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The Best Books of 2024 (So Far)
A sizzling, propulsive new novel from Miranda July, the introspective follow-up to There There, and a debut novel with a killer hook.
In a shabby gym in Reno, Nevada, teenage girls face off in a youth boxing tournament under a shifting ray of daylight that “fills the whole space with a dull, dusty brightness” and surrounded by a sparse crowd of mostly uninterested coaches and parents. Over the course of a semester that shifts between the perspectives of Millie, a meek yet dutiful R.A., Kennedy, a shy transfer student with a traumatic secret, and Agatha, a visiting professor out of her depths, the primary characters are forced to grapple with the heady concepts of desire, privilege, and the rules of social conduct in an environment where the the game is rigged and fairness is reserved for a select few. He’s also grieving his parents, who he considers to have died meaninglessly, his mother on a passenger flight out of Tehran that was accidentally shot down by the U.S. military (a real event that occurred in 1988), his father “anonymous[ly] after spending decades cleaning chicken shit on some corporate farm.” Martyr!
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