Lovers and Time, by Alex Kanevsky © The artist. Courtesy Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco

Danielle McLaughlin’s debut novel, The Art of Falling (Random House, $28), recounts a tumultuous season in the life of an art curator, Nessa McCormack, in Cork, Ireland. The McCormack family—Nessa; her architect husband, Philip; and their sixteen-year-old daughter, Jennifer—is attempting to find its footing in the wake of Philip’s philandering (an affair with the mother of Jennifer’s former best friend), while Nessa prepares to mount a major exhibition of the work of the late (fictional) sculptor Robert Locke. For months, she has…