Books About Kids, for Adults

📚 The Death of Jesus, by J. M. Coetzee

Rewriting the “boy genius”

“Caitlin Horrocks’s debut novel, The Vexations, a fictional dive into the early life of the French composer Erik Satie … creates a wrenching portrait of overconfidence as a destructive force.”

📚 The Vexations, by Caitlin Horrocks

The eerie horrors of The Perfect Nanny

“The children who are dead at the beginning of the book are shown throughout not as idealized innocents, but as complex beings who navigate adult whims, and the line between danger and safety, with a clarity that eludes their elders.”

📚 The Perfect Nanny, by Leïla Slimani

The purgatory that comes after losing a child

“[Jayson] Greene’s memoir grapples with this lesson: the ruinous insight that the world can wound loved ones at random and for no reason.”

📚 Once More We Saw Stars, by Jayson Greene

📚 Inferno, by Dante Alighieri

What J. D. Salinger understood about chance encounters

“‘For Esmé—With Love and Squalor’ celebrates missed connections, reminding us that even brief, glancing encounters can be enough to change a person for the better.”

📚 “For Esmé—With Love and Squalor,” by J. D. Salinger

📚 “The National Cage Bird Show,” by A. M. Homes​

About us: This week’s newsletter is written by Myles Poydras. The book he’s looking forward to is Caste, by Isabel Wilkerson.

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Myles Poydras is an editorial fellow at The Atlantic.