About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Elif Shafak
Rave Washington Independent Review of Books I was impressed with the way Shafak has crafted an epic out of an epic. The magic of this novel lies in her skill at captivating readers with terrific storytelling while reminding us that human arrogance and frailty are too often the engines that drive history. The same creatures who can create great art and reach the pinnacle of civilization have an equally powerful — and terrifying — capacity to destroy it all.
Uchenna Awoke
Positive NPR My reading of this novel would have been greatly enhanced by a clearer understanding of Igbo culture and history. Nevertheless, I enjoyed being immersed in Dimkpa’s life ... Awoke’s writing is impressive; his metaphors are refreshing and vivid.
Hampton Sides
Positive The Washington Post A gripping account of Captain James Cook’s final voyage ... Armed with extensive research and terrific writing, Sides re-creates the newness of the experience, the vast differences in and among Indigenous cultures, and natural phenomena that were as terrifying as they were wondrous.
Tanja Maljartschuk, trans. by Zenia Tompkins
Positive NPR A cryptic, haunting novel meant to be read in this moment ... The narrator\'s malaise and weakening attachment to time serve as a metaphor for today\'s Ukraine, as well as for other struggling democracies, including our own ... A book that begs questions that are impossible to answer.
Jeff Hobbs
Positive NPR Provides background on the evolution of America\'s juvenile justice system — but it is primarily about people, not statistics. Many of the statistics are grim and the outcomes depressing ... Throughout, Hobbs lets his characters describe the broken system, rather than writing as an advocate. With admirable research, he does a wonderful job bringing out his subjects\' humanity. The reader cares about these people — adults and young people alike — and wants them to succeed. Sadly, this is rarely the case.
Meg Howrey
Rave The Millions Howrey brings an artist’s discipline to language. Her prose is lyrical, smooth, and thoroughly enjoyable. She is understated without being withholding ... Howrey is a master of unveiling the hidden emotional lives of her characters with grace and subtlety.
Meg Howrey
Rave The Millions ... a dance novel, but it is fundamentally a family drama that considers what makes relationships work and what makes them implode. The trappings of the dance world and Carlisle’s musings about her choreographic commissions form a rich tapestry around these themes ... Howrey brings an artist’s discipline to language. Her prose is lyrical, smooth, and thoroughly enjoyable. She is understated without being withholding ... Howrey is a master of unveiling the hidden emotional lives of her characters with grace and subtlety.
Nina Totenberg
Rave NPR A memoir about Nina Totenberg, a jaunt through her captivating life and career, nose for the jugular, and forthrightness about her joys and sorrows. The book opens a window into the history of professional women in the workplace, as well as the trajectory of the Supreme Court over the last 50 years. Above all, Totenberg\'s book is about the abiding importance of friendship ... As she namedrops her way through the politically well-connected and influential, Totenberg brings the charm and self-deprecation to keep us turning pages ... In Dinners with Ruth, readers will learn about the critical role Ginsburg played in expanding women\'s rights before and after she was on the bench. Totenberg\'s look behind Ginsburg\'s legendary reserve is of special interest. But let\'s face it, this memoir is a romp through Washington\'s glitterati — Republican and Democrat alike — penned by a reporter who thrives on it. What\'s not to enjoy about being in Totenberg\'s sparkling company for an entire book?
Stuart Isacoff
Mixed The Washington Post Stuart Isacoff sprints through nearly two millennia of Western music in his latest book, Musical Revolutions: How the Sounds of the Western World Changed...It’s always a challenge to get music to live on the page, but Isacoff tackles it head-on, describing his project as a \'book about moments in music history when things dramatically changed, a succession of bold leaps in the progress of Western culture\'...Isacoff delves deep into history to discuss the innovations in Western music that we take for granted today, such as musical notation, polyphony (simultaneous, multiple musical voices), opera and jazz...The trouble with books that speed through centuries of musical development is that they inevitably leave people out...While accurately noting that female conductors have faced the steepest climb — particularly in the United States — Isacoff omits Sarah Caldwell (1924-2006), who forged a career as a professional opera conductor a generation before Marin Alsop took the helm at the Baltimore Symphony in 2007...The coverage of these critical musical revolutions seems thin for a music aficionado and overwhelming for a neophyte...Perhaps the readers best served by this book are the ecumenical music lovers who enjoy music through the centuries but who may be missing the context for their listening.
Namrata Poddar
Positive NPR Poddar\'s organization of the book into two parts: \'Roots,\' and \'Routes,\' is a clever play on words that makes for a clear structure ... one senses that Poddar\'s observations of immigrant life are the plot ... Poddar is particularly skilled at showcasing the illusory nature of the American dream ... She has created an engaging debut by bringing us into the lives of those who leave and those who stay. If she is tilling familiar ground, she is also giving us a new set of characters. That the individual stories in Border Less can stand on their own is testament to her literary dexterity.
