Literary Fiction Highlights: Exploration of Identity and History

This week's literary fiction offerings include Laleh Khadivi's "Female Life on Planet Earth," Sebastian Barry's "The Newer World," and Hernan Diaz's "PLY."

"Female Life on Planet Earth" by Laleh Khadivi delves into the complexities of identity and inherited history. The narrative centers on Heti, who, following her mother's death, discovers unsettling photographs of her mother in Iran during the Iranian Revolution, suggesting a past life as a militant. This revelation overturns Heti's understanding of her mother and her own comfortable life in Los Angeles. Through a series of vignettes, Khadivi examines the diverse spectrum of female experience and challenges assumptions about knowing others.

Sebastian Barry's "The Newer World" revisits the American Civil War, focusing on the story of Tennyson Bouguereau, a formerly enslaved man in Tennessee. Although theoretically free after the Civil War, Bouguereau finds himself on the run, seeking refuge in a college for freedmen and women in Nashville. There, he falls in love and forms a deep friendship. Barry adeptly portrays how individual lives are shaped by larger historical forces, with a writing style described as vibrant. The novel is noted to be enriched by connections to Barry's preceding works.

Hernan Diaz's "PLY" presents a future New York where democracy has dissolved and corporations control public utilities. The story follows an orphaned girl who sustains herself by selling makeshift batteries, primarily for underground concerts. She is recruited by a mysterious figure named Pola, who is planning a significant alteration of the space-time continuum. The novel's plot becomes digressive, incorporating political theory, selfhood, quantum physics, and the nature of reality itself. While recognized for its ambition in confronting present and future societal structures, the novel is categorized as an "honorable fail."