Contrapposto by Dave Eggers

Published by Knopf on ‎ June 9, 2026

What is art? In Madison, Wisconsin during the 1970s, a fellow named Art supported himself by washing windows for sympathetic merchants on State Street. Someone had the idea to make a poster with a picture of Art at work. At the top appeared the words: “WHAT IS ART?” And at the bottom: “ART IS A WINDOW WASHER.” The poster seemed profound when I was young. It still does.

Dave Eggers examines the definition of art from various perspectives in Contrapposto. Told in six parts, the novel follows the life of Rob “Cricket” Dibb from the age of 9 to 74. Cricket’s father moved away when Cricket was 5 and was never heard from again. As the novel opens, Cricket lives with his mother and Silas, his 80-year-old grandfather, in northwest Indiana.

Cricket began making art when Silas showed him a book of Manet’s paintings and took note of Cricket’s ability to observe details that others fail to notice. When Cricket is trying to avoid his mother’s abusive boyfriend, Silas encourages him to make art so he can “have the life you can conjure on your own. You can produce beauty there in your notebooks, from scratch. And harmony. Chaos outside, order on your paper.” This becomes the defining theme of Cricket’s life.

A girl named Pia, having heard that Cricket is good at drawing, enlists him to place masturbation-themed graffiti on a new play structure in a park. Pia insists that the lettering must be ornate, teaching Cricket that precision is “the essence of art.” They stay in touch for a time after Pia moves away, but eventually end their communication.

At 15, Cricket takes a drawing class from a Romanian woman whose sister teaches piano. One of her students is Pia, who now goes by her full name, Olympia. They resume a friendship, with the added element of Olympia rubbing Cricket’s crotch until he makes a mess. Cricket immediately falls in love. He holds that feeling for the rest of his life.

Cricket takes a job at a train station convenience store where he befriends co-worker Jed. Their boss, Roulin, assumes the role of surrogate father to them both. Using his savings, Cricket signs up for a class in figure drawing. He’s rather surprised to find himself sketching nude men and women. A librarian offers to display his drawings in a reading room where art books are shelved, but the plan goes awry when Indiana townies compare him to Mapplethorpe, who was widely condemned in small town America for drawing men who don’t hide their dicks.

Cricket learns a couple of trades and has no plan to attend college until Olympia comes back into his life and persuades him to join her in the art program of an Indiana cow college. On his first day, he attends a session in which students critique the work of other students, debating whether something is or isn’t art. The tend to praise the obscure and to trash beautiful, technically proficient creations as failing to break new ground.

Cricket doesn’t intellectualize the process of creation. To Cricket, recognizing, capturing, and creating beauty is the point of art. Whether others choose to define those creations as art — or as valuable — is beside the point.

Cricket’s brief college experience proves to be fruitful only because he meets an art professor who becomes a lifelong mentor. Marcus Carpenter is much on the outs with the college because he complains that “the art world, in the last century, has made room for those who cannot draw” and asks his students to “resist a new, paradoxical tyranny wherein those without technical skill terrorize those who possess it.”

The rest of Cricket’s life is shaped by Carpenter, Jed, Roulin, and Olympia. His life periodically intersects with Olympia’s, once while working in an art factory owned by Kyle, a fellow student of the cow college who, despite his lack of artistic ability, becomes wealthy by exploiting artists who know how to create beauty. As their lives move on, Cricket and Olympia repeatedly encounter each other in locations from New York to Cambodia to Paris. Their moments together are wrapped in pure delight. Sharing their connection is a delight for the reader.

The novel’s first half is very funny. In troubled times, laughter is therapeutic. I prescribe Contrapposto as an antidote to the real world. I also recommend it because the second half morphs into a meaningful and moving glimpse of the intersection between art and life. The story is sweet without becoming saccharine. That distinction is incredibly difficult for writers to pull off, but Eggers delivers a masterclass in how to tell a story that is alternately uplifting and tragic without ever coming across as forced or artificial.

So what is art? One answer, suggested late in the story, is that art is the product of joyful creation. That answer is suggested in the negative, from the lack of joy involved in the production of art for money. Kyle and those who work for him are not joyful; they are “all engaged in a kind of factory that made beautiful, unnecessary things that meant very little to anyone who made them.”