Melissa Chadburn
Rave The Los Angeles Review of Books Chadburn pitches words with the intensity and speed of Zeus hurling lightning bolts ... Chadburn’s aswang mixes English and Tagalog and speaks with an acid tongue — full of insight, compassion, and unflinching observations ... Investigative smarts and journalistic advocacy are not always ingredients for great literature...Chadburn, however, successfully bridges these worlds ... Chadburn inhabits her novel with ease, pulling off blistering fiction while hewing to ugly realities dredged up through her journalism ... an accomplished debut novel that will grab readers by the collar and shake them out of complacency. It is a shouted remembrance to those silenced by misogyny, racism, and violence, but it is also fantastic literature, penned by a writer with tremendous heart and skill.
Garrett Hongo
Rave The Washington Post ... it turns out you don’t have to be a nerdy audiophile to completely love this volume. The Perfect Sound contains multitudes ... The book testifies to Hongo’s keen observational skills, exquisite hearing and way with words ... It is impossible to do justice to the breadth and depth of the topics Hongo explores ... illustrated with wonderful photographs throughout. My one quibble is that these photos need captions. Overall, however, it was a joy to spend time with Hongo’s book. His roving intellect plants surprises on every page.
Joseph Horowitz
Positive The Washington Post The book is a timely contribution to our growing national recognition that this type of exclusion characterizes most aspects of American culture ... Against the specter of American racism, Horowitz takes a nuanced look at why Dvorak’s prediction did not come true ... Horowitz, a serious educator, takes his mission seriously. Yet I am concerned that Dvorak’s Prophecy presumes a level of knowledge that many readers will not have and that its meanderings may be difficult to access, even for those steeped in classical music. On the other hand, the book is a sincere and erudite effort to right ignorance and wrongs, and to bring this long-forgotten music into the sunlight.
Mina Seckin
Rave NPR ... an engrossing exploration of national identity, the meaning of family and loss, and what happens when a family hides its central secret ... Seçkin demonstrates impressive skill weaving together the story of Sibel\'s extended family with the political violence that has marked Turkey in recent decades ... These female characters are extremely well drawn, each distinct and filled with her own mystery ... In contrast with the first three sections, the fourth section of the book, containing important revelations, moves at breakneck speed. I felt that some smoothing out of the overall pacing might have been advised. But that is a small quibble ... Read The Four Humors for an insider\'s travelogue of Istanbul and its volatile modern political history, and for the tastes and feel of contemporary Turkish culture. Read it too, to get to know a wonderful set of characters — women in all their flaws and generosities — and for an astute account of what it means to be an immigrant in America. Finally, read it to follow one young woman\'s beautifully-rendered journey into her past, so that she can wrest herself from stasis and step into her future.
Atticus Lish
Positive NPR ... peopled with well-drawn characters who live in precarious economic circumstances ... Lish is a sensational literary craftsman, using the words in his toolbelt to construct narrative that is at once coolly dispassionate and red hot with emotion ... Suffice to say that the narrative descends into a level of violence for which I was unprepared. Corey is kicked around and abandoned in every sense of the word. I felt the book thinned out as it moved to its conclusion. I wasn\'t sure what the violence contributed to the world Lish had so painstakingly and masterfully built. Perhaps that is Lish\'s point. His Boston is one with seamy undersides and unhinged characters who act with malice and revenge. The result is a very dark novel ... I will be thinking about The War For Gloria for a long time. The book opens a disturbing window into a teenager\'s losing battle to save his mother, our broken healthcare system, the power that humans have to inflict harm on one another, and one boy\'s efforts to save not only his mother, but himself.
Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint
Rave NPR Composed in compressed, laser-sharp interrogations of immigration and prejudice, colonialism and inheritance, Names for Light reads like poetry ... evokes recent works of Claudia Rankine ... With a keen ability to dissect English, Myint looks at names ... After taking readers through a fascinating ancestral chain, Myint provides a compressed autobiography in the book\'s final section (Section V). There, she writes her personal history in an ironic third person. As opposed to earlier, she brings readers to her writerly present in long paragraphs that often cover multiple pages ... For me, Names for Light was more of an embodied experience than a read, like swimming in a pool of exquisite reflections on family and rootedness and deracination and sorrow and love. Early on, Myint writes, \'Nothing has ever happened to me.\' This \'is the reason I am the storyteller and not the story.\' I look forward to immersing myself further in her gorgeous storytelling.
Elly Fishman
Positive The Washington Post ... absorbing ... Refugee High may not provide the answers, but it contains important messages. Fishman suggests that we ignore our growing xenophobia at our peril, for these students are creative, resilient, adaptive and caring. Her book is also a shout-out to the lasting value of public education. Refugee High showcases a school that not only serves as a welcoming landing pad for immigrants and refugees, but also as a launching pad for talented, productive, future generations of Americans. Students can be heroes, too.
