PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewImpossible-to-define but highly digestible ... The novel could easily slip into a text too dark to enjoy ... It’s a relief, then, that Crucet’s prose is so sprightly and joyful.
Curtis Sittenfeld
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewA love letter to the prototypical rom-com ... Romantic Comedy is partly an extrapolation of a fascinating workplace and partly a contemporary romance novel. In some of the book’s most compelling passages, Sally talks about shedding her subconscious need for male approval at work ... A fizzy ride ... If you, like so many women, are feeling recently jilted by a too-good-to-be-true male lover, then Romantic Comedy can be a pleasing antidote to his failures ... But to enjoy Romantic Comedy is to fall for its premise: that it’s reasonable for Sally to be surprised that someone like Noah would be interested in her. You have to believe that Sally’s precipitously low self-esteem is low enough for this particular romantic comedy. Sometimes it is ... But other times, this \'conflict\' feels largely unearned ... The book is not a full parody of rom-com wish fulfillment, nor is it steeped in irony about the form. Instead, it lives somewhere in the middle, neither committing to the bit nor criticizing it.
Kathryn Ma
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewImmigrant novels are so frequently tales of devastating woe, but Ma’s iteration of the young migrant story is imbued with inherent optimism. Shelley’s buoyancy is frustratingly naïve, and often completely foolish if you have any understanding of how brutal living in America actually is, but you root for Shelley in part because Shelley is rooting for Shelley. Ma finds wry humor in Shelley getting to know the mores of his new country ... By the end, he does indeed come out on top, even if it’s in ways neither he nor the reader could have predicted.
Sloane Crosley
PositiveNew York Times Book ReviewDelicious, spooky ... The novel’s happenings are conceptual, but the feelings it inspires are pretty universal. There’s a thick ooze of malaise throughout, a pleasing sinking feeling of dread and desire and compulsion. The plot of Cult Classic feels less important than the writing — the story sags a bit in the middle — but Crosley’s prose crackles throughout ... The novel reads like a memoir — which makes sense, considering that Crosley is the author of three essay collections ... Her writing defines the diverse list of small grievances and indignities that come with trying to date men ... Reading Cult Classic is...a discomfiting experience that you can’t stop engaging in, like grinding your molars until they hurt in a good way. If you’ve had the recent displeasure of dating in New York, or dating in general, or if your past keeps coming back to haunt you, the book may give you déjà vu ... It’s a good thing Cult Classic is so funny, because otherwise it would be kind of bleak ... I’d perhaps not recommend this novel for anyone experiencing cold feet before a wedding. (Or maybe it’s exactly what I’d recommend; depends on the couple.)
Michelle Hart
RaveNew York Times Book ReviewIs it a uniquely female experience to meet another woman, fall for her brains and beauty and brawn and complications and want to consume her? ... The protagonist in Michelle Hart’s debut novel feels this pull on every page of We Do What We Do in the Dark ... While there’s all this talk about dystopian fiction set in worlds where men no longer exist, Hart has written a realistic world where women do all the talking, to each other, and rarely about the men in their lives. It’s a world that, though a little lachrymose, is still a pleasure to live in ... Hart’s novel does something exceptional that few pieces of fiction have done successfully: She presents the older married professor as not only a complicated figure worthy of desire and suspicion, but makes her a woman too. A weaker novel would’ve made the woman \'the man\' instead ... We Do What We Do in the Dark has flashes of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends, or Halle Butler’s The New Me. Sometimes it’s erotic, sometimes it’s devastating. Maybe this is what the new erotic thriller has morphed into in literature — less about the horror of sex and romance and more about the thrill of quiet despair and ruin. But the writing always crackles, written by someone who clearly knows what it’s like to desire another woman in ways you just barely understand.
