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Recent Reviews
M T Anderson
Mixed WBUR In the Middle Ages, a good story involved a fair amount of fabulism and fantasy. Readers may be better served knowing this up front, however, as Anderson’s blending of highly specific, period-accurate details and elements of outlandish medieval lore may otherwise be confusing ... There’s much to recommend about Nicked, though sometimes its disparate elements can feel a little at odds with one another. Anderson’s world-building is thorough and immersive, though he often seems to linger on small details, showing off what must have been copious research in a way that seems excessively showy.
Rachel Lyon
Positive WBUR Lyon relates this often troubling story in gorgeous prose that’s so vivid and luminous it contrasts starkly with the darkness of the subject matter. Every sentence is a feast, tempting you to push on further even as the discomfiting action of the plot and the often frustrating, deluded, self-defeating characters conspire to push you away ... Lyon closes the book in an ambiguous rush of feeling and fury that comes across as neither triumph nor tragedy. Or perhaps it’s some tainted mixture of the two. It would be hard to call Fruit of the Dead a satisfying read; but perhaps there’s a bit of ugly truth to be found in its imperfect protagonists and dizzy, disorienting denouement.
Kelly Link
Positive WBUR At 640 pages, she takes every opportunity to add as much flavor and color to her story as possible. The result is a sprawling, at times majestic, story with a richly detailed setting, a large cast of well-rendered, endearing characters, and a plodding, ponderous approach to plot development that will test readers’ endurance ... A wild ride, and Link goes to great lengths to hold your attention as the story careens from one extreme to another. But it’s fair to say that the lesson of the book is that even the most powerful storytellers can benefit from some reining in.
Paul Lynch
Rave The Boston Globe Gripping ... Lynch’s dense, lyrical prose barrels down on you relentlessly ... Harrowing ... hat’s a story that needs to be told, and a story we would be well served by. Because the West’s struggle to show empathy for these immigrants and refugees is not due to some alienating attribute they possess that can be solved by a simple substitution; it’s a bigger problem that lies deep within us.
Gabriel Bump
Mixed WBUR The seams where those threads are pulled together are both obvious and strained; the book really feels like six characters desperately searching not for salvation, but for a good reason to all be in the same story together ... It’s when they’re furthest apart that the characters have the room to breathe and really shine, showing off Bump’s skills with characterization and dialogue. I would’ve gladly spent more time with Bounce and his family — this section really sings; his malaise is palpable, compelling, and richly rendered ... Bump aims to show the extreme lengths people will go to in order to give their lives meaning in the face of relentless, seemingly inescapable adversity. What he reveals is that, even in fiction, meaning isn’t always easy to find.
Michael Magee
Rave The Washington Post Deftly captures the spirit of these times. Like Rooney, Magee explores the world of a literary-minded 20-something navigating the distinctions of class in an affecting story of self-discovery. But his voice is wholly his own: unflinching, direct, disarmingly sensitive and informed by his own experiences as a young man in the working class Belfast neighborhood of Twinbrook ... Magee creates a strong sense of place with his prose, which is rife with local color and makes liberal use of Belfast slang ... The effect is immersive. Magee makes you feel like one of the gang, and the feeling of belonging he creates is intoxicating ... Magee succeeds in bringing his neighborhood to life for readers and suggests that amid what seems like a never ending struggle, there is always room for hope.
Alyssa Songsiridej
Rave WBUR Their relationship seems designed to provoke: a young, queer woman entering into a relationship with a wealthy, powerful man 20 years her senior. It runs against the grain of what’s considered appropriate in contemporary, progressive dating culture ... But Songsiridej sidesteps the pitfalls and eschews sensationalism; instead, she has written a thoughtful, sexy and, at times, profoundly moving exploration of agency, desire and identity ... Songsiridej’s sex scenes are powerful and well-rendered, with sensual language that remains firmly focused on Rabbit’s emotional experience. They’re exciting without being salacious, transgressive without being lurid or gratuitous ... Little Rabbit is an impressive debut, and with her unflinching prose, Songsiridej shows us how important fearlessness and honesty are when it comes to creating great art.
Fintan O'Toole
Rave The Boston Globe ... engrossing ... With deep research, a journalistic eye for detail, and a series of revealing personal anecdotes, he paints a vivid and affecting portrait of Irish life, touching on politics, religion, economics, and pop culture. The result is a comprehensive work of social criticism that tells the story of a country that was once so fixated on maintaining an idealized vision of its past that it almost gave up on the prospect of a better future ... a powerful book, not just for what it says about Ireland, but for what it has to teach us about national identity in general. It’s a lesson that feels particularly relevant in the United States today.
Paul Griffiths
Rave Boston Globe A novel of great wit and empathy, one that provides a deep insight into the composition of both classical music and historical literature through playful, inventive prose ... [Griffith] is keen to experiment with form, as well. Occasionally, he will think better of a choice he has made and reset the scene, doubling back to allow it to play out differently and take the narrative in a different, more suitable direction ... While these tactics could easily have come off as cheap gimmicks, they succeed because underneath the cleverness Griffiths has constructed an emotionally resonant story about the nature of artistic collaboration and communication ... By marshalling factual information to create an entirely plausible false reality, Griffiths shows that on some level, all history is just a story we cobble together by interpreting the available facts in the way that seems plausible to us ...By combining deep scholarship with a broad-minded, philosophical viewpoint, Griffiths has written a thought-provoking novel about possibility that pushes us to think hard about what we know and how we know it.
Laura van den Berg
Positive The Boston Globe What follows is a cross-country adventure through the wrecked landscape of a wounded country, and van den Berg deftly parallels these tortured wanderings with flashbacks to Joy’s hard upbringing ... Throughout Find Me, we see Joy tossed about like a leaf on the wind, helpless as others exert their power over her and unable to find her own. On the road, the buses she hops seem to move about capriciously, and in her flashbacks, we see her assaulted by her fellow orphans or outright violated by an older foster sibling, a troubled psychologist who subjects her to odd tests that are the product of his own disordered thinking ... In Find Me, van den Berg depicts a life slowly coming into focus — it’s blurry and impressionistic at times, sometimes deliriously scattered. But out of the fog of memory and the haze of drugs emerges a sense of clarity that’s deep and moving and real.
Akin Kumarasamy
Rave The Millions Kumarasamy makes Nalini the heart of the book with two beautifully vivid stories ... Kumarasamy’s writing is lush and evocative, capable of wresting beauty from sadness and finding slivers of hope amidst great tragedy ... Though the stories in Half Gods are rooted in a conflict that began decades ago and on the other side of the world, many of its themes are startlingly relevant to our current situation in the U.S. ... Akil Kumarasamy has written a book for our time and our place, showing us that others have been down this road before and warning us where we might end up if we aren’t vigilant.
Adam Ehrlich Sachs
Rave The Boston Globe [a] charming and witty collection of stories ... What distinguishes these stories from one another, and where Sachs makes them truly shine, is in the details ... Sachs has a finely tuned sense of humor and an economical writing style that gives each story plenty of punch. And the brevity of each story makes this a great book to simply flip open on a whim for a quick read. He’s made sure that Inherited Disorders is crammed full of smart turns of phrase, clever twists of logic, and plenty of laughs.
Umberto Eco, Trans. by Richard Dixon
Pan The Boston Globe “Though this complex, wheels-within-wheels plotting is classic Eco, Numero Zero stands apart from the rest of his oeuvre in a few ways. For one, it is relatively short—less than 200 pages. And it lacks much of the rich, colorful writing of his previous novels, instead opting for long stretches of expository dialogue in which characters lecture one another on Italy’s complex political history.”