RaveShelf AwarenessCharming, thought-provoking ... Niven humorously and perceptively exploits the juxtaposition of a TV family who have lost the distinction between their on-air personas and their real lives. Niven wisely does not go for the quick fix or the sitcom ending. She instead leaves readers with a realistic picture of a loving family reconstituting itself as growing individuals after a tectonic shift.
RaveShelf AwarenessHumorously and accurately chronicles the dramatic changes in Manhattan\'s Upper West Side during the 1980s ...
Vibrant, funny, and at times bittersweet ... [The restaurant\'s] regulars add depth and dimension to the novel ... Kurlansky endows Mimi with a wonderful wit ... Longtime New Yorkers may feel wistful for a bygone neighborhood so lovingly rendered in Kurlansky\'s portrait ... Mark Kurlansky lends his considerable skills to this loving tribute to Manhattan\'s Upper West Side during the booming 1980s.
RaveShelf AwarenessSpare and direct and filled with beauty ... Much of the strength of Lynch\'s exquisite novel derives from what is unsaid—by her and by her characters ... Lynch\'s astute observations capture the complexity of a person in a few sentences ... Lynch lets small details through, little by little, as she steers the story with strength and elegance ... Readers will find themselves catching their breath at the truth and beauty of many of Lynch\'s sentences. Through her characters, Lynch shows her audience that love between people may change or plateau or grow by leaps and bounds, but as long as they want to keep it, they will ... A gem of a novel, an appreciation of the small moments of connection that last a lifetime
RaveShelf AwarenessChoi\'s ability to make coincidences seem inevitable makes this a delicately balanced drama ... Choi feeds to readers seemingly disparate clues that coalesce in a tale of espionage and global conflict, and the heartrending ways in which world struggles play out in individual lives ... Choi has a gift for instilling empathy in readers as she shows her characters\' flaws.
RaveShelf AwarenessRiveting ... With humor and candor, Romney gives readers much to ponder about a favorite author and why her books are of such importance today.
RaveShelf AwarenessDemonstrates that it\'s impossible to appreciate the artistry of each without also understanding the origins of their work, so intrinsic to their birthplace, its geography and history ... Moving.
Susan Minot
PositiveShelf AwarenessA penetrating, achingly honest novel of sexual attraction and self-discovery ... The sexy scenes and piercing insights will have readers madly flipping the pages to see how this Ivy comes out.
M T Anderson
PositiveShelf AwarenessAnderson humorously exploits the polar-opposite qualities of Tyun and Nicephorus, as well as the blind spots of power-hungry leaders ... Alongside the humor and tension, Anderson plumbs questions of what constitutes as faith, and the circularity of human history.
Louisa Treger
PositiveShelf AwarenessMadwoman, the third novel by Louisa Treger, is a compelling portrait of 19th-century journalist Nellie Bly...It re-creates in intense detail one of her greatest stunts: feigning mental illness to gain entry to the infamous asylum on New York City\'s Blackwell\'s Island.
Geraldine Brooks
PositiveShelf AwarenessEquestrians or not, readers will appreciate Brooks\'s invitation to linger awhile among beautiful and graceful horses, to see the devotion they engendered in her characters and in the author (a horsewoman) herself.
Holly Black
RaveShelf AwarenessBlack has a knack for heightening the tension between the world as readers know it and supernatural elements that infiltrate that world, bringing her characters face to face with themselves ... gripping ... Into her haunting mystery, with classic horror and gothic elements, Black injects a sizzling romance and a protagonist attempting to do the moral thing in an amoral world.
Natalie Hodges
RaveShelf Awareness... fascinating ... Hodges presents an accessible memoir in essays that bridge the time-space continuum in musical terms ... Her description of Johann Sebastian Bach\'s Chaconne invites readers to listen as a violinist would. She pays tribute to her Korean immigrant mother and posits an enlightening suggestion to think of cultural \'assimilation\' in terms of symmetry rather than equality. It\'s a book to savor. The ideas are dense; readers will want to pause and digest them. They offer a way to see the world anew, to reframe experience, the way Hodges has come to understand her own: from the inside out.
Lacy Crawford
PositiveShelf Awareness...propulsive ... The facts carry readers along as they would in a crime novel, with clinical details that force observers to imagine the motives and emotions of the perpetrators and victim ... By toggling between the timelines before and after the book\'s central event, she conveys the universal experience of survivors--the divide between the person she was and the person she becomes afterward ... precise, lucid.
Sahar Mustafah
PositiveShelf Awareness... skillfully nuanced ... Mustafah authentically portrays Afaf\'s enjoyment of her friendships, music and the limited independence her bike affords her, alongside her growing awareness of her mother\'s displeasure with American life ... With exquisite pacing, Mustafah builds suspense and also Afaf\'s quiet courage until--in the book\'s final chapters--Afaf must do her hardest work yet. She must confront the shooter in order to save her students and herself.
Abi Daré
PositiveShelf AwarenessThrough Adunni\'s perspective, Daré demonstrates how social strata matters little for women in Nigerian society ... Through Adunni\'s narration, Daré introduces readers to the full scope of the young woman\'s widening world. The narrator\'s attempts to make the unknown familiar often come across like metaphors in poetry. Readers leave Adunni knowing that she has the intellectual resources and the guts to face whatever challenges she must in order to attain her goals.
