(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Contemporary Fiction Views: A modern fairy tale [1] ['Dan K', 'News Corpse', 'Belinda Ridgewood'] Date: 2026-06-09 Reading Ann Patchett’s new novel, Whistler, was one of those experiences when I learned more about myself. It was an empowering experience. The story begins with a middle-age woman and her husband making an impromptu visit to the Met. They are quiet, calm, capable people. The husband, a retired hospital administrator, notices an older man who may or may not be following them. He is, because he recognizes the woman. Decades ago, she was his stepdaughter. Daphne is the oldest daughter of Eddie Triplett’s former wife. She and her sister, Leda, loved being Eddie’s stepdaughters as much as he loved being their stepfather. Daphne and Eddie had one of those natural, unforced connections. Their mother divorced Eddie abruptly after he and Daphne were in a car wreck. They never saw him for decades. There is, of course, more to the story. I spent pages and pages waiting for the other shoe to drop. Trained by years of reading fiction and nonfiction in which humans act their worst, and living through today’s era of the same, I kept expecting a monster to emerge. But this is Ann Patchett. Whistler is a fairy tale of loving human connection. Even the flawed characters, mostly, have a redeeming characteristic or two. People forgive each other, understanding is deepened and empathy is given full rein to flourish. Whistler is a healing novel. It energized my empathy. ————————————— More fiction is being published this week, including the following. Links are to The Literate Lizard, online independent bookstore of Readers and Book Lovers’ Debtors Prison, with descriptions by the publishers. Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See In 1870, three Chinese women arrive in the small, dusty, and violent pueblo of Los Angeles. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar, is entrancing and innocent. These characteristics should bring her great rewards, beginning with her arranged marriage to a much older merchant. Petal, the big-footed daughter of peasants, has grown up hungry and with dirt between her toes. In a moment of desperation, Petal’s father sells her to buy money for rice seed, and she is loaded onto a ship to the Gold Mountain—America—where she is once again sold. Moon is married to a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She is educated, speaks fluent English, and has been endowed with a face of great beauty, yet her failed footbinding as a child has left her with a limp that lessens her value in the eyes of many. Each woman has her own desires. Dove wants to love and be loved, Petal desires freedom, and Moon seeks justice. Together they face a larger society that wishes them not one ounce of good will. Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors during which all three women are challenged in ways they could not have imagined. Brought together by hardship and heartbreak, they must use their bravery, endurance, and ability to “eat bitterness” to discover their voices, find freedom, and connect through solace and friendship. Together they are daughters of the sun and moon. Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer An aspiring archivist determined to begin a “serious” life after an undistinguished undergraduate career takes up residence in the Italian countryside. Here, he becomes the all-purpose assistant to the Baronessa, known to her friends as Coco, a defiantly youthful and naturally flamboyant woman of ninety-two. Amid a chaotic and colorful milieu of gin-swilling princesses, incomprehensible handymen, roaming boarhunters, nuns, and other local wildlife, our young man does his best to catalog the villa’s extensive collection of art and antiques—although he notices that things seem to go missing from right under his nose. Contrapposto by Dave Eggers Cricket Dib, born on the American prairie, has no particular prospects or ambitions until, in grade school, he realizes he can draw. He soon meets a girl, Olympia Argyros, one year older, who is captivating and brilliant and far more worldly. Recognizing his talent, she convinces him to deface, with profound vulgarity, a popular playground. Under her direction, he does it willingly, already in love, and thus begins a sixty-five-year entwining of Cricket and Olympia, encompassing friendship, working partnership, and love affair. Together they go to art school—an experience of dubious value—and then navigate the art world for the next fifty years, together and apart. Contrapposto is a moving and very funny novel about allies and art, and what it means to be an artist. All through their lives, Cricket sees Olympia as his soulmate and destiny, and while she is always his