Best new books: September 2021

By Madeleine Feeny on 31/8/2021

Famously, publishers release their most high-profile titles in September and October, ahead of Christmas, so selecting our favourites wasn’t easy. Nonetheless, here’s our edit of the latest unmissable fiction, from the new Sally Rooney to an undiscovered Simone de Beauvoir novella, from heists in 1960s Harlem to female rivalry in modern London. In non-fiction, we have a game-changing analysis of transgender lives in Britain, and a boldly original take on freedom.

Beautiful World, Where Are You, by Sally Rooney

She’s done it again. The ‘voice of a generation’ follows up her phenomenally successful BBC-adapted novel Normal People with another compulsive tale tracing the lives of insecure, hyperintelligent millennials in Ireland. Exploring fame and friendship, it combines piercing insights with haunting lyricism. Alice, a wunderkind novelist much like Rooney, has moved to the coast after a breakdown, and meets Felix, a local bad boy who works in a warehouse. Alice exchanges intellectually searching emails with her best friend, Eileen, an editor at a Dublin literary journal, as both struggle to square their private concerns – the search for love, the purpose of art and beauty – with the magnitude of the world’s problems. Meanwhile, Eileen pursues an ambiguous romance with her childhood friend Simon. As the four characters converge, the gaps between self-perception, self-expression and the eyes of others, and between ambition, success and happiness are revealed.

(Faber, 7 September)

The Transgender Issue, by Shon Faye

A manifesto for change from a leading trans activist and writer, this landmark treatise shines a light onto the reality of trans lives in contemporary Britain, where the conversation around transgender issues has become increasingly polarised. Yet despite all the column inches, we hear trans voices all too rarely. Shon Faye sets out to change this by providing a comprehensive study of transgender experience from youth to old age, covering the areas of work, family, housing, healthcare, the prison system, and the LGBTQ+ and feminist communities. A society can be judged on its treatment of minorities and, in this spirit, Faye calls for solidarity between all marginalised people as she presents her vision for a fairer, freer future that will benefit everyone.

(Allen Lane, 2 September)

The Inseparables, by Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Lauren Elkin

This previously unpublished novella by the feminist writer and intellectual (1908-1986) was discovered in a drawer by her adopted daughter. It offers a moving insight into a relationship that influenced Beauvoir profoundly – with her childhood friend Zaza, who died suddenly aged 22. This portrait of an intense bond between ‘the inseparables’, who meet at a Parisian Catholic school and grow up together may remind readers of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, for the bookish narrator Sylvie (Simone) loves and admires the charismatic, talented Andrée (Zaza) fervently. However, being exceptional is not an advantage for girls in this repressive era, and when Andrée falls in love, her life becomes increasingly constrained by the demands of her family. Introduced by Deborah Levy, this first English edition includes an afterword by Beauvoir’s adopted daughter and photographs of the real-life friendship.

(Vintage Classics, 2 September)

On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint, by Maggie Nelson

Acclaimed author of The Argonauts and The Red Parts, Maggie Nelson is one of today’s most original thinkers. Now, in this bracing study, she tackles the thorny subject of freedom, a word that has been co-opted by groups throughout history to take on all manner of meanings, or lose all meaning: the freedom to bear arms, or not wear a mask during a pandemic. For freedom – not to be confused with transient moments of liberation – always has a price. Drawing on everything from critical theory to pop culture and everyday experience, Nelson traces its intricacies in the four areas of art, sex, drugs and climate, seeking to identify the ongoing ‘practices of freedom’ with which we can navigate our interconnectedness, with all the care and constraint that involves.

(Jonathan Cape, 9 September)

Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead

From the twice-Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys comes a riotous adventure set in 1960s Harlem. To all appearances, Ray Carney is a furniture salesman earning an honest crust for himself and his growing family. But if the neighbours peeked behind the mask of respectability, they’d be surprised to discover that crime is in Ray’s blood. As cracks start appearing in his façade, he gets embroiled in a heist that goes awry and finds himself surrounded by Harlem’s shadiest customers. Caught between his honest and his crooked selves, he maintains a precarious double life while trying to stay alive, save his cousin from danger and bag his share of the spoils. Race, power and moral tussles collide in a vivid historical caper that’s part-family saga, part-crime story.

(Fleet, 14 September)

Magpie, by Elizabeth Day

The bestselling author and host of the How to Fail podcast Elizabeth Day has written movingly about her fertility struggle and the longing for motherhood. Now she brings her empathetic perspective and psychological acuity to this thriller about maternity, jealousy and obsession. When Marisa meets Jake, she knows it’s right. After only a few months, he asks her to move in and they start trying for a baby, but their domestic bliss is threatened when they take in a lodger. Kate seems way too eager to make friends with them, but when Marisa tries to raise the issue with Jake, he doesn’t seem concerned. Unsettled and suspicious, Marisa is determined to get to the bottom of Kate’s interest in them and their unborn child, but at what cost? Nothing is quite as it seems in this clever, suspenseful page-turner.

(4th Estate, 2 September)