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Recent Reviews
Max Ludington
Positive The New York Times Book Review \"For every idyllic image of the 1960s there exists its dark inverse, a symbol of menacing chaos. Give me your flower crowns at Woodstock, your free love in Haight-Ashbury, and I’ll hand you the murdering Manson family, or the 5-year-old in Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem, high on the LSD her mother gave her. This slippage of the utopian into the dystopian lies at the heart of Thorn Tree ... While the descriptions of late-1960s drug use and Northern Californian commune life are terrifically vivid, the most remarkable passages in Ludington’s novel describe what drives Daniel, in the mid-1970s, to construct a massive tree from scrap metal ... Ludington...is hellbent on exploring what, beyond art, human beings might do with their messy feelings. We can destroy as well as create. The riskiest element of Thorn Tree is the attention it gives to a monstrous man; he might be too repugnant for some readers. Jack is one bad dude, and yet what haunts him is as compelling as the grief that stalks Daniel ... If there’s a misstep in the novel, it comes in the final third when a bygone cult, a bit of background in Daniel’s story, takes a more central role...This new focus requires that the narrative neglect the story lines of other characters I was invested in, and I felt confused when they were relegated to the background. I was no longer sure what mattered in this universe. Its power was deflated ... Nevertheless, I was enthralled to the end by this novel’s willingness to wrestle with the dangerous impulses within us.\
Emily Habeck
Mixed The New York Times Book Review Beguiling ... Succeeds because it doesn’t function solely on the level of metaphor ... Much shaggier than its easy-to-imagine elevator pitch: Husband becomes a shark and breaks his wife’s heart ... The weakest aspects of Shark Heart are Wren and Lewis themselves. For much of the book, they feel as flat as rom-com log lines ... In the end, I forgive this debut its flaws because it’s surprising and pleasurably uncategorizable. Shark Heart is wild, in every sense of the word.
Stacey Swann
Positive The New York Times Book Review It may be difficult for these characters to realize their flaws and tangled desires, but it sure is pleasurable to read about them ... Although the book takes place over just six days, occasional interludes provide rich portraits of a character’s history ... Over all, the mythological lens feels inoffensive but unnecessary; most of the time it made me wonder why more characters weren’t aware of the allusions ... Swann’s novel is most successful at its violent, surprising turning point. I won’t dare to give it away. I read without breathing — OK, maybe I gasped — and I experienced the characters’ grief and regret as if they were my own. However, once the narrative moved past this climactic event, it too often relied on confessional or confrontational dialogue to do its dramatic work. The town of Olympus faded into the background, and the story felt a bit inert ... Not that this kept me from turning its pages and finding pleasure in its revelations ... I could have stayed in this particular somewhere for a long while.
Alice Hoffman
Rave The New York Times Book Review A brief biography in the first novel becomes, in Magic Lessons, a rich, continent-leaping epic of Maria’s life ... The historical irony provides a protracted Girl don’t go in there! brand of suspense; it’s enjoyable, if a little on the nose ... A lot happens, yet the plot doesn’t feel overstuffed. Storytelling is in Hoffman’s bones, and the skill with which she dispenses information and compresses time, so that a year passes in a sentence, so that a tragedy witnessed becomes the propeller for a hundred-page subplot, is (forgive me) bewitching. My current reality feels chaotic and confusing; to have a narrator take my hand and tell me that linden root and yarrow will cure a racing heart, that witches turn silver dull with their touch, is an undiluted pleasure ... But for all its delights, Magic Lessons is dark. Witch after witch suffers at the hands of ignorant, cruel me ... That this novel is both fantasy and history is crucial ... Witchcraft comes at a price to those who practice it, and with this novel, Hoffman reminds us that every woman, magical or not, pays, be it with her life, or how she must dress, or whom she must marry. We’ve always known that, for certain women, the cost is higher. This deeper subject is so resonant that, at times, the novel’s love theme struck me as contrived, even irrelevant, a vestige of a franchise that has grown darker and deeper. However, the disconnect did not inhibit my enjoyment; Hoffman’s book swept me away during a time I most needed it.
Cherise Wolas
Mixed The New York Times Book Review Cleverly, Wolas opens the novel with an essay from a literary magazine about Ashby and her work, providing an overview of an exceptional career, including excerpts from both of Joan’s books. Before we come to know Joan Ashby, the person, we have already met Joan Ashby, the author. This second identity is the one our heroine connects to more keenly … What slows the narrative down are the excerpts from her work. It’s frustrating to read mere portions of a short story or novel, in part because they require we take leave of Joan’s vivid fictional life. Joan Ashby’s writing is a touch amateur; for instance, raindrops are ‘big as cats and dogs,’ and her characters read like fantasies of free spirits more than actual people. It’s hard to believe her fiction would have influenced the literary conversation or made her an international best seller.
Emma Rathbone
Positive The San Francisco Chronicle Losing It deftly charts the shifting temperatures of awkward social situations, and the reader gets to wince along with its characters. If the story’s premise at times feels a little narrow, it’s only because Julia herself is such a rich heroine whom I would happily read about, no matter the plot ... Rathbone’s accuracy is what makes her so funny; it’s her grace as a writer that elevates this book from a series of comedic one-liners to art.
Lauren Groff
Positive The Los Angeles Times \"Fiction, thankfully, lets us experience and learn from the lives of others. Fates and Furies, Lauren Groff\'s audacious and gorgeous third novel, offers readers such access by depicting over two decades between a husband and wife. The result is not only deliciously voyeuristic but also wise on the simultaneous comforts and indignities of romantic partnership...Lauren Groff has taken the struggles and pleasures of marriage and turned them into art, and in that artfulness she reminds us of the dangers and omissions that any storytelling requires.\