champion, romantically her eyes are always seeking something—and someone—else. Their love changes over the decades, but their commitment to each other, and their search for meaning in the making of art, never wanes. Food Person by Adam Roberts Isabella Pasternack is a food person. She revels in the beauty of a perfectly cooked egg, she daydreams about her first meal at Chez Panisse, and every inch of her tiny apartment teems with cookbooks, from Prune to Cooking by Hand to Roast Chicken and Other Stories. What Isabella is not, unfortunately, is a gainfully employed person. In the wake of a disastrous live-streamed soufflé demonstration, Isabella is summarily fired from her job at a digital food magazine and must quickly find a way to keep herself in buckwheat and anchovy paste. When offered the opportunity to ghostwrite a cookbook for Molly Babcock, the once-beloved television actress now mired in scandal, Isabella warily accepts. Unfortunately, Molly quickly proves herself to be a nightmare collaborator: hungover, flaky, shallow, and—worst of all—indifferent to food. But between Molly’s bizarre late-night texts, goofy confessions, and impromptu road trips, Isabella reluctantly begins to see Molly’s charms. Can Isabella corral Molly out of the gossip rags and into the kitchen? Can she find the key to Molly’s heart and stomach? Or will Isabella’s devotion to her culinary idols and Molly’s monstrous ego send the entire cookbook—and both of their careers—up in flames? Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst, translated by Nicolette Sherilyn Hellberg Five friends from university; seven summer days in a lakehouse in Denmark. A chance to swim, catch up, and mess around like old times. But the idyll is fragile. Lost without the uninhibited magic of their youth, Sylvia is left wondering what happened to the radical ways of living they embraced at university. Tensions rise under moonlit swims and wine-drenched dinners, and Sylvia is stunned to learn her old crush Esben will be getting married at the end of the week—a crush her monogamous girlfriend would definitely not approve. While the group sunbathe, cook, and flirt their way to midsummer night, new desires prove not everyone has left their arcadian fantasies behind. Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi Stevie cannot escape her mother. Abandoning college plans to work a dead-end job, her days are a purgatorial bore. Many dream of moving to L.A. and into the spotlight, but Stevie can’t wait to move away from it, and her mother’s orbit, to start over. Moon is many things: an out-of-work actress, a recovering addict, whatever a mistress becomes when she’s widowed, and a mother. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, Moon struggles to process her grief. And the last thing she expects is for Stevie to leave her too. Nymph by Sofia Montrone To ten-year-old Leo, life is a collection. She spends her mornings tidying the rooms of her Nonna Tina’s timeworn Italian agriturismo, carefully accumulating the curious bits of left-behind detritus from guests—a pearl earring, a lock of hair. Her nights are suffused with gathering the stories that flow from her father’s lips—liquor-spun tales of Odysseus and the Trojans in secret battle. But when an accident rips the gentle membrane of Leo’s childhood, she is left vulnerable to the pains and pleasures of growing up. Years later, in a sultry summer not unlike the many that came before, the agriturismo is the only thing that remains the same. Nonna Tina has grown older, Leo’s brother Max is intractable and mercurial, and the curiosity Leo so loved to feed as a child has turned into something more confusing. When she meets Dolores, an American girl made brilliant by Leo’s perception of her, she can’t help but gather all the experiences first love promises, while shedding parts of the past she no longer fits into. The Poppy Fields by Nikki Erlick What if there were a cure for grief? Welcome to the Poppy Fields, where there’s hope for even the most battered hearts to heal. Here, in a remote stretch of the California desert, lies an experimental and controversial treatment center that allows those suffering from the heartache of loss to sleep through their pain…and keep on sleeping. After patients awaken from this prolonged state of slumber, they will finally be healed. But only if they’re willing to accept the potential shadowy side effects. On a journey to this mystical destination are four very different strangers and one little dog: Ava, a book illustrator; Ray, a fireman; Sasha, an occupational therapist; Sky, a free spirit; and a friendly pup named PJ. As they attempt to make their way from the Midwest all the way to the Poppy Fields—where they hope to find Ellis, its brilliant, enigmatic founder—each of their