Strangers, by Belle Burden (Dial). This engrossing memoir of divorce, by a former corporate lawyer who hails from two of America’s wealthiest families, begins in March, 2020, at the start of Covid lockdown, on the day Burden learns that her husband of two decades has been having an affair. The following morning, he tells her, “I thought I wanted our life, but I don’t,” and leaves. As the divorce unfolds, Burden discovers that their prenuptial agreement favors her husband, who worked as a hedge-fund executive while she left her career to raise their children, and who has quietly amassed “a fortune” held “in his name alone.” Though this story of betrayal hits familiar beats—shock, grief, self-recrimination, resignation—it is enlivened by its particulars.
The Death and Life of Gentrification, by Japonica Brown-Saracino (Princeton). This wide-ranging study explores how the term “gentrification” has slipped the bonds of its original, “brick-and-mortar” usage, becoming a way to signal loss while addressing “structural inequalities and concomitant social changes.” As a metaphor, its meaning has become fluid; it is now commonplace to read of the “gentrification” of subjects as varied as music, the internet, sandwiches, and queer culture. Brown-Saracino also zeroes in on a crucial aspect of the term’s appeal: in an era of ideological land mines, “gentrification,” she writes, “is politically charged without evoking a specific, narrow political stance.”