RaveThe Guardian (UK)Feels a bit like watching a prestige TV series. There are expansive casts of characters, many of whom happen to be good-looking. The plots are pacy and compelling, motored by flashbacks and cliffhangers and twists, while also dealing with social issues – particularly race and class – that add intellectual heft. Dialogue is hyper-realistic ... All this spying serves as good fodder for a sequence of sitcom-like pranks and hijinks; Reid is a talented comic writer. But it also raises deeper questions about how we view the lives of other people, as material for our own consumption ... Juicy.
Melissa Broder
RaveThe Telegraph (UK)\"Death Valley is not a wan little husk of autofiction; Broder’s mind is too weird for that ... It’s unclear how much of what happens out in the desert is real, at least within the world of the novel. But either way, in line with Broder’s previous work, the true substance of Death Valley is the psychological portrait of a woman trying to come to terms with the terrifying co-existence of life and death. There are, as promised, revelations about love too. If you’re the kind of reader who spends a lot of time in your head—rather than, say, keeping track of your surroundings—you might feel you’ve met a kindred spirit.\
Jenny Erpenbeck, trans. by Michael Hofmann
RaveThe Telegraph (UK)\"Like all the best allegories, Kairos cannot be reduced to a single, unambiguous message. There are too many questions – about the nature of love, about memory and history and truth – and no concrete answers. Plus, from Katharina’s perspective, neither West nor post-reunification Germany offers more real freedom than the GDR; the craven consumerism of capitalist society makes her sick ... But, by and large, that’s a story for another time. Kairos is an autopsy of those broken bonds that you were sure would last forever.\
