RaveThe New York Times Book Review... feels like what would happen if you took all of these ingredients and raised the flame beneath them just a bit, acknowledging not only the characters’ tribulations but the devastating changes unfolding in the background of their lives. Close’s choice to set her novel primarily in 2017, just after the election of Donald Trump, has the effect of broadening and deepening the philosophical questions her novel takes on ... This dance between the personal and the political, and the way the latter impacts the former, is the most interesting thematic element ... the trick Close has of taking what might otherwise be an ordinary exchange between ordinary family members and somehow making it riveting. Half of this talent stems from her merry sense of humor — I smiled throughout at various funny observations that also rang true — and the other half stems from the knack she has of inventing story lines that have the feel of extremely good gossip told across a hightop table over a beer with an old friend. Always, I wanted to stay for another, just to hear more ... Something I’ve been thinking about lately, as both a writer and a teacher of writing, is how difficult it is to make everyday events feel fascinating in fiction. Marrying the Ketchups is a good example of a book that performs this magic trick. Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that propulsiveness is a quality that’s hard to explain and harder still to teach — but if Jennifer Close ever felt like running a course on it, I’d sign up.
Tracey Lange
RaveThe New York Times Book Review... confident, polished ... The book derives most of its narrative tension from the omissions and commissions of the Brennan family, but the largest revelation in We Are the Brennans — and the secret at its core — is the way it subverts readerly expectations about the sort of book it is ... Though her novel is obviously descended from earlier stories about large Irish American families struggling to do the right thing, Lange seems willing to break this highly specific genre’s traditional promise: that these families do, in their own fumbling way, eventually find their way toward morality. Instead, We Are the Brennans leaves its main characters in an interesting state of limbo at its conclusion: They’re only half-redeemed, and some have waited until the book’s finale to commit their final acts of selfishness or sin ... what’s more interesting about the book is the way it is unafraid to examine how the Brennans — nominally the heroes of the book — have done harm in the community around them ... goes on this way, becoming increasingly complex, and casting off traditional notions about morality as it has typically been portrayed in works of its kind. But it is the finale that truly breaks rank with its predecessors. Lange, as it turns out, is not interested in tidy or comfortable lessons learned, or redemption for the Irish American family at the center of her novel. When we leave the Brennans, they are perhaps more flawed than they were at the start. But that, to my mind, is what makes them feel human, and what makes the book feel real.
Chris Whitaker
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewThe bighearted We Begin at the End by the British crime writer Chris Whitaker, straddles a host of genres. Part thriller, part bildungsroman, part Dickensian tear-jerker and — most startlingly — part western, the novel centers on 13-year-old Duchess Day Radley, a self-described \'outlaw\' who has been forced to grow up quickly by her troubled mother, Star ... The sibling relationship at the heart of the book is affecting ... Despite this promising foundation, a few issues in the novel’s writing hinder its ability to be truly transporting ... Whitaker has a [...] tendency to rely on writerly shortcuts when it comes to his characters ... The novel’s confusing syntax often makes the reader double back, checking for understanding. Whitaker is clearly attempting the style of writers of the American West, but in his hands the voice sounds like a parody.
Julie Buntin
RaveThe Boston Globe...a thrilling and important examination of female adolescent friendship ... Marlena feels timeless, its vivid characters suspended in the difficult moment of awakening just before adulthood. It is a gem of a book, brief and urgent, nearly perfect in its execution ... We know from the start that Marlena will die. Buntin tells us this on the fourth page of her novel. This early revelation is a daring authorial move that, in lesser hands, would knock the tension out of the narrative. But when Marlena finally meets her end, it feels neither inevitable or muted: Instead, the loss of this young, bright life strikes readers as both surprising and tragic ... as Buntin heartbreakingly illustrates in the elegiac Marlena, there is a firm line that exists between children who are loved and cared for — even by a parent who makes mistakes — and children who are not.