But successful novels must be based on something more than philosophy. Ultimately, Contrapposto is the story of enduring friendship. Cricket and Olympia are friends with benefits, two people who love each other but know they can never be together for extended periods, much less a lifetime. Their relationship works because it works. They find no need to analyze its unconventional nature or to compare each other to other people they have loved or shagged. In that respect, their friendship is almost a form of art, a kind of beauty that exists because they envision its existence.

If Contrapposto has a lesson, it is the importance of living a life with joy. Of Cricket, when he’s 57: “A thousand times in his long life he had felt so happy he could die, and this was another.” Many of those times are the moments he has spent with Olympia, but he also finds joy in tiling a floor and in drawing or painting, even if he’s knocking off a copy of a Pissarro for a few hundred bucks.

The tension between Cricket and Olympia as they consider Cricket’s life gives the story its soul. In a roundabout way, Cricket’s life teaches a cliché: money won’t buy happiness. The cliché might not be true for Olympia, but as long as he can eat and has a place to sleep, Cricket is happy enough without money. Olympia and Cricket fight from time to time about the commercialization of art, as Olympia argues that artists need to eat while Cricket fears that mixing business with art replaces the joy of creation with the stress of production. Perhaps a man with Cricket’s talent could do more with his life, but would that make him more content?

I won’t reveal how Cricket resolves this tension — that is, what Cricket is doing with his life at 74 — but, to me at least, the resolution is both honest and satisfying. Cricket still has a friend in his 70s who was like a father to him at 15. Many other friends have died along the way and Cricket wonders why he has not yet joined them, but he still finds joy in life. Perhaps being content is the key to longevity. If not, it might at least be the key to living a life that feels right. I was moved by Cricket’s late-life epiphany: “No one tells us that our spirits stay delightable, surpriseable, porous and tingling.” What more could any of us ask?

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

The Bookseller by Tim Sullivan

First published in Great Britain in 2025; published by Atlantic Crime on June 2, 2026

Like most writers of a genre series, Tim Sullivan follows a formula for George Cross novels. Readers have little reason to complain when the formula works, at least until it grows stale. Sullivan’s method produces intelligent plots and his original characters add to the pleasure. There’s no reason for him to change his recipe.

The formula is satisfying. Cross investigates a murder. He interviews multiple witnesses, some of whom might have a motive to commit the murder. A superior urges him to charge the most likely suspect. Cross resists because he wants charges to be followed by convictions and isn’t confident that he’s arrested the true killer until he has tracked down all the evidence and eliminated every possibility of innocence. A new suspect emerges but just when the reader thinks the mystery is solved, Cross fits the last puzzle piece into position, the suspect is exonerated, and the killer’s identity is revealed. What more can a mystery reader ask?

It will come as no surprise that the murder victim in The Bookseller is a bookseller. Torquil Squire is ninety years old and has spent most of his life buying and selling rare books. His son Ed worked in his Bristol shop. On the night of his death, Ed stayed in the shop after closing because he expected his father to return from an auction in London. Torquil was delayed a bit and when he returned, he found that his son had been stabbed to death.

Victoria Squire is the victim’s wife. Her niece, Persephone, is the daughter of her brother, Ian Hartwell, and his ex-wife Sarah. Sarah had a physical altercation with Ed about a decade earlier. Persephone works at the bookstore, together with Sam Taylor. Persephone was in the building when the murder occurred and is hiding in a bathroom when the police arrive. Sam resents Persephone’s attempt to shift the store’s focus from rare used books to new bestsellers. Naturally, all these characters are all suspects.

Like many readers, I love books about books. Sullivan opens an insightful window into England’s rare book market. Cross learns that rare book dealers have attempted to corner the market on books by a particular author. If one dealer acquires all first editions of an author’s books, the absence of competition allows him to drive up the price. Ed made an enemy of a London bookseller named Patrick Gibb after accusing him of cornering the market on Evelyn Waugh. That makes Gibb a suspect.

Torquil made an enemy of his former partner, Denholm Simpson, when he took half their stock and opened a store of his own in a building that he acquired from a customer. Denholm had a son named Nigel who used to be Ed’s best friend. Nigel recently brokered the sale to Ed of a letter authored by Christopher Columbus. Ed purchased it from an Italian and sold it to a wealthy Russian collector at a healthy profit. The letter turned out to be stolen, costing the Russian oligarch a couple million dollars when the library that owned it leaned of the sale and demanded its return. The Russian is on the suspect list because his goons threatened Ed’s life.

