Briefly Noted Book Reviews

“The Barn,” by Wright Thompson; “When the Ice Is Gone,” by Paul Bierman; “Bright I Burn,” by Molly Aitken; and “Gifted,” by Suzumi Suzuki.

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Find anything you save across the site in your account The Barn, by Wright Thompson (Penguin Press). Thompson, who was born into an old Mississippi planter family, grew up only miles from the barn where Emmett Till was tortured and killed. This book is not only a retelling of the crime—a story that Till’s family, among others, has already published—but also a rich and wandering history of the township in which Till died: the few square miles of plantations that helped birth both the blues and the Ku Klux Klan. Thompson writes movingly of more than one “enormous web of interconnected people” in the Delta, and of the ongoing fight to commemorate its lynchings. He brings a local’s intensity to the project: the book is as much about his neighbors, and even his kin, as it is about his country. When the Ice Is Gone, by Paul Bierman (Norton). This scientific history recounts the drilling, in the nineteen-sixties, of the world’s first deep ice core—a cylinder of ice that extended more than four thousand feet below the surface. Efforts like this one contributed to the creation of a new scientific discipline. By analyzing the dust, ash, oxygen isotopes, and air bubbles preserved in ice cores, scientists could now reconstruct the history of Earth’s climate. In 2019, Bierman, a geologist, and his team discovered plant fragments in the frozen soil collected from the base of the core—evidence that Greenland’s ice sheet had melted before, under climatic conditions similar to today’s. Unless we curb climate change, he writes, “the island will be green again.” Discover notable new fiction and nonfiction. Bright I Burn, by Molly Aitken (Knopf). Inspired by a real woman, Alice Kyteler, who was born in the thirteenth century and accused of witchcraft, this gripping novel follows its protagonist from her youth in Kilkenny, as the captivating daughter of an innkeeper and lender, to her old age, hiding out as a priest in England. In between, Alice takes over her father’s business; is struck by lightning; marries four times, each with violent ends; births two children; and amasses significant wealth. “I am a rare case,” she says, of her story. “Once brightly I burned, I drew them all to me and consumed them all, unwittingly and wittingly, in my fire.” Gifted, by Suzumi Suzuki, translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell (Transit). In this unsentimental novella, a young woman working as a bar hostess and sex worker in Tokyo reckons with several unresolved personal traumas in the course of a few weeks. Her mother, an unsuccessful poet, is dying—first at her daughter’s house, in the entertainment district, then in the hospital. The unfortunate circumstances force the unnamed protagonist to reflect on the abuse she endured at her mother’s hands, as well as on the recent deaths of two of her friends. Based on Suzuki’s own experiences in the adult industry, the book chronicles the young woman’s wanderings from bar to bar, hospital to home, with brutal honesty. “This district is rife with women walking around with two million yen,” the character remarks. “Nearly the same number who say they want to die.” A wedding ring that lost itself. How the World’s 50 Best Restaurants are chosen. Did a scientist put millions of lives at risk—and was he right to do it? Linda Ronstadt has found another voice. The Web site where millennial women judge one another’s spending habits. The foreign students who saw Ukraine as a gateway to a better life. An essay by Haruki Murakami: “The Running Novelist.” Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. Sections More © 2024 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Choices

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