Quick Pick: July 3, 2015

The Quick Pick is a weekly feature highlighting of one of the week’s best new releases. Subscribe to the New Books newsletter using the form below for more!

The Star Side of Bird Hill by Naomi Jackson

I feel like the descriptions of this book revealed too much, so I’m just going to tell you a little and then wave my arms in the air like Kermit because, holy cats, this novel is wonderful. It’s a great summer in Brooklyn, but Phaedra and her older sister, Dionne have been shipped off to Barbardos to stay with the grandmother they hardly know. The girls’ mother is suffering from depression, and thinks the trip will do them good. The girls try to adjust to the unfamiliar ways of the island, while their grandmother Hyacinth attempts to help raise them and keep them close in a way she didn’t with her their mother. This book is wonderful, and lyrical, a really stellar debut. (I declare 2015 The Year of the Debut Novel, because wow, there have been so many amazing ones!)