Nana Nkweti
Rave NPR ... walks an impressive tightrope between laugh-out-loud comedy and breathtaking profundity ... Nkweti does not translate the French or Cameroonian phrases peppered throughout the collection, adding to the reading adventure ... Nkweti executes this back and forth between cultures with exquisite skill, remaining just far enough outside each culture to make keen observations, delivering finely observed detail with a wicked sense of humor ... A linguistic pole vaulter, Nkweti bends language like a master. Readers will enjoy her frequent, unique plays on words ... Nkweti hovers at the edge of pop culture, familiar with its highs and lows, as well as its pervasive impact on contemporary life ... It Just Kills You Inside was the one story that I felt struggled to stay within its boundaries. It was well constructed, and like all Nkweti\'s stories, fiendishly clever, but I couldn\'t help wondering if this story wanted to grow into a novel ... This is a minor complaint, however, in a collection that is piquant with witticisms and remarkable, innovative prose. Walking on Cowrie Shells is a terrific read, each story different and varied from the one before. Nkweti has proven herself a bright new star. I, for one, cannot wait to read what she writes next.
Clint Smith
Rave The Washington Post ... an eminently readable, thought-provoking volume, with a clear message to separate nostalgic fantasy and false narratives from history ... Without being didactic, Smith debunks contorted arguments that the Civil War was not about slavery ... Smith forces readers to face uncomfortable truths about America ... Smith provides an important guide to learning about ourselves and our country. With a deft touch, he raises questions that we must all address, without recourse to wishful thinking or the collective ignorance and willful denial that fuels white supremacy.
Cassandra Lane
Rave NPR We Are Bridges is Lane\'s resurrection of her great grandfather\'s memory. Her poignant requiem has deep reverberations today ... Lane writes with a poet\'s sensitivity and her book is a must read for its gorgeous language alone ... With this debut volume, Lane has written Burt Bridges into history. We Are Bridges makes a stunning contribution to what must become our collective memory.
Morowa Yejidé
Rave The Washington Post Every once in a while, a novel is so compelling that it changes your sense of a place. Morowa Yejidé’s Creatures of Passage is that book ... Yejidé’s characters are so finely drawn, her language so lush, the city’s landmarks so cleverly repurposed within this magical setting, that the fictional place feels as real as the place itself ... Yejidé’s writing captures both real news and spiritual truths with the deftness and capacious imagination of her writing foremothers: Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and N.K. Jemisin ... threaded with hope and love and connection ... that rare novel that dispenses ancestral wisdom and literary virtuosity in equal measure.
Marguerite Duras, Tr. Kelsey L. Haskett
Mixed NPR ... reads like a dress rehearsal for The Lover, minus the temporal fluidity and linguistic skill ... not a particularly enjoyable read. Its interest is as a window into Duras\'s process. Two enlightening afterwords enhance this volume — the first by translator Askett and the second by Duras\'s biographer Jean Vallier. Duras comes forward as an assertive young woman, self-confident in her writing ... Askett notes that problems of lucidity and cohesiveness present challenges for reader and translator. Nevertheless, the English language version of The Impudent Ones is significant. Whether or not it is great literature, the book offers a roadmap for what was to come.
Matthew Gavin Frank
Positive NPR ... crisp and poetic prose ... a quirky mixture of whimsy, history, and elegy to personal loss. We may have a hunch that diamonds are a sinister business, but in Flight of the Diamond Smugglers, Frank divulges completely new facets of the trade. The result is an intriguing read ... Don\'t read Flight of the Diamond Smugglers if you can\'t stomach learning about the myriad ways humans abuse animals and one another. On the other hand, if you resonate with keen observations and factoids, you\'re likely to love the refreshing oddities that fill these pages ... With great eloquence, Matthew Gavin Frank weaves his personal losses into a riveting cultural tapestry. If Flight of the Diamond Smugglers induces justified discomfort about the dirty business of diamonds, it also rewards with a panoramic view of an ancient and mysterious trade.
Janice P. Nimura
Positive NPR \"Author Nimura has combed through mountains of documents to bring all of the siblings alive through their own words. The book is illustrated with photographs that bring the era to life ... The Doctors Blackwell not only testifies to Elizabeth and Emily\'s iron determination but also chronicles evolving medical practices. Nimura places the sisters within the broad intellectual context of their time, creating an important and engaging history lesson.
Ae-Ran Kim, Trans. by Chi-Young Kim
Positive Words Without Borders ... elegantly translated ... Areum tells his story with wry humor, showing great curiosity about himself as well as the people around him, starting with his parents ... The narrator writes a book within the book, so that My Brilliant Life turns out to be the story of Areum telling the story of his parents. Separately, he includes an account of his deeply private affection for a girl his own age. Kim develops this structure naturally, without fanfare. It is not clear until the end whether Areum is telling his parents\' story as a way to understand himself and his origins better, to evade his predicament, to create a substitute for his absent social life, or some combination of the three. Only after completing the novel is it apparent how masterfully the book is woven together ... The book feels like a seed, using the metaphor of disease and tragedy to sow a discussion of the importance of compassion. English language readers, most new to Kim’s work, will find much to relish.
