I've been screaming for new fiction, but it just hasn't been happening. All the new titles--chick lit, historical fiction, complicated love triangles, yet another Nazi Germany story--they look like all the new titles last year, and the year before, and the year before...

Sigh.

I'm dying for something like 1984. You'd think that someone would be writing a book with a social conscience these days, given, well, these days.

I ended up with Saturday, by Ian McEwen; The Franchiser, by Stanley Elkin; and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffennegger. I picked up Saturday because it was the closest thing I could find to a novel dealing with contemporary issues (it's about a neurosurgeon who runs into an anti-war protestor on the way to a squash game); The Franchiser because Lewis Buzbee recommended it, and because he has an eye for almost-forgotten novels that say something; and The Time Traveler's Wife because it was published by MacAdam Cage, a West Coast Publisher that makes beautiful books, and I really liked the premise (it's a sort of magical love story between a man who involuntarily travels through time, and a woman who can't).

I'm skeptical about all these, but maybe I'll get lucky.