For all the antagonizing, ruminating, and even moralizing that comes with defining the parameters of literary fiction, perhaps the one point of (near-) universal agreement debators enjoy is over the notion that such a book should be in some way realistic, should faithfully reflect life and those who live it. How this is to be done, and to what ends, and within what exact parameters—this is where the trouble begins. But that there should be present fiction’s mysterious friend verisimilitude is, it seems, a matter of relatively little disagreement. There are myriad ways, of course, that this might be accomplished, but one of the more under-appreciated tactics is the reflecting of a subject matter in the very form a work takes. To infuse in the readerly experience some measure of the sensations and emotions navigated by the protagonist; to mirror life and art, so to speak, is an approach as tricky as it is effective. In her debut novella, Love, Maayan Eitan realizes this goal rather ably, painting a portrait of a young sex worker that itself contains the fluidity, disquiet, and uncertainty of its subject’s life.
Dennis Duncan’s breathless description of his encounter with a 15th-century volume in an Oxford library offers an indication of his enthusiasm for the subject of his new book. He writes of his “disbelief that something so significant, something of such conceptual magnitude, should be here on my desk. … It feels astonishing that I should be allowed to pick it up, hold it, turn its pages. … I feel like I am on the verge of tears.”
The source of this excitement? Duncan has in his hands the text of a sermon, printed in 1470, on whose opening page appears the numeral 1. In another context the digit would be unremarkable, but this particular book boasts the first printed page number in history. And page numbers, together with a much earlier innovation, alphabetical order, form the basis of the index, the topic of Duncan’s entertaining and erudite “Index, a History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age.”
Throughout her journey, Williams manages to retain her sense of humor, and her writing is honest, even when ruminating in detail about her divorce. At times her self-awareness borders on self-absorption, but her storytelling opens up when she interacts with researchers and therapists, and when describing her experiences in nature and with therapeutic groups and organizations designed for trauma survivors.