In This Issue

This week in our fiction selections, several protagonists encounter rather surprising obstacles to achieving their greatest aspirations. In Art on Fire, novelist Yun Ko-eun "brilliantly skewers the art industry" through the surreal story of an artist in residence at a Palm Springs museum--and the dog who runs the place. Meanwhile, with "satirical edge, exquisite pacing, and blending of myth and fact," Sonora Jha's "triumphant" Intemperance considers a feminist sociologist who devises a grand contest to determine whom she will wed as her third husband. And Jane Hamilton "blends dark comedy and high drama" in The Phoebe Variations, a "marvelous... enchanting" novel in which an aging woman reflects on her younger years as a piano prodigy and the misadventures that life brought her.