Emily Ratajkowski
MixedBuzzfeedWhat an impossible task Emily Ratajkowski gave herself—it’s admirable, really, her efforts to better understand the arcane, patriarchal, racist, capitalistic measurements of physical beauty that have allowed her to be famous and successful and rich ... Honestly, the whole book is pretty depressing, a constant push-pull between Ratajkowski’s self-awareness and the greater forces that commodified her ... Ratajkowski’s clean, clear writing does what you want it to do; it wrestles with what it means to be conventionally attractive ... Where Ratajkowski fails is in thinking more critically about her place in the world, in the continuum of women feeling bad about their bodies, being discriminated against for their bodies, being abused and assaulted for their bodies. There seems to be almost no recognition in her writing that her body is held up as a standard — not necessarily by her, but by other people intent on maintaining the beauty status quo — used to shame people who don’t look like her ... The thing that she’s trying to understand in a more holistic, intersectional way is the very thing that has given her a good, comfortable life. I don’t begrudge her those moments of low self-esteem or the individuals in her life who seem to think she’s nothing but a body, but when taken in the larger context of fat-shaming and body discrimination, hers is an unfulfilling tale ... My Body doesn’t give us any way to move forward, any idea what to do with our punishing self-hatred or the way men profit from women’s beauty ... People are entitled to look however they want, Ratajkowski included, even if her body sometimes makes me feel bad about my own. That’s not her fault, per se — but she is an active participant in a system that raises her up and makes me hate jean shopping. That dichotomy is missing from her reflections ... My Body doesn’t cut as deep as I want, but it cuts all the same
Hanna Halperin
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe extraordinary commonness of female trauma, especially at the hands of men, can work against a piece of fiction, but in the case of Hanna Halperin’s debut novel, Something Wild, it does the opposite. Some version of the story Halperin tells will likely feel familiar in a way that reminds you of pressing on an old bruise you were sure had healed. Something Wild is propulsive, tender, frustrating and entirely realistic. That’s what hurts so much ... creates a compelling, believable and upsetting portrayal of how trauma ripples through a family ... It’s a rare story where you’re somehow rooting for everyone...the book is an impressive hat trick, pulling empathy from you for so many people in one story. There are a few side plots that add little to the novel, but the core of the book is still blistering ... did something that a book hasn’t done for me in a very long time — it made me weep. Not just a few tears, but big, ugly tears, embarrassing ones, the kind you’d prefer to hide in the middle of the dark, the novel wrapping me in grief and fear and fury. The familiarity of the narrative gets caught in your throat; the clarity with which these women love one another clears it. Men fail their children and wives, the court system fails them again, and it’s the mothers and sisters who pull themselves back together again. Something Wild can err on the side of predictability, sure, but domestic violence is pretty predictable too ... I wish Something Wild felt foreign, I wish the plot were pure fantasy. But good books sometimes cut to the bone, and this one feels like a scythe.
Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe best way to read Black Futures is, frankly, as slowly as possible. At over 500 pages, it’s heavy, literally and figuratively. Every page of this oversize illustrated book is dense, even when it’s just a few lines of white print on black background, or a sepia portrait of Representative Ilhan Omar. The book’s curators, Kimberly Drew (the former social media manager at the Metropolitan Museum) and the New York Times Magazine culture writer Jenna Wortham, advise that \'like us, this book is not linear,\' nor is it meant to be read as such; you can enter and exit the project on whatever pages you choose. This freedom creates a literary experience unlike any I’ve had in recent memory — once you start reading Black Futures, you are somehow endlessly reading it, even long after you’ve devoured every page ... its messages can and should speak to anyone ... That’s where so much of the pleasure of “Black Futures” lives: in getting lost down rabbit holes, learning more about, say, Black trans visibility or Black farming or Black hair. The brief chapters reach in seemingly infinite directions, each one a portal into what could be an entire book on its own ... t’s a document that could flex and change with time, that could have endless editions attached to it as Black life moves apace. For now it serves as a living and breathing memorandum, and a pressing reminder that anyone anywhere can — must — join the fight.
Laura Lippman
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewIn first person, Lippman is funny and sharp at her best; she can sling a hell of a one-liner ... At times, however, she’s mundane in her insistence that actually, she’s very troublesome. The book’s title suggests someone who’s living her whole life as a villain; the reality is, Lippman is someone who got in trouble with her daughter’s principal for one lousy tweet. (It involved a revenge fantasy involving aforementioned schoolmates.) The rebellion that Lippman seems to want to convince the reader of is sort of tedious — her writing on menopause, though cheeky, isn’t really risky in the time of writers like Samantha Irby or Patricia Lockwood, women who bare themselves in their books. Some of her writing includes strange pronouncements, like her argument that she and her husband are \'solidly middle-class people no matter what our tax return says.\' (Strange for many reasons, including the fact that her husband wrote and created The Wire along with a few other successful television shows, and thus is likely not actually middle-class) ... Regrettably, you leave My Life as a Villainess wanting more of something. More introspection on her role as an \'old\' mom, more vulnerability when she talks about her body or her father, more detail, more heart, more heft. It’s not enough to just enjoy the lilt of her writing (though the chapter titled Men Explain ‘The Wire’ to Me made me laugh). Essay writing requires that you be not just a gifted writer — which Lippman is — but that you have a point, a purpose, an insight, or at least a memorable conclusion ... Essay writing is, indeed, the most accessible kind of writing around. But just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
