Book notes: World views

In The Futurist (Doubleday, June 6), former advertising exec James P. Othmer spews his bile against corporate influence in the form of Yates, a successful tastemaker, trend predictor and phrase coiner who experiences a personal crisis. The premise starts out a bit familiar—a corporate sellout gets mad as hell, rebels against his phony life via a public flameout and seeks redemption, aided by the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold—but the story takes a nervy, original turn when Yates is recruited by a shadowy duo, who hire him to travel the world to find out how much and in what ways Americans are hated. The Futurist is relentlessly entertaining, thanks to a knockout sense of humor, well-placed insights and the economy of language of a veteran adman.

Poetic, understated and somber, Monica Ali’s Alentejo Blue (Scribner, June 20) couldn’t be less similar in approach. Ali’s follow-up to her much-lauded novel Brick Lane focuses on a Portuguese village called Mamarrosa and the people who live there, from lifelong residents to an English scholar attempting to finish his book in relative solitude and a family of outcasts on the run. Its sustained melancholia occasionally becomes more cloying than poignant, but the grace of Ali’s words—especially in memorably descriptive lines such as “she treated words like money, and money was always tight”—is dazzling.—Ben Goldstein