The Cheffe, by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French by Jordan Stump (Knopf). At the heart of this novel is a character study of a brilliant chef, filtered through the perception of her most obsessive disciple, a much younger man to whom she is fairy godmother, mother, and beloved. His attraction propels a spiralling family psychodrama, whose richness and suspense are surpassed by those of scenes depicting the chefs exquisite inventions, from a signature green-robed leg of lamb to sweet crabmeat poached in absinthe. NDiaye creates an arresting portrait of a self-effacing genius, as the chef yearns to leave only a vague, marveling recollection in the eaters minds... only a dish, or just its name, or its scent, or three bold, forthright colors on a milky white plate.

Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen, by Dexter Palmer (Pantheon). In a small English village at the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, a woman named Mary Toft gives birth to a dismembered rabbit every few days. Whether her plight is a medical miracle, an elaborate hoax, or a shared moment of collective delusion is the conundrum of this frolicsome period comedy. The young surgeon who cares for Toft becomes renowned as an expert in human-leporine midwifing, and, when word of Toft reaches King Georges court, she is summoned with the surgeon and his apprentice to London, where they become entwined in the bizarre and barbarous world of the upper classa visit that exposes the chasm between provincial innocence and metropolitan cunning.

Parisian Lives, by Deirdre Bair (Nan A. Talese). The author of this sparkling memoir achieved two of the greatest coups in literary biography: writing a semi-authorized life of Samuel Beckett, which the gnomic Irishman promised to neither help nor hinder, and a life of Simone de Beauvoir, which was based on interviews conducted immediately before the philosophers death. Bair spent seven years on Beckett and ten on Beauvoir, and her dedication to her subjects is apparent. Into her accounts of working with these eminent, often exasperating writers she weaves recollections of malfunctioning tape recorders, grandstanding sources, and her travails as a professional and a mother commuting across the Atlantic, working in a field dominated by men.

Medieval Bodies, by Jack Hartnell (Norton). Elegantly combining strands from the histories of medicine, art, and religion, this study explores how the medieval world understood and treated the human body. In the late Middle Ages, medicine sought natural as well as mystical causes for all manner of afflictions, making diagnosis a complex affair (stringy hair, for instance, might indicate an unscrupulous character, while baldness resulted from an excess of heat). Focussing on Byzantium, the Islamic world, and the patchwork of kingdoms constituting western and central Europe, Hartnell deftly shows how these societies visual cultures were, like their medical theories, profoundly influenced by a symbolic understanding of humanitys relationship to realms seen and unseen.

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Briefly Noted Book Reviews - The New Yorker