10 of The New Yorker's Favorite Fiction Books of 2024

"In the opening chapter of this short, deftly written novel, two roughnecks in the employ of an Irish drug dealer abduct a teen-age boy named Doll English, hoping to extract repayment of a debt owed by Doll’s older brother... The kidnapping serves as a binding device, bringing together a small, carefully drawn cast of characters under unusual, high-pressure circumstances... Barrett is less concerned with suspense than with the ways in which people negotiate 'that razor-thin border separating the possible from the actual.'"

"When Carl Fletcher, the heir to a Styrofoam fortune, is abducted outside his Long Island estate, in 1980, his wife, Ruth, withdraws two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from the bank as easily as if she’s getting a coffee to go... The novel, Brodesser-Akner’s second, traces the aftereffects of the kidnapping on Carl and Ruth’s three children, who grow up to squander the fortune their self-made grandfather painstakingly accumulated."

"The fourteenth novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of 'The Overstory' essentially comprises three story lines... It’s not a spoiler to reveal that an A.I. entity appears—and that it does not end up destroying life as we know it. In fact, the representation of A.I. is almost sympathetic, suggesting the possibility that machines could learn grace and benevolence. A Silicon Valley-inspired twist brings these threads together."

"This striking début novel of cultural inheritance and painful family bonds follows a man living across the river from Maine’s Penobscot reservation... The man spends his days observing his estranged daughter, who was the result of an unexpected pregnancy, and whose mother, a Penobscot woman, brought her to the reservation. Taking care of his own aging mother, he unearths details he hadn’t known about his past, which he aches to share with his daughter, believing that they belong to her, too."

"In April of 1984, a demonstration outside the Libyan Embassy in St. James’s Square, in London, brought supporters of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi and his “popular revolution” up against protesters in opposition. The demonstration had barely begun when shots were fired from the Embassy’s windows. Eleven protesters were injured, and a policewoman was killed: all the spokes of Matar’s lingering, melancholy new novel connect to this transforming event."

"Although Akbar, an acclaimed Iranian American poet, has incisive political points to make, he uses martyrdom primarily to think through more metaphysical questions about whether our pain matters, and to whom, and how it might be made to matter more."

"The protagonist of this page-turning novel of ruthless ambition is Conor O’Toole, a debt-laden striver newly graduated from law school, who lands a summer job giving tennis lessons in a wealthy gated community in Massachusetts... The longer Conor lives among the privileged élite, the more he yearns for 'the money and the real estate and the bone-deep confidence' of his new neighbors. Risky and violent decisions ensue."

"July’s second novel is a study of crisis—the crisis being how middle age changes sex, marriage, and ambition... July’s moving, very funny book is at once buoyant about the possibilities of starting over and clear-eyed about its costs."

"Senna has spent her career finding humor in the ways that biracial people are questioned, fetishized, or ignored in America. Her latest follows a writer, Jane Gibson, whose main issue with her mixed identity is figuring out how to exploit it properly... What follows is a tart, incisive portrait—both of the country and of the narcissistic task of self-commodification."

"This dryly witty novel centers on Jules, a twenty-eight-year-old aspiring novelist turned study-guide editor living in Brooklyn... Jules is just self-aware enough to admit that chief among her joys in life is feeling superior to others. She spins a fixation on her Instagram feed as research for 'a book-length hybrid essay' on feminism, capitalism, antisemitism, and the Internet. As Tanner’s novel explores these topics, its depiction of Jules’s relationships also highlights absurdities of contemporary culture and the consequences of self-absorption."