After a dreary 2007 for fiction, a number of strong novels have found or are about the find their way to American bookshelves in early 2008. Several big name books win prizes but are catastrophic failures in my eyes, and other books like The Wentworths, by Katie Arnoldi (Chemical Pink) and Chang-Rae Lee’s The Surrendered are on their way.

Grip ‘Em

The Quiet Girl by Peter Hoeg – Hoeg’s first novel in ten years marks a return to form for the celebrated Danish author of Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Stewing elements of seismology, philosophy, a gambling-addicted circus acrobat with super-duper hearing, psychic children and a secret order of nuns, you might think that Hoeg has thrown too much into one novel. But you’d be wrong. Hoeg manages to keep his overstuffed pages moving with the urgency of a potboiler, a thriller than reads like commercial fiction but feels like so much more.

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon – Due to publish in May, Bosnian-American and Chicago writer Aleksandar Hemon’s second novel proves again his original, calloused, and fatalistic voice is one to be reckoned with. While the past and present plotlines (Chicago’s police chief murders a Jew named Lazarus in 1908 and a struggling writer named Brik travels back to a fractured Yugoslavia to retrace Lazarus’ life to author his book) never quite gel, you can’t help but keep reading for another one of Hemon’s crystalline observations about the American immigrant experience.

The Gathering by Anne Enright – The Man Booker Prize winner of 2007 is the real deal. To say Enright’s narrator, Veronica Hegarty, has some deep-held resentment in the aftermath of her brother’s drowning would be an understatement. Rage, betrayal, and secrets fester and the Hegarty clan fails again and again and again to love each other to redemption.

Skip ‘Em: The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers (P-yoo-litzer, indeed), The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz (Dominican comic book geek teenager as tragic figure – too cute by half), Darkmans by Nicola Barker (you’ll laugh but you won’t care).