2022 may have come to a close, but the new books were flying into the library right up until the last minute! You can find a selection of books which caught our eye below – why not pick up something new for the new year?

As ever, if you’d like to browse all of the EFL’s new books, head on over to LibraryThing.

N. K. Jemisin, How long ’til Black Future Month? (2018).

Jemisin has written a number of works of fantasy, science fiction, and speculative fiction, including three (highly decorated) series: the Dreamblood duology, the Inheritance trilogy, and the Broken Earth trilogy. How long ’til black future month? is her first collection of short stories, and won the Locus award in 2019.

The collection contains 22 stories, and takes its title from an essay Jemisin published on her blog in 2013. Most of the stories were written between 2004 and 2017 and had previously been published, while four are new for this collection. They contain themes of community, revolution, justice and power, and often feature characters on the margins of society. While they all sit under the umbrella of speculative fiction, they are written in a smorgasbord of different styles, from cyberpunk and steam punk to alien invasion and high fantasy.

Some of the stories explore the same worlds as her novels, such as ‘Stone Hunger’ which takes place in the same universe as the Broken Earth trilogy. Others provide tantalising glimpses of Jemisin’s ideas, and read ‘like a provacative sketch for a much longer work‘. Across all the fascinating stories in this collection, Jemisin revels in the ‘uncanny moments in which the human integrates with what feels profoundly inhuman‘.

Also by Jemisin at the EFL: the Broken Earth trilogy (2015-17).

Christine Brooke-Rose, Remake (1996).

Brooke-Rose (1923-2012) was an experimentalist writer who wrote novels, short stories and poems as well as criticism. Her work is often described as ‘playful and difficult’, and Remake is no exception.

Remake is autobiographical in the sense that Brooke-Rose was writing about her own life. But she was extremely resistant to the idea of writing an autobiography, and arguably did not write one: Remake has been described as ‘an autobiographical novel with a difference’ (from the publisher) and even as ‘a kind of antibiography’. Discussing the process of writing Remake, Brooke-Rose talked about struggling with a long list of the ‘facts’ of her life, a list she said ‘even I couldn’t re-read’. Her writing was only really enabled when she found ‘a constraint’ in the form of writing an autobiography containing no personal pronouns and no possessive adjectives.

Remake is ‘more narratively straightforward’ than Brooke-Rose’s more experimental, ‘difficult’ novels. But Brooke-Rose didn’t see difficulty as a bad thing. For her, ‘difficulty [was] the locus of pleasure’, meaning that reading becomes more enjoyable when it makes demands of the reader. Whatever your view on difficulty, Remake is a fascinating third-person fiction capturing ‘not the facts but the content of those facts’ (from the publisher), the textures, feelings, tones and transformations of a life.

Many of Brooke-Rose’s other works are also available at the EFL. You can find them on SOLO.

Francis Spufford, Golden Hill (2016).

Although Golden Hill is Spufford’s first novel, he has previously written in a dizzying array of genres. These include his memoir, The Child That Books Built (available in the library), as well as more experimental work, such as Red Plenty (available on Bodleian PCs) which blends history and real people with fiction.

Spufford has form when it comes to bringing authentic history and gripping stories together – and he does so masterfully well in Golden Hill. Without giving too much away, the novel follows Mr Smith who arrives in mid-eighteenth-century New York with a note for £1,000 that he wants to exchange for cash with a local trader. If Smith is not who he says he is, this would prove ruinous. The story follows Smith as he navigates this New World – and as the city’s inhabitants seek to establish what Mr Smith is hiding.

This is historical fiction underpinned by a huge amount of research, although that research is ‘worn refreshingly lightly‘. Spufford creates a vivid and authentic eighteenth-century world that echoes eighteenth-century novelists such as Sterne, Smollett and the Fieldings. But Spufford never seems weighed down by his eighteenth-century antecedents – nor does he let things like archaic spelling get in the way of what is at the end of the day a marvellous story!

