Clayton Longstaff

With Study for Obedience, Sarah Bernstein offers a thought-provoking tale about the pervasive influence of storytelling on apparently objective history. This intricate book features an unnamed cast in an unnamed location contending with a looming threat —“an awareness of catastrophe just beyond the garden gate”— that also goes unnamed. The effect is less a perplexing lack of…

Sheila Heti is anything but ­predictable. Her latest novel meditates on friendship, intimacy, and identity through the frame of God, a disgruntled artist, as he stands back to contemplate his first draft of existence. After a long delay, the Lord decides to tear his design apart: the earth is obviously flawed. But before he scraps all living things…