A new novel from Hanya Yanagihara, an Elephant 6 oral history, and more books to read in January

The author of A Little Life returns with a new novel, Neutral Milk Hotel gets the oral history treatment, and more books to read this month

Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. So every month, The A.V. Club narrows down the endless options to five of the books we’re most excited about.

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To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara (January 11, Doubleday)

From the author of A Little Life comes another hefty years-spanning novel of high drama. To Paradise begins in an alternative New York in 1893, where, as with the rest of the United States, people are allowed to love whoever they please. Then it’s 1993 and the AIDS epidemic is ravaging Manhattan. Finally, in 2093, plagues and totalitarian rule have fallen upon the country. Yanagihara’s A Little Life was a runaway bestseller that also drew criticism for its melodramatic depiction of the lives of gay men, and it should be interesting, to say the least, to see how she treats the material here.

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My Annihilation by Fuminori Nakamura

My Annihilation by Fuminori Nakamura (translated by Sam Bett; January 11, Soho Crime)

In Fuminori Nakamura’s latest literary thriller, a man wakes up in a cluttered, dilapidated cabin in the mountains, and finds a journal in which he reads this foreboding line: “Turn this page, and you may give up your entire life.” The man reads on and discovers unsettling information about the journal writer’s previous life as a psychiatrist and one of his patients, becoming entangled in both their lives once he leaves the cabin. In an advanced review, Publishers Weekly calls My Annihilation a “fever dream of a novel.” This dark, psychological tale sounds like just the thing to push a reader through the post-New Year doldrums.

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You Don’t Know Us Negroes And Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston

You Don’t Know Us Negroes And Other Essays by Zora Neale Hurston (January 18, Amistad)

While Their Eyes Were Watching God may be Zora Neale Hurston’s most well-known work (in part for its frequent placement on high school and college curricula across the country), Hurston was far more than a novelist; she was also a prolific essayist. Co-edited and with an introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr., You Don’t Know Us Negroes collects essays from 35 years’ worth of the Harlem Renaissance writer’s work. Hurston explored all manner of topics related to Black life in her nonfiction, from Brown vs. Board Of Education to Marcus Garvey, displaying not just her willingness to engage with the most important, timely topics but also her wit and range.

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Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang

Joan Is Okay by Weike Wang (January 18, Random House)

In Weike Wang’s follow-up to her PEN/Hemingway Award-winning debut novel, Chemistry, the writer has once again imagined an idiosyncratic protagonist who she then throws into crisis. This time, it’s Joan, a content 36-year-old Chinese American woman who’s dedicated to her work as an ICU doctor in Manhattan. But after the death of Joan’s father, who moved back to China after Joan and her brother became established in their careers, her mother comes to the States to reconnect with her kids, and “a series of events sends Joan spiraling.” In a novel that butts up against the early pandemic, Wang wryly crafts a story of family, otherness, and becoming.

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Endless Endless: A Lo-Fi History Of The Elephant 6 Mystery by Adam Clair

Endless Endless: A Lo-Fi History Of The Elephant 6 Mystery by Adam Clair (January 18, Hachette)

The ardor people feel for Neutral Milk Hotel functions inversely to the amount of music the band put out in its short life. The second of the group’s only two full-length albums, 1998’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, became a cult classic, garnering a devoted following for the band and propelling lead singer Jeff Mangum to become something of a recluse and stop playing music for years. For this oral history of Neutral Milk Hotel and the Athens, Georgia-based Elephant 6 Collective at large, music journalist Adam Clair assembled more than 100 new and forgotten interviews. While Mangum’s own voice is absent here, fans hungry for stories and details of the surrounding Athens scene should find plenty to enjoy.

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More in January

Anthem by Noah Hawley (January 4, Grand Central); Bibliolepsy by Gina Apostol (January 4, Soho); Fiona And Jane by Jean Chen Ho (January 4, Viking); The Unfamiliar Garden by Benjamin Percy (January 4, Mariner); Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez (January 4, Flatiron); High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez (January 11, Soft Skull); Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments In Rock And Roll by Lenny Kaye (January 11, Ecco); Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz (January 11, Random House); I Came All This Way To Meet You: Writing Myself Home by Jami Attenberg (January 11, Ecco); Yonder by Jabari Asim (January 11, Simon & Schuster); Mouth To Mouth by Antoine Wilson (January 11, Avid Reader); Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor (January 18, Viking Books For Young Readers); This Will Be Funny Later by Jenny Pentland (January 18, Harper); All Day Is A Long Time by David Sanchez (January 18, Mariner); Red Milk by Sjón (January 18, MCD x FSG); How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu (January 18, William Morrow); Devil House by John Darnielle (January 25, MCD x FSG)

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