The winds of change blow through the 10 best books of March
This month鈥檚 selections sweep across the literary landscape with fervor and imagination, illuminating aspects of the human condition and celebrating the desire for transformation.聽
1.聽The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World聽by Laura Imai Messina
In a coastal garden in northeast Japan sits the Wind Phone, which offers visitors a place of grace for their sorrow. This quiet novel follows grieving Yui and Takeshi as they form a friendship of shared experience 鈥� and navigate the trickier shoals of a deeper relationship 鈥� in lyrical, unrushed prose.聽
Why We Wrote This
Good books can upend long-held ideas and disrupt assumptions. The picks for this month reflect a yearning for fresh beginnings and new ways of understanding ourselves and each other.
2.听尝颈产别谤迟颈别听by Kaitlyn Greenidge
鈥淟ibertie鈥� follows a Black girl born free in the Reconstruction era. Her mother is a doctor who wants nothing more than for Libertie to follow in her footsteps, but Libertie has different ideas of what freedom 鈥� for herself and for her people 鈥� truly looks like.
3.聽Klara and the Sun聽by Kazuo Ishiguro
In his first novel since winning the Nobel Prize in 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro explores questions about what makes humans irreplaceable. This parable about a society in which science has been taken to ethically questionable levels is, thanks to its narrator 鈥� a kind, smart, sympathetic, solar-powered Artificial Friend 鈥� a surprisingly warm morality tale about love, hope, and empathy that subverts our expectations about dystopian fiction.
4.聽The Committed聽by Viet Thanh Nguyen
In this sequel to his 2016 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, 鈥淭he Sympathizer,鈥� Viet Thanh Nguyen drives home the brutal 鈥� and often horrifyingly absurd 鈥� effects of colonialism and every other kind of 鈥渋sm鈥� on human beings. The Vietnamese immigrant narrator cleans toilets and runs drugs in Paris, not because he wants to, but because this is what the subjugation of his country has brought him to. The novel is not for the faint of heart, but it speaks with power.聽
5.聽Red Island House聽by Andrea Lee
Andrea Lee traces an African American scholar鈥檚 marriage to a wealthy Italian businessman and her uneasy relationship with the pleasure palace he鈥檚 built on an impoverished island in Madagascar. Told in linked stories, 鈥淩ed Island House鈥� offers a captivating take on colonialism, privilege, race, and heritage.
6.聽Surviving Savannah聽by Patti Callahan
Patti Callahan鈥檚 inspiring historical novel launches off from the 2018 discovery of a luxury steamship that sank in 1838 off the coast of North Carolina, killing half its passengers, many of whom were wealthy Southerners. The steamship, believed to be the Pulaski, has been called the Titanic of the South. The novel moves between the 19th-century passengers and modern-day treasure hunters and museum curators.
7.聽A Most Remarkable Creature聽by Jonathan Meiburg
Jonathan Meiburg鈥檚 superb book begins as the story of a bird and ends having marshaled natural history, travelogue, biography, and memoir to conjure people and places both known (Darwin) and not (the South America of the glyptodonts). Along the way he shows how inaccurately we understand our species鈥� place in the world.
8.听笔濒耻苍诲别谤听by Menachem Kaiser
A master storyteller embarks on a journey to learn about his grandfather and to reclaim an apartment building that was stolen during the Holocaust. The odyssey is fascinating and thought-provoking. 聽
9.聽The Barbizon聽by Paulina Bren
The Barbizon was New York City鈥檚 premier women-only residential hotel in the 20th century. This delightful history explains how, in a pre-feminist time, it sheltered the ambitions and dreams of thousands, including Grace Kelly and Sylvia Plath.
10.聽The Gospels聽translated by Sarah Ruden
After having tackled Virgil鈥檚 鈥淎eneid鈥� and St. Augustine鈥檚 鈥淐onfessions,鈥� classicist Sarah Ruden turns to the Gospels. She grounds them in thorough research and infuses them with a fresh, immediate voice that captures each Gospel鈥檚 characteristic tone.
