Briefly Noted Book Reviews | The New Yorker

Seeking Shelter, by Jeff Hobbs (Scribner). This moving real-life saga opens with a family—Evelyn and her five, soon to be six, children—living in a small city in California. They move to Los Angeles in search of better schools, but a single mishap leaves them mostly unhoused for the next five years. Hobbs reconstructs Evelyn’s story using interviews conducted after the family’s situation stabilized, but the narrative unfolds with gripping immediacy. Evelyn’s war is waged on the streets, on automated government-aid hotlines, in schools, in hospitals, in low-wage jobs. Most important, it’s also waged in her psyche, which Hobbs wisely foregrounds. Though Evelyn is undeniably a victim of corrupt systems, she possesses a resilience that makes her story nothing short of heroic.

Dust and Light, by Andrea Barrett (Norton). In these collected essays, Barrett, an acclaimed novelist, explores the relationship between fiction and nonfiction. For her, research creates “the bones” of a story, and imagination provides “the breath and the blood.” By way of example, she recounts how the experiences of American soldiers stationed in Russia during the early twentieth century influenced her story collection “Archangel.” She also highlights how history informed the work of her literary influences, like Hilary Mantel. The late author’s “Wolf Hall” trilogy, Barrett writes, uses details from Thomas Cromwell’s life as “nucleation sites around which emotion engages and metaphors are richly made.” Barrett’s book is an ode to fiction’s unique ability to illuminate history—not as fact but as felt experience.

Illustration by Ben Hickey

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