Lea Singer, Trans. by Elisabeth Lauffer
Mixed Washington Independent Review of Books ... a wonderful setup for a book ... Unfortunately, The Piano Student presents serious challenges. With no quotation marks and a narration that switches frequently from first to third person, it can be difficult to tell who is speaking. Whether this ongoing confusion derives from the original German or the translation (I suspect it’s the original German), it is a shame. The story is gripping in its newness and historical import, but it wants clarification ... The Piano Student contains a lovely air of mystery and a clear-eyed view of the difference between pianistic workmanship and pianistic greatness.
David Diop, tr. Anna Moschovakis
Rave Words Without Borders David Diop’s new novel, At Night All Blood is Black (tr. Anna Moschovakis), combines a war story with allegory and myth ... The incredible lies not in the actions Alfa describes, gruesome though they are, but in Alfa’s chilling interpretations ... At Night All Blood is Black is translated with economy and sensitivity by poet and translator Anna Moschovakis, who is particularly successful at rendering Alfa’s feelings of foreign-ness into English ... In the end, translation itself becomes a subject ... What and who is being translated, and by whom? Is it the man society deems mad, who may in fact speak the truth? Is it the way in which the African views the white man? Or, most important, how the white man translates the African into a monolithic image of brutality, an image that begets violence and lasting damage? Diop’s novel poses these questions, with the stark implication that the white man’s destruction runs so deep that it destroys not only whole societies but also humanity itself.
Delphine Minoui, tr. Laura Vergnaud
Rave NPR The Book Collectors, by Delphine Minoui, translated from French by Lara Vergnaud, depicts the savagery of Syrian President Bashar al Assad\'s regime contrasted with that life-saving symbol of civilization: a library ... The Book Collectors is about hope and connection against unspeakable violence, deprivation, and tragedy. It is a meaningful addition to the literary subgenre that covers books and libraries.
Tom Zoellner
Rave NPR ... a fascinating investigation into American places and themes; metaphors for our country ... Documenting his manic travels risks Zoellner portraying himself as America\'s Everyman — part cowboy, part Johnny Appleseed. He avoids this fate with insightful and well-crafted prose, along with occasional introspection, including questioning his own arrogance ... Aside from the pleasure of sharing his discoveries from an armchair, readers are offered nuggets of wisdom ... Woody Guthrie could have written the soundtrack to The National Road ... an enthralling journey that proves his point.
Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
Mixed NPR Most of The Upswing is taken up with how the curve evolved. It is less clear why the curve evolved. The authors take great pains to untangle complex and nuanced explanations, none of which can solely explain the curve\'s trajectory ... One can question the reliability of this kind of evaluation, but Ngrams are only one part of the authors\' much larger analyses. No doubt, future writers and researchers will appreciate the nearly 100 pages of endnotes. The Upswing is saturated with data and charts, so much so that it can be difficult for a lay person to weigh and evaluate what is presented. This matters, because readers will be eager for guidance to move the curve toward a more connected, unified \'we\' ... Given how structural racism underlies everything from economic security to health and political participation, I would have preferred that race was a more intentional through line, rather than a stand-alone chapter ... I had similar feelings about addressing gender in a stand-alone chapter. After all, half the American population did not have voting rights until the 20th century, and grossly lagged on economic rights. To be fair, Putnam and Garrett do mention race and gender in other chapters. But I couldn\'t help wondering how their interpretation of data might have changed with more deliberate inclusion of non-white, non-male theorists throughout ... Most of all, I longed for clear, prescriptive solutions for a better, more inclusive future.
Desmond Meade
Positive NPR ... compelling ... the man and the campaign offer inspiring examples of hope, persistence, and the power of organizing ... As recounted in Let My People Vote, the Florida voting rights restoration battle is a story of courage and vision and persistence. Too, it is a stark tale of Florida\'s Republican leadership overruling the will of the people in a blatant move to suppress votes.
Marjoleine Kars
Positive NPR ... comes alive with period illustrations, as well as meticulous attention to primary sources. Kars recounts a tale of oppression, bloodshed, and some triumph; rebelling slaves held off their masters for nearly a year ... a gripping tale about the human need for freedom. It is also a story of shifting loyalties among slaves from differing backgrounds, between slaves and Amerindians, and among the Europeans themselves ... While Kars did not set out to write cultural history, readers may have trouble retaining the minutiae she so carefully presents. However, because her scrupulous research provides spellbinding detail, perhaps that is beside the point ... The story of the Berbice Rebellion begs to be told, and Kars\' telling is impressive.
David Litt
Positive NPR Litt refreshingly debunks myths about our founders, pointing up false narratives and warped historical perceptions. He is explicit on the calamitous risks of a widening income gap that concentrates power in the one percent. The racism that erodes our democracy bears repeating as well, and loudly ... breezy, digestible prose ... a no-nonsense guide for how we, the people, can fix ourselves.
Sejal Shah
Rave NPR Shah brings important, refreshing, and depressing observations about what it means to have dark skin and an \'exotic\' name, when the only country you\'ve ever lived in is America ... The essays in this slim volume are engaging and thought-provoking ... The essays are well-crafted with varying forms that should inspire and enlighten other essayists ... A particularly delightful chapter is the last, called \'Voice Texting with My Mother,\' which is, in fact, written in texts ... Shah\'s thoughts on heritage and belonging are important and interesting.