Subplots involving secondary characters have been developing throughout the series. Cross’ mother has been back in his life, an event to which — thanks to his autism — Cross has not easily adjusted. His father’s health has taken a bad turn, which has Cross contemplating retirement to take on the role of caregiver. Cross’ partner, DS Josie Ottey, has been promoted to DI, technically making her Cross’ superior — another event that doesn’t thrill Cross, although he sticks to protocol and calls her ma’am, much to Josie’s annoyance. Alice Mackenzie, a former staffer, is now pursuing police training. Series fans are likely to view these subplots as enjoyable encounters with old friends.

Cross is increasingly endearing. He has developed effective coping mechanisms for his autism, but his relentless honesty and failure to recognize when honesty will be perceived as rude is a dependable source of comic relief. At the same time, he makes serious efforts to understand the important people in his life by using logic and close observation as a substitute for his inability to express his emotions. Sullivan makes me believe characters when they say that Cross is both maddening and loveable.

As always, I changed my mind about the killer’s identity two or three times — maybe four, possibly five. Admittedly, I usually change my mind after Cross explains why my favored suspect couldn’t be the murderer. Cross is a cleverer detective than I am, but the series would be boring if that weren’t true. The large collection of suspects makes it challenging to identify the killer, but the answer is always plausible and Sullivan always gives the reader a sporting chance to guess the mystery’s solution. I have yet to be disappointed by this series and now rate the Cross novels as a “must read” for fans of classic mysteries.

RECOMMENDED

The Fervent Whites by De’Shawn Charles Winslow

Published by Random House/One World on June 9, 2026

The Fervent Whites uses a murder mystery to drive the story of a community’s racial disharmony. The Whites in the title are James and Ella White. They live near Saugerties, New York in a hamlet called Fervent. So the book is literally about the Fervent Whites, but the title undoubtedly has a double meaning. Working out that meaning would seem to be a natural topic for a book club discussion.

Fervent has twelve tract houses and “a post office the size of a tool shed.” The houses were built by the Fervent brothers. The last three houses did not sell so, in need of cash, the Fervents sold them to Black families. Most of the white owners of the remaining houses sold to Black buyers and moved to all-white neighborhoods. In 1982, the only white families in Fervent are the Whites and the gossipy Mrs. Talbot, a recent widow who is remaking herself as a realtor.

As the novel opens, Sylvia Upshaw is getting ready to go to a party at Mrs. Talbot’s house when the Whites arrive at her front door. Based on testimony that the Whites and Hopes got into a fistfight shortly before Paul Hope was found dead, the Whites were convicted of murder. They were released from prison after Christopher Josey confessed to killing Hope. Josey is a serial killer “with a penchant for terrorizing and taking the lives of Black people,” making it odd that he would target a blond man like Hope.

Sylvia is surprised to see the Whites returning to Fervent. So is Sylvia’s neighbor and best friend, Lafayette “Fate” Jolly, a gay man living in a time when HIV has only started to make headlines. Since Fate testified about James’ unwarranted anger at him for mowing the lawn before ten, he’s worried that the Whites will make his life uncomfortable if they resume their life in Fervent.

Ella was raised in an orphanage where she developed a friendship with a Black girl. Years after entering adulthood, Ella’s friend gave birth to her son Morgan. She told Ella she had to give up the baby and Ella agreed to adopt him, although she had to overcome James’ objections.

Morgan hung out with Sylvia’s kids and became close to her family. Ella explained Morgan’s history to Sylvia in confidence and made her swear never to reveal the identities of Morgan’s real parents to him. Sylvia strongly believed that Morgan was entitled to know the truth about his biological parents, so she broke her vow after Ella went to prison. Sylvia assumed her betrayal would have no consequences because she did not expect to see Ella again.

Soon after Morgan learned his parents’ names, he decided to visit Washington, D.C. to search for them. He died on that trip. Sylvia now lives in fear that Ella will learn of her betrayal and will blame her for Morgan’s death.

Against that background, The Fervent Whites tells a crime story. A disciple of Christopher Josey has been murdering Black people. When one of the story’s characters is murdered in Fervent, the reader will wonder whether the death is being blamed on the wrong person. The story eventually takes on the characteristics of a thriller when Sylvia finds herself facing great danger.

