Stephanie LaCava
Amber Husain. Photo: Leila Husain Amber Husain’s Replace Me is a long-form essay on human replaceability in the workplace and in intimate relationships. It draws from Husain’s own experiences and an extensive list of articles, books, films, and artworks. The latter includes the sculpture by German Conceptual artist Rosemarie Trockel that lends its title to the book. Trockel has made at least two works with the title Replace Me, but the one that Husain cites is from 2011: two ceramic sofas covered in plastic with a soft blanket thrown on top. For Husain, the work “distills this doomed collision 
When in French: Love in a Second Language is New Yorker staff writer Lauren Collins’s memoir of falling in love with a Frenchman and navigating life overseas. It isn’t a linear story; instead Collins combines episodic anecdotes with heavily researched passages exploring linguistics. Appropriately, section headings make use of complicated French verb tenses. Flashbacks are simply “The Past” (Le Passé composé), for example; Collins’s childhood is “The Imperfect” (L’Imparfait); and the more recent past is “The Past Perfect” (Le Plus-que-parfait). As Collins tells it, “I could have given each episode the conjugation test to figure out where it should