RaveNew York Journal of BooksRelentless in its depiction of the moral and psychological injury that comes of excessive ambition ... The marvel of Catton’s story is the breadth and profundity with which choices reverberate, extend, and, ultimately, warp, as characters engage in canny scheming: to compromise, to prevail, to do harm, to protect. As the fabrications and deceptions deepen, the novel’s terrain becomes increasingly dangerous.
Namwali Serpell
PositiveNew York Journal of BooksPowerful...a novel as diffuse and oblique as memory itself ... Even the most patient reader—borne along by Serpell’s assured pacing—will be off-balance, perhaps willingly so by this point. Cassandra’s attempts at making sense of her brother’s absence are compelling, a rich exploration of the possibilities inherent in the incidents that define our lives as well as our recollections of them; but Cassandra’s recounting is so enigmatic and allusive as to be deeply disorienting ... There is a fascinating exploration occurring...but it’s undeniably a murky path Serpell traverses ... This labyrinth is wearying, circles within circles, identities assumed and refashioned, the past reimagined. It’s also very often exhilarating.
Jonathan Lee
PositiveThe New York Journal of Books... remains more strictly within the limits of historical fiction as well as more frequently within the soul of its doomed protagonist, something of a daring move for a writer as skilled at dramatic illumination as Lee ... Lee’s book, in its muted speculations, voices the truths Green felt compelled to silence, though fans of Lee’s earlier works may find themselves wistful over the quieter tone. The subdued tenacity Green cultivates in realizing his vision holds the story together.
Marie Benedict
RaveNew York Journal of BooksMarie Benedict’s neatly arranged, earnestly imagined The Mystery of Mrs. Christie offers an interpretation Dame Agatha might have endorsed, a page-turning hybrid of historical fiction and literary thriller ... Through brief, alternating chapters, we get a first-person account of Christie’s life from the evening in 1912 when her eventual husband, war-pilot Archie, falls hard for her at a dance, all the way through to the inscrutable 11 days.
Eshkol Nevo, tr. Sondra Silverston
RaveNew York Journal of Books... a novel at least as much about the conceits of fiction itself as it is about the regrets and resolve of the book’s narrator ... All is filtered through the device of an interview. The entire novel is an extended Q&A, with questions ostensibly posed by an online publication and the narrator responding to them ... The insistence on the untrustworthiness of the writer and what he writes, as well as the endless reminders that words can transfigure—even hijack—both memory and experience may weary some readers. The novel, though, is undeniably engaging and often authentically moving—as incoherent as that might seem in such a self-consciously layered work.