past secrets and mysterious motivations threaten to derail their voyage. Rasputin Swims the Potomac by Ben Fountain Reporter Clarence Thomas Jr. is looking for a great story, former country music teen star Faith Spack has parlayed her fame into a job at the White House, and the two-term incumbent president is campaigning for a constitutionally dubious third term. After an outbreak at a campaign rally, a mysterious new pandemic of “weeping sickness” sweeps the nation, threatening the president’s hold on the Oval Office. Desperate to retain power, he enlists the mystical pro wrestler Rasputin to help ensure his reelection and guarantee additional seasons of his presidential reality TV show, The Real West Wing. But as Rasputin’s appeal threatens to exceed the president’s, and the wrestler’s supposedly supernatural powers start to seem like the real thing, the campaign finds itself trapped in a spandex-clad destiny no number of executive orders can control, one in which both Clarence and Faith are compelled to play increasingly large parts. Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth Well, that’s about it for the story of planet earth, poor earth, reduced in Earth 7 to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life—and love—persist in unexpected ways even in the most inhospitable circumstances. Earth 7 is the story of two women, one who was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other who may or may not be a robot. Earth has been severely depopulated, not due to any one calamity but because of many. Some humans have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue digital eternal life. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts, and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that someone in the future may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do? The Martian named Zee might have an opinion, too. May You Have Delicious Meals by Junko Takase, translated by Morgan Giles The power dynamics of the office are never more apparent than when it comes to food: mandatory lunches with the boss, the colleague currying favor with home-baked treats, or the sad remnants of someone’s late-night binge. In a small office in Saitama, Ashikawa is the kind of woman Nitani imagines he’ll one day marry—sweet, obliging, and determined to cure him of his instant noodle addiction. Yet he finds himself unable to respect her—or the sugary sweets she brings in to win her coworkers’ affection through baking rather than hard work. Oshio, on the other hand, is bold and uninhibited—Nitani’s drinking buddy and kindred spirit. In the stifling atmosphere of the workplace, the two grow close, bonded by their shared status as outsiders rebelling, in quiet ways, against the rigid corporate order. Cinema Love by Jiaming Tang Moving from post-socialist China to contemporary New York, Cinema Love is a tender epic about forbidden relationships, belonging, and the weight of memory. At the Workers’ Cinema in rural Fuzhou, gay men would cruise for love in the screening rooms, while in the box office, the woman who sold tickets would tightly guard their secrets. But when a series of haunting events unfold, these characters are propelled toward an uncertain future in America. This staggering novel asks: When love and survival exist at odds, what do we sacrifice? Cages by Chantel Acevedo Cages is the story of Felix—a zookeeper in Cuba during the time of the missile crisis, an exile in swinging sixties London, and finally a dying man in 1980s AIDS-era Miami. In this daring novel, Acevedo’s most personal and heartfelt to date, the fragments of Felix’s story are put together like pieces of a puzzle by one who knew him mostly as an absence. Cuba, 1963. Felix risks everything for an illicit love affair with a co-worker. In a society where homosexuality is branded “counterrevolutionary,” their tenderness unfolds in the shadow of danger, treachery, and political oppression. In London, Felix and his wife Anabel navigate exile and reinvention, while an aspiring actress named Claudia finds herself drawn into their orbit, her ambitions and desires colliding with Felix’s own hunger for connection. Years later, Virgilio—Anabel’s devoted brother—recounts the disintegration of Felix’s marriage and his decision to step in and protect the family Felix abandoned. From Anabel, long silent about her complicity in the events that forced Felix’s flight from Cuba, to Rita, the daughter born out of wedlock, each vivid character gives us a different version of Felix, and the result is a dazzling mosaic of longing, deception, survival, and reconciliation. READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/9/800052027/community/contemporary-fiction-views-a-modern-fairy-tale/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/