RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewCaptivating ... Probing ... Armfield forgoes sentimental scenes and simple answers for suspense and horror, building an eerie mystery around an incident in Carmichael’s own house ... Armfield invites us in, honoring the greatness and darkness of Lear’s drama. Then, thrillingly, she starts throwing stones.
Ela Lee
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewSmart, compulsively readable ... The book balances the heavy subject of rape with a darkly funny treatment of work culture ... Will justice be served? And how much will Jade risk in its pursuit? These questions drive the plot, but it’s the characters who make us care.
Caitlin Shetterly
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewTender ... Shetterly is attuned to quicksilver changes in the family dynamic ... Shetterly is particularly good at showing how caring for children can test a relationship ... Shetterly does not allow Pete the airtime she grants Alice. We get three third-person chapters from Pete’s point of view and nine first-person chapters narrated by his wife ... In certain moments, Shetterly’s debut achieves a subtle grace, a quality of light and shadow worthy of a Bergman film.
Tom Rachman
RaveThe Washington PostWitty ... Consists of a mix of Frenhofer’s wildly inventive stories about people in moments of crisis, disappointment and revelation, interleaved with Frenhofer’s own diary entries ... Readers who enjoy literary complexity will relish ... Rachman riffs brilliantly on art and the imagination, but he writes best about the human heart.
Jean Hanff Korelitz
RaveThe New York Times Book Review... a sparkling novel that is in essence satirical and wise, in style old and new ... If this novel is funny, it is also cutting, a nearly forensic study of family conflict...Nimbly, Korelitz juggles the stories of each parent and child, weaving a tapestry of secrets, antipathies and private quests. This is a book with 19th-century scope, touching on politics, race, class, inheritance and real estate ... At times this book suffers from an embarrassment of riches. The plot is ingenious, the pacing brisk — but the reader longs to delve deeper ... As Joanna clings to the illusion of family unity, she begins to \'slide away,\' and the reader loses her point of view as well. We see the consequences of her actions in the second half of the novel, but we can no longer access the mixture of pain and idealism motivating them ... As for the triplets, ;\'n full flight from one another as far back as their ancestral petri dish\' — their loathing becomes limiting. A more nuanced relationship would raise the stakes on the fateful night when the siblings turn on one another. In the event, their entrenched antipathy undercuts the drama of mutual betrayal ... In each case, the reader craves development and shading, but it’s testament to Korelitz’s achievement that her novel leaves us wanting more. Her tale is both compulsively readable and thought-provoking. Her writing is evocative, with rich descriptions of Outsider art, Shaker furniture, rabid parents at college night ... consistently surprising. Its protagonists reinvent themselves with astonishing ingenuity. Fair warning to readers seeking \'likable characters\': The people here are fierce, and they fight dirty. The Oppenheimers dare you to love them — and even when you don’t, you cannot look away. The triplets are simply too original, too searching, too driven ... Korelitz shows how art reveals itself to viewers and how ownership illuminates character ... Korelitz combines moral inquiry with social satire. Like Wharton, she invites the reader to reflect, even as she paints a picture of privilege. A sumptuously wrapped gift, The Latecomer is a Gilded Age novel for the 21st century.
Jessica Anya Blau
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewIt’s a schematic setup — strait-laced suburbanites versus groovy artists — but this book works because it’s got a great protagonist ... If this is a coming-of-age story, it is also a story of self-possession and common sense. ... Bighearted and retro in its setting and music, this novel has the bouncy rhythm of classic television ... Blau is a deft hand with comic juxtaposition and domestic fantasy. She keeps it light, she keeps it moving and she’s got terrific visuals ... There are moments when the plot feels farfetched ... Some of the primary-colored characters could use a little shading ... The end of the book is not quite as strong as the beginning, perhaps because Mary Jane starts spelling out what she learns...All this goes without saying! Still, Blau’s story is so clear and bright that you can watch the movie in your mind. Lady Gaga as Sheba? I’m already casting it.
Rachel Beanland
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe reader learns a great deal about these characters, even as they hide the truth from one another ... At times, the secrets in this novel strain credulity. Culturally, the desire to protect the family from bad news rings true; structurally, the machinations involved become problematic. It is hard to imagine pregnant Fannie would be passive and unquestioning for quite so long ... Beanland’s subplots also require willing suspension of disbelief ... Sometimes the plot works against the novel, so that an incident that initially sparks curiosity begins to slow the narrative ... Despite these limitations, Beanland’s novel draws the reader in. The situation she describes is poignant and the characters she develops win us over with their private grief. Beanland is particularly good at conjuring 1930s Atlantic City, with its small family-owned hotels yielding to larger, more commercial palaces.
Ann Patchett
RaveThe Washington Post...bare summary sounds like melodrama, and this plot would devolve into cliche in the hands of a softer more sentimental novelist. Fortunately, Patchett is made of sterner stuff ... Patchett dramatizes this sibling bond as beautiful, necessary and dangerous ... Here again, the situation sounds both bleak and fanciful, but Patchett writes with restraint, never indulging in overwrought language ... Masterfully, this scene dramatizes the central conflict in The Dutch House— not the struggle between orphans and stepmother, innocent children and wicked witch — but the war between memory and mature reflection, childhood myth and adult analysis. A classic theme, but what makes this novel extraordinary is Patchett’s fair-minded presentation. She inhabits both the child and adult point of view. Both have their powers, their insights and deceptions, their vanities, cruelties, and passions. The outcome is uncertain, lives hang in the balance, and we cannot stop reading. Subtle mystery, psychological page-turner, Patchett’s latest is a thriller.
Jess Walter
MixedThe Washington Post...lively prose, sharp transitions and an entertaining cast of characters … There are glitches. At times, Walter extends a moment two or three beats too long...At other times, Walter’s dialogue lands heavily … The quick reader will enjoy a plot that’s well constructed and also lively, shuttling fast between parents and long-lost children, books and movies, the Italian village Porto Vergogna with its ‘dozen old whitewashed houses’ and Claire’s coffee shop, where almost every table sports a ‘sullen white screenwriter in glasses, every pair of glasses aimed at a Mac Pro laptop, every Mac Pro open to a digitized Final Draft script.’ Time traveling, cross cutting, inter-textual and cross-cultural, this is The English Patient without the poetry or history.
