RaveThe Star TribuneIf it all sounds a little drab, it\'s not. Ford is, as ever, a deeply skilled prose stylist, infusing the quotidian with a kind of muscular grace. In his hands the normal feels new, the mundane extraordinary. If Be Mine is a bit smaller and less given to vintage Bascombe rambles than its predecessors, that feels right, given the way that aging can shrink one\'s world.
Anna Moschovakis
MixedThe Minneapolis Star-TribuneReaders used to traditional novels might not respond well to Participation ... Much of the book\'s first half is spent struggling to pull meaning from its highly experimental form ... Moschovakis writes lovely prose and has a talent for insightful description, and if she ever did try to write the kind of story she seems determined to disown with Participation, it would probably be a great read.
Percival Everett
RaveThe Star Tribune... what about supervillains? Maybe it\'s something about this uncertain era, populated by peculiar billionaires obsessed with outer space, irresponsible demagogues with cultlike followings, and yacht-bound oligarchs that make a character like Lex Luthor feel more realistic than a character like Superman ... A prolific novelist and finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the Booker Prize, Percival Everett plays with that possibility to dizzyingly good effect ... In the villainous character of John Milton Bradley Sill, Everett gives us a charmingly witty, possibly insane billionaire with a decades-long grudge to bear against the United States and an elaborate plan for revenge that hinges on the application of a deeply esoteric field of mathematics ... a breezy, strange, frequently hilarious, action-adventure story that\'s rife with Everett\'s talent for deadpan dialogue and vivid scene-setting, but just as equally given to brainy tangents and wordy digressions on dense mathematical concepts ... It\'s also another thoughtful entry in Everett\'s career-long literary exploration of America\'s troubled racial legacy. But he keeps the mood light by mimicking the silliest conventions of spy movies, with a story that shifts between exotic locales and luxury compounds, and a large cast of characters chasing around in planes, a submarine and a yacht, heavily armed jeeps and sports cars. Kitu makes for a delightfully eccentric protagonist, a maladjusted math whiz with a one-legged dog, Trigo, who talks to him in dreams ... might be a little too odd, a bit too brainy and inclined to philosophic-mathematic ruminations to significantly build on any new fans Everett gained with his last few, lauded novels. Still, fans of last year\'s The Trees will see parallels — the earlier book a detective thriller with suggestions of the supernatural, Dr. No a spy caper that shades into science fiction, both propelled by reckonings over racial injustice ... What marks Everett as a singular talent is the way he elevates such serious concerns inside a stylishly executed, frequently hilarious pair of genre thrillers. By the end of Dr. No, even as the self-negating logic of Everett\'s plot about nothing builds to an inevitably surreal conclusion, a more pertinent question than what\'s happening (or not happening) on the page might be, what are the actual chances that an unhinged billionaire with limitless resources and a righteous sense of grievance could bring widespread harm upon society? Probably not nothing.
Aaron Foley
RaveThe Star Tribune... charming ... Lighthearted and episodic ... Foley, a journalist and Detroit native, has written two nonfiction books about the city, and his love for and frustration with it shine through on every page. He spins through neighborhoods, name-checks intersections, catalogs some of its best bars and restaurants — while exploring whether one of Black America\'s capitals is becoming yet another fixer-upper for \'upstart white Detroiters\' interested in reclaiming the city\'s ruined architectural glory ... The critiques never get too heavy-handed, though, and ultimately Foley is more interested in his characters\' sex lives and dating mishaps than their views on gentrification ... Funny, contemporary and often amusingly raunchy, Boys Come First feels almost revolutionary in the way that Dominick, Troy and Remy aren\'t made to experience the kind of suffering over sexual orientation that once seemed a hallmark of queer literature. Foley gives us characters who are comfortable as gay men and proud to be Black men, but are still flawed, very human, wise and foolish in roughly equal measure. You probably know people like them.
Nell Zink
PositiveStar TribuneNell Zink has honed a talent for prose that\'s assertive, even breezy in the face of ostensibly sad subjects ... So it\'s fitting in a way that her latest, Avalon, is a kind of modern fairy tale ... Loosely plotted and chatty ... Zink lovingly lampoons the way that teenagers bumble toward identity and character ... What little narrative momentum that \"Avalon\" achieves — Zink is best for readers who don\'t mind a lot of digression in their novels — lies in finding out whether Bran will get her happy ending ... A comparative literature major with curly black hair, Peter is almost comically erudite for his age ... But it\'s easy to forgive Zink this flight of fancy in a book that\'s so fun to read. And you don\'t have to believe a fairy tale to enjoy it.
Stewart O'Nan
PositiveThe Star Tribune...it wouldn\'t be right to call it a mystery, because the killer\'s identity is established in the very first sentence. Even as he inverts the form, veteran novelist Stewart O\'Nan effectively keeps you turning the pages quickly with this tragic story of teenage love ... it should be mentioned that the sections of the story narrated by the murder victim, Birdy, gather an almost excruciating tension as she approaches her inevitable fate. O\'Nan makes her much more than a simple plot device, and it\'s what elevates the story to more than just a page-turner ... it\'s hard to not feel frustrated at points with the almost casual way the murderers face the consequences — or don\'t — of the crime they committed.
Amy Klobuchar
MixedThe Star Tribune... is at its most readable as Klobuchar frames the issue historically, breezily recounting episodes of American and Minnesota history while occasionally weaving in bits of family and professional experience ... Later chapters, as Klobuchar digs deep into federal antitrust law and various congressional proposals, get a bit more dry (she acknowledges major help from her law professor husband, who helped with the legal content and wrote the book\'s voluminous endnotes) ... Antitrust policy doesn\'t seem like the juiciest angle for an ambitious national politician. Klobuchar acknowledges the wonky nature of the issue, and even proposes a rebranding. Antitrust law, Klobuchar writes, should become \'competition policy.\'
Nell Zink
PanThe Minneapolis Star TribuneA foreword notes that a literary agent once deemed the novel 'unpublishable,' and if you attempt to read it, you'll see why ... Frequently inscrutable, it's a patchwork of bizarre scenes and absurd characters, jokey literary references likely to be lost on all but the most sophisticated readers and occasional bursts of personal history. Those bits where Zink writes of her early life all come near the end, and they nearly make the whole thing worth reading. Let's hope sooner or later she writes a proper memoir.
Nell Zink
PositiveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneThat it works as well as it does, without bogging down in pathos, is a testament to Zink’s deftness in portraying the clashing values and quirks of three successive generations — baby boomers, Gen-Xers and millennials ... Zink has a sharp knack for illuminating the challenges facing American millennials circa now: the dicey customs and codes of an increasingly racially and sexually diverse society, the growing blur between social media and lived experience, the difficulty of making a living in a post-career economy.
