RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewIt’s a thrill to hear the characters develop on the page ... One of the better portrayals of addiction I’ve encountered in literature, up there with books by Jean Rhys and Leslie Jamison, and one that almost convinces you of the exhilaration in using ... There is a stubbornly idealistic streak across Despentes’s fiction, and in Dear Dickhead it’s unmissable.
Jo Hamya
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewSharp and agile ... Thankfully, nobody in this appropriately claustrophobic story emerges the clear hero ... In less capable hands, the novel might have become a tiresome examination of how sexual mores evolve between generations, or a flimsy inversion of Oedipal myth ... Overall, Hamya’s staging is savvy; each scene is packed with implication and, often, wit.
Alba de Céspedes trans. Ann Goldstein
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewWhat might have been a family story, with all its betrayals and unhappy detours forgotten, becomes an excruciating study of the diarist herself ... Ann Goldstein, who translates Ferrante’s writing and has a particular skill for conveying the full power of a woman’s emotional register, for locating an undertow of wrath or grief even in stated ambivalence, has reinvigorated the text.
Jokha Alharthi, trans. by Marilyn Booth
PositiveNew York Times Book ReviewBitter Orange Tree offers plenty of detail about Omani life between world wars ... Evocative reading ... Committing Bint Aamir’s life to writing transforms her story into one that inspires reverence, rather than pity. Bint Aamir takes on a mythic quality...and her unchanging appearance, wearing the same garments all her life, gives her a sense of permanence amid the sudden changes in her country. In Alharthi’s world, it’s not only the future that holds promise; the past has possibility and opportunities for revision, too.
Mahir Guven, trans. by Tina Kover
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewOlder Brother, the superb debut novel by Mahir Guven, unfolds in Paris \'the way you drive a car in the banlieue: tires squealing, running red lights and stop signs.\' This may be a story from the city’s outer margins, but it’s one that goes to the heart of questions roiling contemporary France ... The brothers remain unnamed until the book’s final pages and trade off as narrators, though the older one propels the story. His voice, expertly translated by Tina Kover, is wry, jaded, insouciant ... Guven was born in Nantes, the son of refugees, and worked as a journalist. He has a reporter’s knack for balancing a chorus of perspectives about everything from France’s economic tumult to its charged relationship with immigration. His book — which won a top French literary award, the Prix Goncourt for a debut novel — accomplishes what the best kind of reporting can do: wade into questions that resist simple answers, while restoring dignity to its characters ... Contradictions enrich the novel, steering it away from the territory of a plodding, dutiful fable.