The crime story provides the glue to bind the novel’s elements, but the most interesting themes address questions of race and identity. Sylvia was vocal in her concerns about a white family raising a Black child. She thought Morgan needed to be exposed to a Black church and visit a barber who understood a Black boy’s hair. Emma resented the implication that she was unfit to raise a Black son. Sylvia didn’t handle Emma’s resentment well, telling her “it takes a village, and you just happen to be living in a village full of Black people. If you gon’ get pissed every time one of us gives Morgan some advice, or even shows him some care, maybe move some damn where else.”

Morgan loved his adopted parents but also loved and identified with the Upshaws. His experience suggests that Sylvia is wrong to think that white parents should not raise Black children. At the same time, Morgan’s relationship with the Upshaws suggests that the village theory is true, that an adopted Black child will benefit from interaction with Black culture. Identity is more than a skin color, but adopted children more readily construct an identity when they are exposed to members of their own race as well as members of their parents’ race.

As a gay man, Fate’s story is also one of identity. Fate doesn’t hide who he is, but he is the victim of homophobia as well as the lingering racism that dominated the Hudson Valley for centuries. Fate has an open relationship, but his lover might be jealous of his interest in entertaining other men. That dynamic plays into the crime story.

As it develops those themes, the story casts doubt on whether the Whites were actually innocent of the crime for which they were exonerated. Families trade gossip and fear as they wonder who might die next and speculate about the killer.

De’Shawn Charles Winslow creates a strong sense of time and place and fills Fervent with multifaceted characters. While the story works as a satisfying murder mystery, and to some extent as a thriller when a new serial killer seems to be terrorizing Fervent, The Fervent Whites excels as a captivating drama of racial tension in a small community.

RECOMMENDED

A River Red with Blood by John Connolly

Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books on June 2, 2026

Horror fiction and crime fiction are a natural fit — at least when the crimes are horrific — but I am not a great fan of supernatural explanations for evil, common through they are in the world of crime fiction. I am nevertheless a great fan of John Connolly, if only because his prose is on a higher level than most crime novelists can reach. My ambivalence about infusing a ghost story into a crime novel has never impaired my enjoyment of Connolly’s work.

Readers who follow the Charlie Parker series know that his daughter Jennifer died with her mother in 1998. Jennifer often appears to Charlie. Lately she’s been appearing to warn him of a danger from the beyond. Jennifer makes brief appearances in A River Red with Blood and a small part of the story concerns a contract for a hit on Parker that seems to have been offered by a spirit. I am pleased to report that the balance of crime fiction and supernatural/horror story tips substantially in favor of crime.

The crime that engages Parker’s interest is the murder of Scott Theriault. Scott was a seventeen-year-old student at the Spero School in the Kennebec Valley. Spero is a private school that specializes in correcting the behavior of troubled youth with strict rules and harsh discipline. Scott supposedly ran away from the school, got drunk in the woods on stolen liquor, and accidentally drowned.

Scott’s father believes his troubled son was killed. Scott’s father is in prison. Perhaps he feels guilty for not giving his son a better life, but he needs to know the truth about his son’s death. His lawyer contacts Moxie Castin, a lawyer who often hires Parker to conduct investigations. Moxie convinces Parker to talk to Scott’s father. Parker suspects Scott died an accidental death but agrees to poke around.

At about the time Scott died, a young woman named Mallory Norton disappeared. Since Mallory lives in the same part of the state, Parker suspects a connection between the two cases.

Other crimes of consequence are committed by a group of serial killers. Four men, operating in teams of two, abduct young women and take turns raping and torturing them before disposing of their bodies. They operate under strict rules, including limiting their hobby to one abduction per year, always at an untraceable location far from home. Some of the men seem to have a connection to Spero and at least one of them hasn’t adhered to the rules that keep them safe.

Connolly always tells an engaging story. The four villains are creeps but Connolly gives them complete lives, replete with the ordinariness that allows their criminal personas to go undetected. They try to victimize women whose disappearance won’t be noticed, but their lives begin to unravel when two of them kidnap the wrong woman.

Series fans will enjoy Parker’s banter with his friends Lewis and Angel, two hard men who blend sensitivity and love with loyalty and merciless judgment. While the plot is carefully constructed, I’m not sure readers who haven’t followed the series will find value in another story of serial killers that has too many predictable elements.