Stephen Graham Jones
Rave The Washington Post Jones, a Blackfeet writer who has published more than 20 books, \'likes werewolves and slashers,\' according to his author bio, but he has also spent a lifetime interpreting Native American culture and mythology for contemporary readers. So he does here, exploring Native American deer and elk mythology and delving into the importance of elk ivory ... Jones writes in clear, sparkling prose. He’s simultaneously funny, irreverent and serious, particularly when he deploys stereotype as a literary device ... The Only Good Indians is splashed with the requisite amounts of blood and gore, but there’s much more to it than that.
Karin Tanabe
Mixed The Washington Post Tanabe shows the gaping disparities between the life of leisure and richesse led by the French occupiers, and that of the oppressed Indochinese, who can barely scrape by ... This is a book of secrets, but not of great subtlety. Where the reader could have been left to make inferences, the characters spell out their emotional conditions. The plot moves quickly, often in long passages of expository dialogue ... has a cinematic quality — which may be telling, given that Tanabe’s second novel, The Gilded Years, is being made into a film starring Zendaya. This view of French occupation in Indochina is replete with love affairs, revenge and secrets, not to mention a history lesson about the evils of colonialism.
Mark Doty
Rave NPR Doty\'s memoir is not only an exaltation of America\'s troubadour, but also a celebration of gay manhood, queerness, and the power and elasticity of poetry ... Doty devotes the largest number of pages to Whitman\'s \'uncharted desire,\' how Whitman navigates and proclaims queer sexuality. Doty\'s fascination is as a poet, teacher, and as a man. He\'s at the top of his game in these chapters ... Doty examines his sexual life with rigor as well as a sense of wonder. He relishes the moment — insatiable — while simultaneously standing on the sidelines commentating ... Doty both embodies queer liberation and rejoices in it. But his relationship with Walt Whitman extends way beyond the political. Doty is on intimate terms with Whitman ... What is the Grass provides a deeper understanding of both Mark Doty and Walt Whitman.
Philip Kennicott
Rave NPR Kennicott\'s descriptions will resonate with any aspiring musician ... Kennicott provides insight into many classical pieces and artists but focuses on Bach ... Kennicott plumbs Bach the composer, architect of the Goldberg Variations\' brilliant symmetry, grounded in fractals and written with mathematical precision. Over the course of the book, Kennicott meticulously deconstructs the variations, but cannot answer the central mystery — why this piece moves us — because no one can. What can be said is that players and listeners alike experience this piece not as a set of cold calculations, but as soul-wrenching art ... Like all serious thinkers, Kennicott raises more questions than he can answer, both about music and about his family ... Given the wounds his mother inflicted, Kennicott\'s account is gracious, even loving. He takes pains to empathize with her, putting her furies in a context personal to her. His musical journey provides balance and balm and depth, in concert with struggle ... a thought-provoking and accomplished memoir.
Paul Lisicky
Rave NPR His analysis of...relationships is part revelatory for his keen powers of observation, part heartbreaking, and all human ... Lisicky is a gifted writer. With meticulous emotional nuance, he not only captures his day-to-day, but manages to translate lessons from the day-to-day into a manual for living ... gorgeous ... Later is beautifully composed and structured ... \'every death will always be an AIDS death; everyone will always die before their time, whether they\'re twenty-one or ninety-one.\' And that perhaps, is Later\'s greatest lesson.
Maisy Card
Rave The Washington Post ... a novel overflowing with unadulterated humanity ... Card is a natural storyteller. Whole family histories are compressed into two pages, stories building upon stories like strata of earth ... Card writes in first, second and third person, and presents one story through a journal. She has a marvelous ear for dialect. Because stories unfold quickly through a range of narrators, it’s not always clear who’s speaking. Nevertheless, the result is a rich stew, teeming with grudges, humor, doubt, loss and love ... It is a measure of Card’s skill that we come to know these characters in three dimensions, even as they struggle to know themselves.
Adam Cohen
Mixed NPR Cohen, in his new book, explores the court\'s opinions over the past five decades and comes to a rueful conclusion: These decisions have greatly exacerbated America\'s gap between rich and poor ... Cohen shows, the Supreme Court has narrowed individuals\' rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, awarded police more power, severely limited federal tools to address voter suppression and much more. Read Supreme Inequality for a breathtaking, if depressing, catalogue ... Cohen proves his argument that the Supreme Court\'s decisions have widened the wealth gap, diminished consumers\' abilities to right wrongs, limited individuals\' say in our democracy and greatly empowered corporations. His objections are clear, but he does not offer a path forward other than the unstated: Since the court fostered this concentration of corporate power and exacerbated the 1%\'s rise, it has the power to reverse itself. At the dawn of 2020, it is unimaginable that the Roberts court would do so. On the contrary, this reviewer observes that conservative justices continue to actively seek cases that allow them to overturn decades of precedent favoring ordinary people.
