (out in May 2023) is available for pre-order now, and I’m obsessed with the cover.

Laura has excellent taste in books, and I’m eager to see what she recommends.

And, now, what to read if …

You Share My Love of Russian Literature

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

I am a Russian lit nerd. I have a favorite translation of Anna Karenina (Pevear and Volkonsky, for the curious). I have read War and Peace more than once. Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita is one of my favorite books. This is all to say, I had high hopes for The Family Chao, a new, loose retelling of Dostoyevsky’s classic The Brothers Karamazov, and Lan Samantha Chang met all of them.

As the book opens, the Chao brothers — Dagou, Ming and James — are reuniting in their small Wisconsin hometown for the first time in years. The two youngest brothers are in town for a meeting their eldest brother Dagou has arranged between their bullying father and the abbess of a Buddhist temple, hoping the spiritual leaders will convince the patriarch to make his son a partner in the family restaurant where they both work. The abbess declines to weigh in, and the failed meeting sets off a series of family tragedies that shake their tight-knit Chinese-American community.

The Family Chao is many things. It’s a poignant family saga, a slow-burn murder mystery and a tale of small-town secrets. But mostly, it’s a brilliantly written book. Chang is a masterful writer at the sentence level and a fantastic storyteller. An excellent option — whether you’re a Russian lit nerd or not.

You Have a Favorite Agatha Christie Novel

The Agathas by Kathleen Glasgow and Liz Lawson

I do not have a favorite Agatha Christie mystery because I could never choose among them. Too many brilliant options. Alice Ogilvie, one of the heroines of The Agathas, is also a Queen of Mystery fan girl, devouring Christie’s books and looking to her for inspiration.

I think this is such a cool cover.

The summer before the book begins, Castle Cove’s Queen Bee Alice is unceremoniously dumped by her basketball star boyfriend Steve. Much like her hero, Alice takes off and disappears for five days. (Sidebar history lesson: On December 3, 1926, Christie disappeared, sparking a nationwide manhunt. Renowned mystery writers Arthur Conan Doyle and Dorothy Sayers joined the effort to find her. She was found 11 days later in a hotel, with no memory of how she got there.)

As Alice restarts school, her former friends, the popular kids, have abandoned her. Her lone social interaction comes from mandatory tutoring sessions with Iris Adams, a teen at the top of her class and the bottom of the school’s social hierarchy. But when Alice’s former best friend — and Steve’s current girlfriend — disappears, the one-time Queen Bee and her tutor team up to prove Steve’s innocence, using Christie’s books as a guide.

The Agathas reminded me of “Veronica Mars,” the beloved early 2000s high school PI show, in a good way.

Both combine a well-plotted mystery with sharp commentary on class divides, high school politics and complex teenage friendships. YA readers and Christie superfans will find a lot to enjoy with this one.

Bonus (MOVIE) recommendation: I saw “See How They Run” yesterday, a comedy whodunnit set a London theater showing Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap.” It was charming, well-acted and lovely way to spend an afternoon.

You Know the Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth

For the Love of the Bard by Jessica Martin

For bardolators (a term I just learned for people who idolize Shakespeare) seeking a contemporary romcom, look no further than Jessica Martin’s For the Love of the Bard, a charming love story between a writer and a veterinarian.

Our heroine, Miranda, returns to her Shakespeare-obsessed hometown of Bard’s Rest (local businesses include Merry Wines of Windsor and Measure for Measure Hardware) for the summer to finish her YA novel and assist with the town’s annual Shakespeare festival. Her plans are thrown off course, though, when her mom volunteers her to direct one of the festival’s plays, and she’s forced to work closely with Adam, the animal doctor who broke her heart on prom night.

Martin’s ability to manage multiple storylines —a family health scare, a romance and sibling rivalries — within a quirky world impressed me. It would be easy for a setting like Bard’s Rest to weigh down a book, making it a distraction from the story, but instead it adds a sense of warmth. Come for the Shakespeare puns, stay for the sweet and surprisingly moving story.

Reminder Rec: Mona Awad’s All’s Well is a novel about female pain, college theater and Shakespeare.

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That’s it for me today. I’ll be back in your inboxes on Thursday with a Q&A featuring Jane Pek, author of The Verifiers.

I’m happy to share a guest recommendation from travel writer Sally Jane Smith this week, who suggests Laura Maya’s debut, Tell Them My Name:

After years of volunteer work creating a children’s library in a remote mountainside village, an idealistic young couple invites their Nepali hosts, two indigenous Gurung elders, to accompany them to Europe. The unusual family travels through France, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands, taking the culture-curious lens that mindful travelers engage on their journeys and directing it back on our own ways of life. Tell Them My Name is both entertaining and thought-provoking, balancing love and good humor with a willingness to face up to serious issues.

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