Caroline Darian

2 weeks ago | publishersweekly.com | Alice Bolin |John Birdsall |Caroline Darian |Prabal Gurung

Essayist Bolin (Dead Girls) probes the intersection of technology, culture, and feminism in this ferociously smart collection. In “Enumerated Woman,” she argues that using Fitbits or other devices to track steps, calorie intake, and other data is a manifestation of a “postfeminist” ideal that uses notions of bodily autonomy to uphold traditional standards of beauty while fueling capitalist consumption.

1 month ago | publishersweekly.com | Catherine Lacey |John Birdsall |Caroline Darian |Prabal Gurung

Catherine Lacey. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27 (240p) ISBN 978-0-374-61540-6Novelist Lacey (Biography of X) reflects on love, faith, and loss in this ambitious genre-bender. Reeling after a breakup, Lacey set out to process it with a “Möbius strip of narrative”: the book’s first half is fiction, and the second—printed backwards and upside-down, requiring readers to physically turn the book over—is memoir. In the first, a woman named Edie visits her friend Marie near Christmas.