Garth Greenwell
Rave NPR ... exquisite ... Greenwell displays a precocious ability to take readers into his narrator\'s mind and body ... Greenwell submerges readers in the bedroom, sharing his protagonist\'s intense attractions and doubts ... expertly rendered flashbacks ... Greenwell\'s backward glance, humming with insight. The book traverses an arc that is part heartbreaking and part forward looking ... Greenwell\'s prose sings, even as much of the music occurs in the rests. This writer understands beauty and loss, sorrow and hope, his fluid writing making the telling seem effortless.
Aarti Namdev Shahani
Rave NPR ... riveting ... a bruising critique of colonialism ... This story is heart-rending, but perhaps more compelling is Aarti\'s struggle to understand her father ... If you\'re moved by frequent calls to deport so-called criminal or undocumented immigrants and refugees, please read Here We Are ... contains multiple messages: the value of grit and hope and determination; the relentless work immigrant families undertake just to tread water; the fortitude and generosity of such families; and the gaping flaws in American justice. These messages risk going unheard, however, if readers fail to acknowledge that unless your ancestors arrived in chains or were indigenous, you, too, likely hail from immigrants who cut a few corners to survive.
Peter Kaldheim
Positive NPR I\'m not sure I would have argued for another memoir in which a white man\'s life implodes from alcohol and cocaine addiction. But now comes Idiot Wind by Peter Kaldheim, its title from the Bob Dylan song, with something to offer ... Kaldheim channels his inner Jack Kerouac to guide him, and conjures additional substance-abusing, macho, white writers. Frederick Exley, Jay McInerney, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, and others make appearances. Perhaps as a consequence, Kaldheim\'s language can feel dated ... Fortunately, Idiot Wind picks up steam on the road, with some train hopping thrown in ... Even if we weren\'t in need of another road-trippy-addiction memoir, Idiot Wind recounts Kaldheim\'s very human efforts to swim to shore with compassion and gratitude.
Margarita Liberaki, Trans. by Karen Van Dyck
Positive NPR Three Summers, by Magarita Liberaki (1919-2001), weaves a dreamy, cinematic tapestry of Greek village life ... Katerina\'s efforts to assemble a framework that reconciles her fantasies with the bewildering and disturbing facts she encounters make Three Summers both engaging and provocative. Liberaki skillfully raises questions; it\'s up to the reader to wrestle with them. As the book concludes, Katerina offers a resolution about love, women, and family. It may not tie up the novel\'s many mysteries, but it conjures a lovely rose-colored vision[.]
Anna Merlan
Mixed NPR Merlan...provides horrifying details about conspiracies ... If you want more detail on a parade of horrifying twists of truth, read the book ... Merlan\'s recitations are chilling, as are her warnings that fringe beliefs tend to go mainstream ... Republic of Lies would have been strengthened with deeper analysis of the extent to which these theories take hold and the weight our society accords them. Where do these theories fall in the metrics of our political discourse? Are we comparing apples and oranges when we talk about falsehoods versus reality, or are we comparing apples and dump trucks? How potent are the false equivalencies?
Massoud Hayoun
Positive NPR ... an absorbing family history that spans continents and epochs ... With a clear point of view, Hayoun weaves in his family history with the politics that shaped their lives. When We Were Arabs is a nostalgic celebration of a rich, diverse heritage. It is also a diatribe against white supremacy in the form of European oppression ... In a sweeping gesture, [Hayoun] proudly proclaims his identity ... Perhaps that declaration of love is his most important takeaway.
Lorene Cary
Rave NPR ...a thoroughly engaging memoir ... It is Cary\'s recounting of her upbringing and ancestry that provide the most engaging parts of Ladysitting. Her family is a fascinating pastiche, and her narration captivates with humor and forthrightness ... Her strength and clear-sighted resolve, as well as the support she receives from the loving family she has created, form an important and uplifting through line to this memoir. Cary may have demons to tackle, but she does so with admirable grace ... Read Ladysitting...for its candor and singular take on a familiar tale.
Jean Frémon, Trans. by Cole Swensen
Positive NPR Elegantly translated by Cole Swensen, Now, Now, Louison portrays a woman whose mind never rests, whose capacious memory serves as a bottomless source of artistic inspiration ... Frémon brings Bourgeois\' art to light through her keen observations on life. Frémon\'s portrait is convincing; artists of Bourgeois\' intensity do not separate life from art ... The best way to read Now, Now, Louison is to surrender to it, to observe in tandem with Louise, to feel alongside her. Individually, the vignettes may not always be decipherable, but collectively they portray a woman of great complexity and imagination. Her life is her art, and vice versa ... Mixing media is a challenge; translating visual art into words impossible by definition. But with Now, Now, Louison, Jean Frémon delivers a special pleasure — he invites us into Louise Bourgeois\' head as she creates. In so doing, Frémon opens up our understanding of both the artist and her art.
