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Boris Fishman’s A Replacement Life is that rare thing: a newly told Holocaust story. (Do we need even one more? If it’s this, a resounding “yes.”)

Aspiring magazine writer Slava Gelman is awakened early on an already hot summer day by his ringing landline, a curiosity. It’s his mother, letting him know that his beloved grandmother “isn’t.”

With that, Slava is sucked away from his young adult Midtown life, back into Soviet Brooklyn, where his grandfather lives and now grieves. Pretty quickly, though, grandfather involves Slava in the scheme that informs the book: fabricating the life story of his grandmother, so grandfather can receive German moneys due Holocaust victims.

Grandmother, who escaped the Minsk ghetto, didn’t share her story while she was alive. So Slava interviews others, to create a likely life story. (This is difficult reading.) At the same time, Slava falls in love with co-worker Arianna, also the child of refugees. Theirs is a sweet, sexy romance that opens the book to the intimate pleasures of living in Manhattan, like star gazing in Central Park or lounging at Grant’s Tomb.

There are no secrets in Soviet Brooklyn, and soon Slava is translating and writing the life stories of other survivors. Unlikely friendships blossom: with the aged, with a gypsy-cab driver, and with Vera, a girl Slava grew up with, who has morphed into a woman. “..curves, everywhere curves. Vera’s bookshelves curved. Her lampshades curved. Her fridge would have curved if only the maker obliged.”

Slava’s writing attracts notice by the German official administering the program: will Slava confess? (Is his a crime? Can there ever be just compensation?) Will Arianna forgive his actions and lies?

One of the things I loved most about this read is Fishman’s rendering of New York City, where there is always someone — typically a stranger — commenting, cajoling, seducing, scolding. Even during a quiet visit to his grandmother’s grave, Slava gets an earful.

Another New York story I liked: Preparation for the Next Life, by Atticus Lish. (Unlike every other reviewer, this will not be a rave.) The novel is the immigrant experience of Zou Lei, a young woman from the provinces of China. Her life is harrowing. She works hard — and works out hard — but is always wary of being deported.

Skinner, an unhinged Army veteran, becomes her lover. Theirs is an odd romance that ends violently. What I loved about Fishman’s New York — the city’s inescapable crush of people, and their opinions — is lacking here. It felt like these two, who suffer or have suffered mightily, are in a bubble, a dystopian New York.

So, what kept me going? His clear writing and the lovers’ fates.

Finally, I liked parts of Dinaw Mengestu’s All Our Names, but not the whole. Much of it is set in Africa, focusing on two young men caught up in revolt, during the 1970’s. The rest — the story switches back and forth — is set in a vanilla Midwestern college town.

There an African student named Isaac — one of the activists, but which one? — is housed by an aid group. A social worker falls for Isaac, and begins an affair with him. This should be incendiary, but isn’t: no one works against them, which is odd for the place and time. Their union should be heartbreaking; instead, it’s mostly dull.

Up next: Lily King’s Euphoria (thank you, Cherie.) I’ll let you know.