Two powerful but very different new novels for adults move between past and present to tell stories of queer families, change, and healing. In one, a trans witch hopes to help her lesbian mother by teaching her magic; in the other, two narratives intertwine to tell of loss, injustice, and finding a way forward.
Lessons in Magic and Disaster, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor).
Jamie is a graduate student in 18th-century literature, trying to balance the demands of writing her dissertation, teaching, dealing with transphobia, and maintaining her relationship with her spouse, Ro (who is nonbinary). Jamie, a trans woman, is also hiding a secret—she’s a witch.
Teaching her mother Serena about magic, Jamie thinks, will help Serena move forward from the depression she’s been in ever since the death of her wife, Jamie’s other mom, Mae. But Jamie didn’t predict the dangerous direction that Serena will take her newfound skill and the impact it will have on both their lives. Jamie realizes she needs to better understand the nature of magic, but the key seems hidden in a novel from 1749. Can Jamie unlock its secrets in time to save them?
As always, Anders’s writing is masterful: simultaneously erudite, hilarious, and revelatory, creating a story that is entertaining, thought-provoking, healing, queer as heck, and very highly recommended.
A Family Matter, by Claire Lynch (Scribner)
In a powerful novel that weaves across generations, an English mother in 1982 falls in love with another woman and struggles to maintain a relationship with her daughter as her husband sues for custody. Alternating sections, however, are set 40 years later, and share the story of Heron, an elderly man who has just received news of a cancer diagnosis and struggles to tell his daughter, who is busy raising kids of her own.
The two threads are connected, but to say more would be to reveal spoilers. Know simply that author Claire Lynch’s spare, pitch-perfect prose masterfully illuminates her characters as they move through their lives, each seeking meaning, fulfillment, and connection, but hindered by family secrets, societal strictures, and injustice.