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Review_FICTION

mushing is captivating. It’s a unique take Pearl’s small, insular world is shattered by returned to Paris, Kit first loses a friend
on rural noir. Agent: Michelle Brower, an armed drifter, she starts on a dangerous in the Charlie Hebdo shootings and later
Aevitas. (Mar.) path that will change the rest of her life. fears that a loved one may have played a
Clement’s affecting and memorable novel role in the November terror attacks.
Gun Love is also an incisive social commentary that Steavenson, the author of several books
Jennifer Clement. Random/Hogarth, $25 will give readers much to ponder. (Mar.) of international reporting (The Weight of
(256p) ISBN 978-1-5247-6168-4 a Mustard Seed, etc.), skillfully writes
In her excellent fifth novel, Clement Paris Metro about the history and politics of global
(Prays for the Stolen) tackles homelessness, Wendell Steavenson. Norton, $25.95 (384p) conflicts; the novel’s first half, which
America’s love affair with guns, and the ISBN 978-0-393-60978-3 could almost read like a fictionalized
economic despair of folks living on the Terrorism arrives on one journalist’s journalistic memoir, is balanced by its far
dark edge of society. Pearl is a 14-year-old doorstep in Steavenson’s expansive debut more emotional second half. The false
girl living with her mother in an old car novel. Kit has spent her adult life trav- dichotomy of an “us vs. them” divide, the
next to a crummy trailer park and the eling between difficult places—from lingering prejudices of a protagonist who
town dump in central Florida. The car has Baghdad in 2003 to Kos, Greece, in 2015 once thought herself above such things, the
been their home since Pearl was born. She to cover the influx of Syrian refugees. knowledge that solutions are rarely, if ever,
and her mother are dreamers (“It doesn’t Along the way, she falls in love with a tidy—all are wrestled with throughout a
take too long to figure out that dreams are charming Iraqi, Ahmed—who may be novel that powerfully merges the personal
better than life,” says her mother), but working for the UN or who may just be and the political. (Mar.)
their dreams don’t spare them from untrustworthy—and becomes stepmother
tragedy when cop-killing charmer Eli to Ahmed’s son, known as Little Ahmed. The Fighter
shows up and woos Pearl’s mother, coming Kit’s friends joke about her chronic “bad Michael Farris Smith. Little, Brown, $26
between mother and daughter. Eli and luck” because she always narrowly misses (256p) ISBN 978-0-316-43234-4
trailer neighbors Pastor Rex and Ray are the opportunity to witness scenes of vio- The ferocious fourth novel by the
in the gun-running business, selling lence and catastrophe firsthand. But all author of Desperation Road confines itself
weapons in Texas and Mexico. When that changes when, in 2015, having to a few fraught days in the life of a cage