NOVEDADES

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He s attractive, troubling, young young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day partner, parent, creator, muse and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.

Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA. Encapsulating Dominican-American history, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao opens our eyes to an astonishing vision of the contemporary American experience and explores the endless human capacity to persevere—and risk it all—in the name of love.

Noria, a single-by-choice barista with a little resentment for the "crazy cat lady" label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood's stray cats. On her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-it notes left by a secret admirer in the area where she feeds her favorite stray-a black cat named Cat. Like most felines, he is both curious and observant, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Noria, however, is clueless. Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high-school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early midlife crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns Noria's favorite bodega?