Brian Dillon’s essay collection “Affinities” is nominally a book of art criticism — most of the essays take visual artists as their starting point, and the book is subtitled “On Art and Fascination” — but its real charm (for this reader, anyway) is in the “fascination” part of that equation, as Dillon meditates on the various ways an image or story or striking detail can come to exert a hold on our imagination.
So it seems only fitting that a fleeting anecdote from the book has stayed with me: After the German art historian Aby Warburg suffered a mental breakdown in the early 20th century, Dillon tells us, he reportedly developed a habit of “talking to the insects that flew into his room at night”: “He would speak to them for hours, recounting to moths and butterflies … the onset of his agony, describing the shape of his suffering.” That scene returns to me each time I encounter my own nocturnal insects as I walk home, and it’s as fine a reason as any to recommend Dillon’s book to you this week.
Also up: a history of African Americans traveling abroad, the true story of a sex-and-therapy cult on the Upper West Side, and a tale of polar exploration that doubles as a history of the rise of mass media. In fiction, we recommend a story collection, a debut novel about a college student coming to terms with an incident from her past and a novel about a tech worker contending with a literal black hole, along with a thriller about a stalker and “Crook Manifesto,” the sequel to Colson Whitehead’s “Harlem Shuffle.” Happy reading.
—Gregory Cowles
Returning to the world of his novel “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead again uses a crime story to illuminate a singular neighborhood at a tipping point — here, Harlem in the 1970s. The novel makes sinuous the sounds of a city and its denizens pushing against the boundaries.
Doubleday | $29
Elise Sutton, an off-duty detective browsing at a big-box store, shoots and kills a gunman who seemed to be aiming at one man in particular. The apparent target flees — only to surface days later, when he begins to stalk and terrorize Elise with chilling psychological acuity.
Dillon has acquired a deserved following for his bracing, cerebral meditations on art and language; this book, the third in a loose trilogy, consists of elegant mini-essays on creative figures as well as two autobiographical pieces, about the author’s devout mother and an insufferable aunt.
New York Review Books | Paperback, $18.95
This fascinating study traces a ’60s-era experiment in communal living that morphed into a cult guided by a pair of Manhattan therapists (one without formal training), before collapsing in a storm of lawsuits and blame.
Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $30
This true-life adventure follows the breathless 1909 race — between explorers, as well as the newspapers that championed them — to reach the North Pole. The competition made for brisk sales, but at a cost.
Viking | $30
RIPE
Sarah Rose Etter
This absorbing novel follows a 33-year-old tech employee in San Francisco who has lived all her life alongside a looming “black hole,” both a threat and a companion. Hovering over the novel are the questions: What happens on the other side of this darkness, and under what conditions is it worth finding out?
Scribner | $25
Jakobson’s debut novel is a spirited coming-of-age story and a poignant examination of trauma; it follows a college sophomore as she takes her first steps into adulthood while trying to understand a past sexual encounter with a friend’s older brother that she realizes was nonconsensual.
With storytelling flair and the detailed knowledge of a tour guide, Walker explores the conditions and contexts that have led African Americans to travel and live in other countries.
Crown | $28
The ambivalence of exile drives the stories in this stunning debut collection, in which characters in India or the United States yearn for a home, and a version of themselves, that no longer exists.