Edouard Louis, Trans. by Lorin Stein
Positive NPR \"... a brief, poetic telling of the myriad ways societal contempt, homophobia, and poverty can kill a man ... Louis\' clear-sighted awareness of this masculine insanity allows him to paint a sympathetic portrait ... There is a universality to this story — the child\'s longing for acceptance contrasted with the mature son\'s painful journey to understand why his father behaved as he did ... Capturing the macro and micro culprits in Who Killed My Father, Louis serves as both raconteur and son, expressing deep and considered empathy for a man whose absence looms large.\
Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman
Rave NPR A memoir with bite ... profiles the challenges of the 99 percent with humor, sarcasm, and wit ... shows us what it takes to become a fully realized adult — or at least this fully realized adult ... Hindman doesn\'t shrink from the big, systemic picture, but her fascinating personal story, with its unexpected twists, puts the memorable into this memoir.
Stephanie Allen
Positive NPR Allen uses this little world to explore larger issues of race, class, and gender. Writing primarily in the present tense, she gives us a set of characters who are odd and often lovable, characters who wrestle with sticky parts of their pasts and try to imagine life beyond Doc Bell\'s ... Entropy is at the heart of Tonic and Balm. More than constructing the show, the book deconstructs it, as if designed to shed characters at the same pace that Haydn\'s Farewell Symphony requires musicians to leave the stage. It\'s a tricky premise, but in general, it works ... The characters may disappear one-by-one from Dr. Bell\'s, but Miss Antoinette\'s strong, mysterious presence holds their reflections.
Sarah McColl
Positive NPR \"McColl delivers thoughtful and finely crafted prose to vivify this emotionally intense relationship. From time to time, her writing becomes obscure as she tries to make sense of herself and Allison ... McColl may have her linguistic surfeits, but she should be applauded for unstinting efforts to put her heart on the page.\
Josephine Wilson
Rave NPR All may be allegory, but Extinctions gets its hands dirty with a real plot and realistic characters ... takes a hard look at the politics of adoption, cultural appropriation, loss, deracination, and professional frustration, without Wilson letting up her fictional grip ... [Wilson] writes with great intention, calling upon us as individuals and as a society to change.
Craig Morgan Teicher
Positive NPR \"We Begin in Gladness is well worth reading for its celebration of the art, and for placing poetry as a necessity in today\'s frenzied society—where dystopian fiction sells well, and too few people take time to read. Teicher\'s examination of poets\' artistic maturation is an engaging topic. If his conclusions are informed by his own taste, we can appreciate him as a generous guide through his chosen profession ... There may be readers who would prefer to have had more background threaded through Teicher\'s thoughtful examination of the poetic life. The presumption that poetry is a language of common parlance would be welcome if true. But alas, it is not.\
Aaron Jacobs
Mixed Washington Independent Review of Books The hero (or anti-hero) of Aaron Jacobs’ The Abundant Life is Alex Wolf, a Jewish boy who goes rogue as a teenage gunrunner, does hard time, and returns home to — not much. Meet his struggling family: Mom’s a bleeding heart working in a homeless shelter; Dad’s a gambler and a business failure; and little sister Rachel’s greatest aspiration is to leave home for college. Where to find money? The credit-card debt is too deep to see the bottom, and the house, of course, is a health hazard ... Author Jacobs needs to prune his clichés and deploy fewer ordinary turns of phrase. His writing can be choppy and convoluted. What he does deliver, however, is humor. Alex’s cynicism is unrelenting, but fortunately, he can laugh at himself ... Character development? Not really. Big ideas? Nah. Call this book madcap, call it screwball, and you would be right. Read The Abundant Life for entertainment and for a plot that defies reality; that is, if we weren’t living in 2018.
Kiese Laymon
Rave NPR \"I have dog-eared too many pages to close my copy of Kiese Laymon\'s Heavy: An American Memoir. I found something noteworthy on almost every page ... This is a memoir to read and reread, as Laymon recommends readers do with all books of significance ... Dear white people, please read this memoir. Dear America, please read this book. Kiese Laymon is a star in the American literary firmament, with a voice that is courageous, honest, loving, and singularly beautiful. Heavy is at once a paean to the Deep South, a condemnation of our fat-averse culture, and a brilliantly rendered memoir of growing up black, and bookish, and entangled in a family that is as challenging as it is grounding.\
Eric Vuillard, Trans. by, Mark Polizzotti
Positive The Millions \"Poetically translated by Mark Polizzotti, the book shines a light on the industrial titans and politicians behind Hitler’s might. With chilling precision and moral authority, Vuillard draws a straight line between the marching orders Hitler gave to Germany’s moguls, and the Anschluss ... Vuillard’s language is beautifully and economically crafted; his judgments raise crucial questions.\
Luce D'Eramo, Trans. by Anne Milano Appel,
Rave NPR Finally, 39 years after its debut, comes its first-ever English edition, vividly translated by Anne Milano Appel ... This devastating chain of experience cannot be told in linear fashion. The story must \'deviate,\' as the memory and weight and brutality of D\'Eramo\'s past unfolds in bursts ... If we appreciate Karl Ove Knausgaard for his introspective tenacity, then we must genuflect before Luce D\'Eramo ... It is not simply D\'Eramo\'s personal story, but also her ruthless quest for self-knowledge, that render Deviation a literary tour de force.
