The Men

In 2019, Sandra Newman published a novel, The Heavens, that landed on my year's best list, a book that "asks profound questions about what kind of world we want to live in and what lengths we'll go to change it." She's asking those questions again, with more insistence, in The Men, which is a virtual lock for this year's best list. It posits an inexplicable disaster in which all men (everyone with a Y chromosome, that is) vanish overnight, not a wholly original trope, but one that Newman handles expertly—she has anticipated and resolved with satisfaction whatever doubts one may have about that premise. Her dystopia is as sharply described and gripping as classics by the likes of Margaret Atwood and Emily St. John Mandel, but it advances beyond those works before all is said and done, taking a turn into literary territory that feels altogether new. —James (from the Madison Books newsletter)