PositiveThe New York Times Book Review... demonstrates Ghosh’s belief that the improbable has a place in serious literary fiction. And in teaming this with the subject of climate change, he has not held back ... A flurry of coincidences and spooky interventions do the work of an actual plot, and the supporting characters are script ready ... This kitchen sink approach is either a brave experiment in bringing climate change to action-adventure readers or an overwrought provocation, a dialectic an experienced writer like Ghosh probably intends, since in the course of his narrative he makes reference to jatra, a style of Indian performance art that goes on \'for hours with absurdly costumed figures screeching in falsetto voices\' ... Ghosh challenges the writers among us to remember that throughout history we have dealt with crises by telling ourselves stories. Climate change might be our successor to the Black Death: We may have to use all our inventive ability, rational and magical, to think our way out of it.
Nuruddin Farah
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review\"... we might expect high drama, but here, instead, is a nuanced, quietly devastating family soap opera ... There is indeed a weary tone to this book, relayed mainly through Mugdi: the exhausted, chronic grief of one who has witnessed his country implode like a dark star ... Farah is a deeply sophisticated writer, his prose almost aromatic, like rich, sweet Somali tea. The story exists in the ether between the words; nothing will be simplified or explained, and quiet dread mounts, page after page, though little plot propels it.\
Aminatta Forna
MixedThe New York Times Book Review\"At its weakest, Happiness devolves into a stern lecture, delivered through Attila, arguing that our avoidance of discomfort has become a pathology, one that supports an ever-expanding therapeutic industry ... Yet Forna’s finely structured novel powerfully succeeds on a more intimate scale as its humane characters try to navigate scorching everyday cruelties.\