Ed. by Arjun Singh Sethi
Rave NPR Amid the ugly realities of contemporary America, American Hate affirms our courage and inspiration, opening a roadmap to reconciliation by means of the victims\' own words ... Read American Hate for the faces Sethi puts on our national hate epidemic, and for his sobering account of the fallout—humiliation, terror, injury, and death. But read American Hate, as well, for what the last chapter terms \'Hope in a Time of Despair.\' Hate may be rampant in America, but so are its antidotes: We must understand and own our history. We must speak out, for in community is power and love.
David A. Kaplan
Positive NPR If you aren\'t a regular on the Washington cocktail circuit or a subscriber to SCOTUSblog, this material is presented at a level of granularity with which you may not be familiar. It makes for engaging, if not reassuring, reading ... Kaplan\'s discussion of Bush v. Gore is particularly elucidating in explaining the competing postures of state and federal courts that resulted in George W. Bush\'s first inauguration. Chapters such as \'Runaway Court,\' \'Revenge of the Right,\' and \'For the Love of Money,\' leave no doubt about Kaplan\'s views on the wisdom of judicial restraint; he\'s for it. He does us a favor by pointing out the hypocrisy of originalism ... In the final chapter of The Most Dangerous Branch Kaplan asserts that \'if the Court is to become a less dangerous branch,\' Justice Roberts \'has the opportunity, the temperament and maybe the skill to make it so.\'
Esi Edugyan
Rave The Millions Washington Black is a terrific new narrative about enslavement, but that description fails to do it justice ... In its rich details and finely tuned ear for language, the book creates a virtual world, immersing the reader in antebellum America and Canada as well as in Victorian England ... the trek is fraught with danger and thoroughly engaging. Edugyan captures the Arctic so artfully, you want to reach for your parka to stay warm ... More important than travelogue, however, is Washington Black’s interrogation of human attachment ... refreshing in its oddities and unconventionalities.
Alexander Chee
Rave NPR \"Chee\'s writing has a mesmerizing quality; his sentences are rife with profound truths without lapsing into the didactic ... In his new book, he circles back from his last book, the epic Queen of the Night, to further mine his inner core with a refreshing candor that poses answerless questions and owns misjudgment and uncertainty ... Chee is a very special artist; his writing is lyrical and accessible, whimsical and sad, often all at the same time. No doubt he is an inspiring writing teacher as well.\
Sigrid Rausing
Positive NPR Rausing's core message is this: Addiction is a family affair. Her book embraces those surrounding the addict by courageously exposing her own self-doubt and heartache ... Rausing's narrative is delivered in disjointed, non-sequential fragments. Single sentence paragraphs complete sections for emphasis; hers is a jagged presentation that seems intended to mirror addiction's mayhem ... Rausing places her experience within a broader context. She considers Amy Winehouse, she cites Patty Hearst. She highlights America's opioid blight to remind us that addiction is not solely a family affair, it's a societal pathology.
Benjamin Rachlin
Positive NPR A crisply written page turner ... Deploying the same precision with which he documents Grimes' prison life, Rachlin recounts the arduous and complex work to move the wheels of justice. 19 years after Grimes' arrest, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill to establish an Innocence Inquiry Commission; Chris Mumma's fingerprints were all over it. Read Rachlin's Ghost of the Innocent Man to follow the twisted path that led Chris Mumma to pick up Grimes' file, ultimately exposing the use of outdated photos to mis-identify the perpetrator, the failure to fingerprint relevant parts of the crime scene, exculpatory evidence destroyed, contorted "science" involving a single hair, and more. But don't read for the gripping story alone. Willie Grimes spent 24 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit, while the real perpetrator continued to offend. Shouldn't we be better than this?
Randa Jarrar
Rave The Millions With compelling themes of displacement and reinvention, these stories push boundaries — probing race, class, sexual identity, and family; the role of women in Arab and American culture; and much more. In this collection, mythology meets reality, and Jarrar’s palette spans the world ... The thirteen stories in this collection blend humor with rage, wit with pathos. Jarrar presents an astonishing variety, each story as inventive as it is insightful. It’s a book for this oppressive electoral season, where presidential politics are ugly and destructive, and demagoguery is endeavoring to trample a core American truth: Our country’s strength derives from open borders. Jarrar is here with a correction.
Pamela Erens
Rave The Millions Eleven Hours is crafted with the taut economy of The Understory, and with the same laser focus on human alienation. In fewer than 180 virtuoso pages, Erens knits together two women, two lives, two stories. Each woman has borne serious trials; each is detached from her family of origin, albeit for different reasons. Each has reason to worry about bringing new life into this world. They are together, but brutally alone. And yet for the duration of Lore’s hospital stay, their communion feels both necessary and illuminating. What passes between Franckline and Lore lifts them above despair, thrusting them toward life itself.