PositiveVirginia LivingHoke has a firm hand on the writing style and the voice. Yet, for all the excitement of being in the head of a cougar, he could have dived further still ... But it’s a vivid and exciting ride for the most part, and readers will surely remember the strange, sad cougar who got his revenge.
Katy Simpson Smith
RaveVirginia LivingHolds...little wonders and more ... The Weeds is really a wonderful book. There\'s drama and self-finding and a whole lot of fascinating botanical info that\'ll get you out in your own garden. Katy Simpson Smith really revels in what she reveals about the natural world as well as the human one. The amount of research surely involved must have been dizzying. But worth it.
John Banville
RaveVirginia LivingThe Irish author is a prose stylist first and foremost...Some reviewers (and readers too) might find his writing pretentious or difficult—his sentences often require a dictionary to be on hand at all times (prelapsarian, plimsoll, flocculent). However, there is a great beauty to his work and writing that cannot be overlooked, that should be enjoyed and immersed in, lounged in ... the drama the family is mired in can be quite delicious, particularly through the dry, gallows humor Banville supplies in sumptuous surplus ... exceptional for those willing to sit and absorb the vast amount of allusions and the linguistic skills employed by the author who is a master of the written word.
Kate Beaton
PositiveSouthern Review of BooksBeaton’s art style is a typical comic strip type that reads well enough, but isn’t really innovative — it’s more focused on solid storytelling ... Beaton never preaches to the choir though, she allows her experiences to speak for themselves.
Geraldine Brooks
PositiveVirginia LivingBeing a horse lover and a rider herself, Brooks easily gives details and descriptions about equines and the sports they participate in. Her knowledge not only builds the world, past and present, but it gives it a human warmth—a love that alights on the page, passed on to the reader .... trots along at a pleasant pace; the chapters making sure the plot doesn’t get mired in its machinations ... ending \'incident\' with Theo and Jess seems a bit heavy-handed, even if it remains realistic and altogether relevant. And for someone with such skill at creating a mostly fictitious history and using it to bring the past into conversation with the present, the side story of Jackson Pollock and his patron Martha Jackson seems a bit untethered ... All things considered, Brooks handles her horse book with a firm grasp on the reins ... enjoyable and gives subtle shocks here and there, realizations into untold truths, and includes the best kind of love story—one without the melodrama of two human participants.
Anne Tyler
RaveVirginia Living... the insistent unmasking of the ordinary to reveal the subtly tragic makes the book shine ... charming, wryly humorous ... classic Anne Tyler, almost to a fault—if writing about middle-class America in a realist fashion is some sort of sin. The fact that she makes the little things seem larger (more important) than large things gives her novels a unique air and grounds them in the world around us. A world that we recognize and see even more clearly than before ... The strained relationships between Tyler’s characters may seem ordinary or unworthy of illustration, but they function as the cement of the life portrayed in the pages—holding together the plot ... collects the stories that might escape telling around the campfire or kitchen table as well as those that are so rehashed they’ve become a family legend. Tyler takes these stories, familiar to most in one way or the other, and creates a family quilt that stretches several generations ... Though the themes undertaken are old territory, they are cozy, creating a pleasant and pleasurable read for old fans and new admirers.
Morgan Thomas
PositiveSouthern Review of BooksManywhere is a short story collection about travelling, about secret histories, and about finding and investigating identity ... They manage to zero in on the gender-facet of identity taken for granted by many cis people. The voices here feel new and unheard of, unheard from. Though not all the stories are of equal strength, they all hold together in their depiction of people looking for meaning in a messy world. And like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, they feel ageless.
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
RaveVirginia LivingThe narrative is swift and steadfast, and I didn’t have much time to dwell on such ponderings because the writing was so moving and controlled. My Monticello is not a novel; it\'s made up of five short stories and one long story—a novella nearly ... full of wisdom and the woes of our neighbors and our fellow humans. But there is no need for gilding here; everything is raw and beautiful—in its terrifying truth. Instead, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson takes her pen (Seamus Heaney’s fabled shovel) and digs into the dirt, the history of Virginia. Like a museum, a book can hold treasures, but these insights and artifacts are not behind glass; they are before you, living and occurring in the present day. Johnson furthers the Southern tradition, widening its scope and giving us something new to examine and learn from.
Lauren Groff
RaveVirginia LivingMatrix follows Marie as she makes her own biblical tower of sorts—in a splendidly sacrilegious way ... Marvelously blasphemous ... Though the realism, at first, seems a bit faulty (women with power, lesbians in the Middle Ages?), there’s no reason not to believe that this could have happened and been censured by the history books ... In prose that is poetic but never overwhelming, Matrix seeks to secure a place for women at Christianity’s not-so-round table and does so by being a rebellious book about love and gender roles. And though what Marie builds—and what Groff simultaneously builds through words—could be burned away by an angry mob, the message of a better future will always remain.
Kaveh Akbar
PositiveVirginia LivingThe title poems have periods like bulletholes—like a driveby that got flirty. These punctuate the text and make reading interesting connecting through disconnection. With each little phrase, there\'s a choice as to whether to attach the previous one or the proceeding one. Here the author seems to allow the reader the option of deciding how to read the poem, not forcing a concrete idea, a concrete interpretation ... He takes the minute and deconstructs and reconstructs and allows a new perspective to arise from that task ... This collection is not better than his last one, but it goes in a different direction, explores language and form and the spirit. Though at times the collection seems slightly hollow (in what way I cannot completely ascertain or assert), the amount of \'self\' exposed and given over to the reader is startling. Perhaps said hollowness is the lack of maternal involvement ... He gives us enough to see where his opinions and ideas are coming from but not enough to fully dissect and behold a body of flesh and veins and blood and bones. He allows us to see him as much as he wants to.
Gin Phillips
MixedVirginia LivingThough the scenes of Lucia, her husband Evan, and Rachel sitting together in the living room drinking ginger ale are charming and have an innocent air to them, there isn’t enough meat to their more mature relationship a few chapters later. But perhaps this is purposeful, meant to show how childhood fixations dissipate or become disillusioned as time goes on. Yet, that cannot be it, for Rachel still idolizes the lawyer into her high school years ... I wanted more conflict ... Where’s the struggle of internal emotions? There doesn’t seem to be enough external action to propel internal, cognitive change or reaction ... Gin Phillips wants the reader to see that not all women are victims, that there are some women who instigate trouble for selfish reasons. This, naturally, makes for great reading. Family Law brings together two characters and jockeys them around, showing how a younger generation can follow and then become someone other than mommy\'s little girl.
