PositiveAV Club...The Da Vinci Code for typography nerds ... Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore could be a drab, whiny affair, bemoaning the loss of physical books, the rise of a Kindle nation, and the impersonal Internet library pioneered by Google, then exploited for advertising revenue. Instead, it rolls along at a nice clip, progressing through the mystery behind the library with inspired humor. Sloan’s depiction of startup culture in San Francisco is positively dead-on and bitingly funny, and taking the story to Google’s Mountain View campus offers plenty of opportunities to poke holes in the puffed-up egos of the digital behemoth ... the novel rides the borderline of the print/digital divide without tipping its hand in preference too heavily either way. It’s overly serious in spots, particular Clay’s meandering pontifications, but that doesn’t get in the way of some serious fun unraveling a compelling mystery.
Melinda Moustakis
RaveAV Club...this slim volume delivers a powerful look into the lives of three generations and how an unforgiving environment wears them down as they grow ... Moustakis finds a way to make the typical story format of swinging back and forth from present to past seem inventive ... Moustakis wisely avoids painting Alaska as a frontier to be discovered. Instead, she creates infinite and unflinching wilderness, families reduced to animal instinct fighting to survive even as they perpetuate the cycles they struggle to break. Each story burrows deeper into the families, creating stronger links, binding the stories together in a powerful, cohesive structure that gleans new details at every turn and makes them feel valuable ... Moustakis shares O’Connor’s astute character observations and an ability to construct regional values.
Justin Torres
RaveThe A.V. ClubHis debut novel, We The Animals, is concise, but shows a strong command of tone over the course of less than 150 pages, creating a sharp, hauntingly brief coming-of-age tale ... In its best moments, We The Animals resembles the family aspects of The Tree Of Life, with racial undertones instead of economic shifts in the background ... Torres has crafted a fine debut that lives up to his credentials, pointed in all the right places and ending just at the right time.
Ernest Cline
PositiveA.V. ClubReady Player One lends itself easily to mash-up comparisons, since in its more complicated passages, it amounts to long strings of cultural references pumped through well-worn story arcs. The adventure comedy of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy meets South Park’s Imaginationland with a dash of Willy Wonka, except all of the cynicism has been replaced by sheer geeky love … There’s a high learning curve to all of the little details Wade throws out about the world, and for anyone who doesn’t understand or love the same sect of pop culture Halliday enjoyed, Ready Player One is a tough read. But for readers in line with Cline’s obsessions, this is a guaranteed pleasure.
Junot Diaz
PositiveA.V. ClubJohn Updike had Harry Angstrom, John Fante had Arturo Bandini, and Díaz has Yunior. Díaz’s first two books emerged with an almost effortless mastery; every word in This Is How You Lose Her feels like it was earned with blood, sweat, and tears — and yet it still admirably measures up to Díaz’s previous work ... In this collection, he grows from merely wanting to “fix the relationship” after countless infidelities to understanding real compassion and feeling the full weight of his transgressions against women ... This Is How You Lose Her is far more personal, plumbing the depths of Yunior’s character as he grows into an adult seemingly incapable of having a healthy relationship ... With such a heavy weight of autobiographical content, and that thin veil of comic book allegory, Yunior becomes not only a figure of observation, but representative of the way Díaz views himself.