Fortunately, the story isn’t entirely predictable. I believe this is the first novel I’ve read that imagines a ghost hiring a hitman. Still, I was underwhelmed by the novel’s ending as Parker and his friends decide to confront the supernatural being that wants them all dead.

As a Connolly fan, I recommend the novel to other Connolly fans. To crime fiction fans who haven’t followed Connolly, I recommend starting at the beginning and working your way through the series. A River Red with Blood isn’t the best Charlie Parker novel, but a familiarity with the characters will likely enhance appreciation of Parker’s latest brush with violent criminals and supernatural entities.

RECOMMENDED

The Brothers McKay by Craig Johnson

Published by Viking on May 26, 2026

It’s been a minute since I read a Walt Longmire novel. Longmire seems to have gotten into trouble with some Russians. An old friend of Longmire named Ruth One Heart is being held captive in Russia. A Russian named Maxim Sidorov who once tried to kill Longmire might now help him rescue Ruth. That subplot would have meant more to me if I had kept up with the series, but it has little to do with the plot that drives the story. That’s fortunate for me and for readers who want to enjoy The Brothers McKay as a standalone.

The main plot is a murder mystery. Longmire’s undersheriff explains the difference between a murder mystery and a thriller. In a murder mystery, the obvious killer is the last person the reader would suspect. In a thriller, “we’d know who it was in chapter two and then have five-hundred pages of chase.” Craig Johnson adds some thrills as the story nears its climax but substitutes a forest fire for a chase.

Pepper McKay is found dead in a river where was fishing. He got drunk for breakfast and may have slipped and hit his head on a rock but an extra set of footprints in the river suggests that someone might have clobbered him. Since everyone hated McKay, the list of suspects is long. The list begins with his biological sons — David, Ian, and Alan — and a young man named Manx Henenoka, who (rumor has it) is his illegitimate son.

Pepper owned a ranch where Manx is the head wrangler. David is the son of Pepper’s first wife and has already squandered his mother’s inheritance on gambling and women (like father, like son). Ian is a journalist and Alan is a monk at Wyoming’s Saint Benedict Monastery. Shortly before Pepper died, Pepper and his sons had a family meeting that didn’t go well. All the kids are accordingly suspects.

Pepper and David were both sleeping with Paetra Agirra, as were some other men. She was sneaking in and out of the house regularly and might have been there on the morning of Pepper’s death, so she is among the suspects. Paetra’s uncle, a notable Wyoming thug named Boris, made the suspect list by repeatedly threatening to kill Pepper for shagging his niece.

Other suspects include ranch foreman Gary Lyman and his wife Lynn, who were largely responsible for raising Manx; David’s fiancée (or possibly ex) Katherine Verkhov; Michael Rakin, a novice at the monastery who, together with Elder Zebrowski and abbot deputy Brian Schiffer, was visiting Alan; Bob Erlichman, who resented Pepper’s interference with his planned wind farm; and “neighbors in all directions” who had their own Wyoming-style reasons for wanting Pepper dead.

The title is an allusion to The Brothers Karamazov, a book that characters in The Brothers McKay discuss at some length. The murder mystery in Dostoevsky’s novel is unsolved (characters speculate about the reveal Dostoevsky would have penned if he had lived long enough to turn the novel into trilogy), so familiarity with the Russian masterpiece won’t provide much of a clue to Longmire’s mystery.

A reader might as well throw darts at the novel and hope one lands on the murderer, but Craig Johnson plants real and false clues, giving the reader at least some chance of guessing the reveal. I give Johnson enormous credit for crafting a credible mystery, which is something of a lost art in the modern world of crime novels and their endless chase scenes.

Longmire gets an assist from his friend and series regular Henry Standing Bear and Sidorov helps Longmire get a handle on The Brothers Karamazov. Both are interesting characters, but the star of the show is a mule named Borax.

The novel creates palpable tension as it nears the end. Longmire is surrounded by a wildfire but, in heroic fashion, tries to save a character who seems intent on committing suicide by fire. For some time, it’s an open question whether Longmire will save the stubborn Borax or whether Borax will save him.

Longmire novels are always impressive. Johnson keeps the story moving at a steady clip, creates amusing characters, surrounds them with authentic atmosphere (a smoke-filled atmosphere in this novel), and avoids the nonsense that permeates Wyoming politics. The result is a strong entry in a series that rarely disappoints.

RECOMMENDED