About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Mesha Maren
Positive The Seattle Book Review The border of El Paso and Juarez is both the physical setting of this novel and its thematic center. At times, Alex and Elana’s position as Americans in Mexico seems to be all-defining, yet their commitment to their own journeys allows them more intimate access. Mesha Maren succeeds in offering readers an insider’s view of impenetrable communities, and Elana’s search for Alex will leave readers breathless.
Hermione Hoby
Positive Seattle Book Review Luca’s search for meaning, identity, and a palatable version of adulthood is bleak and unrelenting, raising the question of what happiness is possible––or deserved––in a world full of injustice and violence. Hoby allows Luca his unforgiving regrets and offers little in the way of redemption. Though acceptance and even contentment are possible for Luca, time isn’t enough to dim the worst of his youthful mistakes.
Diane Cook
Rave The Seattle Book Review This remarkable novel does not provide extensive backstory or explanation for how The City came to be, and in this way, it’s somehow more sinister, as though suggesting that our current path of environmental neglect leads logically and inevitably to such a state. The Wilderness is beautiful but not for the weak; loyalty and love are fluid, and power goes to those who claim it. When pieces of the old world appear—a vending machine, a bathroom—they seem as faraway from normalcy as the moon. The Wilderness is not a refuge. There is, as The New Wilderness portends, no longer any refuge at all.
Elena Ferrante
Positive The Seattle Book Review Ferrante, true to form, is unflinching in her depiction of female adolescence, and the title alone is a clear indication of what Giovanna will discover as she journeys to adulthood. Mistakes, grudges, betrayals, heartbreak, infidelity, cruelty–all of these things have been in Giovanna’s life, but only when she casts off her childhood can she see them clearly. Giovanna senses that female friendship are critically important, but even those are mercurial and, sometimes, full of shame. Lying Life is a clear-eyed, evocative reminder that the terrain of adulthood is as fraught as the darkest corners of Naples.
Zaina Arafat
Rave The San Francisco Book Review ... a raw and unsettling exploration of a young girl’s shifting foundations. Arafat’s sure hand draws readers across time periods and places, weaving the narrator’s past formative experiences with her present-day choices and questions. The narrator is heartbreaking in her precarious teetering between extreme self-awareness and naivete, but Arafat steers clear of easy answers and pat solutions. The narrator may know best: life is messy, love is messier, and finding one’s place in the world may just be an impossible dream.
Andrew Krivak
Rave The Seattle Book Review Written in spare, beautiful prose that evokes the richness of the mountains, ocean, river, and forest through which the girl travels, The Bear is a fable that centers the earth and its inherent generosity toward those who treat it with respect. Life in the wilderness is brutal, the death of creatures essential so the girl can live, but the girl brings reverence to each kill, sometimes even leaving pieces of meat for other creatures to find. In a world drowning in careless excess, The Bear suggests another way, and the rewards are great.
C Pam Zhang
Rave The Seattle Book Review This riveting novel is full of myth and also rooted in a raw, harsh landscape. Children bear the burden of tradition, but family rituals also provide solace and even freedom. The capable flintiness of Lucy and Sam enables their physical survival, but all the toughness in the world won’t numb their wrenching discovery about their own mother’s sacrifices and selfishness. Only their love for each other will help make a place for them in a changing world.
Lucy Ellmann
Positive Manhattan Book Review Contrasting the narrator’s stream of consciousness are occasional short sections that feature a lioness and her cubs. Terse and specific, these more traditional scenes are a relief from the constant mental chatter but not separate from it ... There is enlightenment in the melee, and heartbreak, too, as separations of all kinds—expected and unexpected, willing and unwilling—challenge mothers of all species. Love, parenthood, survival, and loss are the dominant notes, and readers who give themselves over to the dense pages will find themselves moved.