New York Review of Books Review

ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE, by Gail Honeyman. (Penguin, $16.) Eleanor, the socially awkward, terrifically blunt heroine of this quirky novel, is a loner, spending her weekends alone with vodka and frozen pizzas. But a blossoming romance with her office's I.T. specialist, Raymond, and their friendship with an elderly man help stave off isolation, opening them all up to the redemptive power of love. THE FACT OF A BODY: A Murder and a Memoir, by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. (Flatiron, $17.99.) The author's work as an intern at the firm that defended an accused murderer and pedophile compels her to re-examine her own past abuse. She devotes herself to finding parallels between her molestation by her grandfather and the firm's client, and indicts what she sees as society's refusal to acknowledge wicked acts. MADE FOR LOVE, by Alissa Nutting. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $15.99.) After Hazel's husband - a wealthy, manipulative tech visionary - implants a chip into her brain, she leaves him, showing up at her father's senior living community to stay with him and his sex doll. As our reviewer, Merritt Tierce, put it, the novel "crackles and satisfies by all its own weird rules, subversively inventing delight where none should exist." THE OUTER BEACH: A Thousand-Mile Walk on Cape Cod's Atlantic Shore, by Robert Finch. (Norton, $16.95.) Finch, a nature writer, shares 50 years of observations from a stretch of shoreline. The book, arranged chronologically from 1962 to 2016, devotes a chapter to each place up the shore; our reviewer, Fen Montaigne, wrote that "Finch artfully conveys what is, at heart, so stirring about the beach: how its beauty and magisterial power cause us to ponder the larger things in life and drive home our place in the universe." OUT IN THE OPEN, by Jesús Carrasco. Translated by Margaret Juli Costa. (Riverhead, $16.) In this bleak, dystopic debut novel, a young boy flees his tormentors and family's betrayal into a parched, unnamed land. When he is joined by an old goatherd, the pair recalls Don Quixote as they make their way through a merciless world, trying to evade cruelty. Faced with suffering, the novel asks, will we respond with grace? I WAS TOLD TO COME ALONE: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad, by Souad Mekhennet. (St. Martin's Griffin/Henry Holt, $17.99.) As a Muslim of Moroccan descent raised in Germany, Mekhennet, a Washington Post reporter, has been able to access inner circles of Islamic militants. Her book takes readers into the world of jihadi recruiters and their targets, and assesses the risk the West faces.