Also by Spufford at the EFL: The Child That Books Built (2002).

Arji Manuelpillai, Improvised Explosive Device (2022).

Manuelpillai is a British Sri Lankan poet who hasn’t always been a poet. He has previously rapped with an international touring band and his own band, worked with a children’s theatre company and on various other shows, and taught workshops and multidisciplinary art. All of this has been motivated by what he calls a fascination with people: Improvised Explosive Device is the result of bringing ‘[his] love for poems and people together into one collection‘.

Improvised Explosive Device is Manuelpillai’s first poetry collection, described as a ‘powerful political debut‘. It explores extremist violence, the lives and experiences of people who engage with terrorist groups, and how close we all are to acts of violence. Underpinned by extensive research including conversations with former members of extremist groups and their families as well as academics and sociologists, these are ‘complex, unnerving texts’ chronicling how people turn to violence (from the publisher).

When speaking to people for this collection, Manualpillai has described being inspired by people whose ‘stories were truly unheard’. He sought to listen without interruption or judgement, then capture their stories in his poems. The result is an incredibly powerful collection which ‘will change the way you look at the world’ (from the publisher).

Yasmin Arshad, Imagining Cleopatra: Performing gender and power in early modern England (2021).

Cleopatra ‘is one of the most renowned and enduring figures from classical antiquity, yet remains one of its most elusive’ (from Arshad’s Introduction). This study aims to establish not how we perceive Cleopatra today, but how she was imagined and used by early modern English writers and audiences.

Arshad’s key aim is to expand our understanding of the different and multiple early-modern imaginings of Cleopatra, moving beyond both how Shakespeare presented her and how we imagine her today. In particular, she shows how Cleopatra was a model for femininity and motherhood, as well as serving as a vehicle for critiques of and commentary on contemporary political developments at the Elizabethan and Jacobean courts.

Arshad’s work has generally been well-received by critics. Some have pointed out that, although Arshad states she wants to ‘decentre’ Shakespeare from understandings of Cleopatra in early modern England, he in fact frames her analysis, appearing on the first page and forming the subject of the last chapter (from review by Rutter). Others say that, while Arshad’s analysis of gendered imaginings is admirable, her discussion of race lacks depth (from review by Léon Alfar). However, the overall consensus is that Arshad has produced ‘an accomplished and varied scholarly work that provides a necessary and unexpected interpretation of a popular figure’ (from review by Green).

An e-book of the 2019 edition of this work is also available.

Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin (2011).

Donoghue is a writer of novels, historical fiction, children’s books and short story collections, as well as works of literary history. In Slammerkin, she draws on the ‘nasty, brutish and short‘ (real) life of Mary Saunders, re-imagining a vivid inner life for Mary based on the merest fragments of historical record.

We know very little of the real Mary except that in 1764, aged sixteen or seventeen, she was hanged for the murder of her mistress. At the time, newspaper accounts said Mary’s crime was motivated by her desire for fine clothing. But Donoghue looks beyond this, to find a child who wants more than drudgery and poverty, whose ‘murderous outburst [is] a reaction to the physical traumas [she] suffered’ (from article by Mulvany).

Perhaps because of Donoghue’s background as a historian, Slammerkin has received a wealth of scholarly attention. Some have found elements of queer theory in Mary’s rejection of chrono-normativity (the heteronormative lifecycle of childhood, marriage, family and death), a refusal to abide by society’s rules that leads to her ultimate end (see article by Mulvany). Others have pointed to Donoghue’s use of historical fiction as a feminist political tool, rediscovering and giving some degree of agency to historical women (see article by O’Callaghan and Young). But Slammerkin is also the gripping and moving story of a young girl who tried to find a world beyond the class and gender boundaries she faces.

Also by Donoghue at the EFL: We are Michael Field (1998); Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins (1999); The Sealed Letter (2012).