Three First Novels that Just Might Last

[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine.] THE BOOK THE SETUP WHY IT'S GOOD FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE ... THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE By David Wroblewski Hamlet, basically, but set in rural Wisconsin and starring a mute boy who breeds dogs It's a big-hearted piece of old-school storytelling that feels short at 566 pages A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. And who love--or tolerate--dogs PERSONAL DAYS By Ed Park Some office drones work at a moribund company. That's really all Park needs Never have the minutiae of office life been so lovingly cataloged and collated The Mezzanine, Then We Came to the End (a book it superficially resembles, but only superficially) CHILD 44 By Tom Rob Smith A serial killer is loose in 1953 Russia, but the state won't even admit that he exists How do you catch a killer in a world run by the biggest serial killer of them all--Stalin? Anything by Alan Furst, Martin Cruz Smith (who wrote Gorky Park) or John le Carre. Or Dostoyevsky