MixedLos Angeles Review of BooksIt takes a sharp and decisive writer to leave a husband of eight years out of her memoir ... This memoir reads as written for and about the author herself, concerned primarily with her emotional recovery. However, the laser-like intensity with which she beams in on the lifetime of mistreatment she’s received from various \'fucking men\' inevitably detracts from that project. Tendler’s own story is much richer and more interesting than her hyperdetailed descriptions of past relationships ... If Tendler’s recitation of boys, man-children, and, eventually, grown men becomes tedious, it’s because, aside from a few ludicrous one-offs, her experiences are relatively common ... Tendler, however, is the one who is interesting—not the men. And it can get frustrating to see so much page space devoted to the shortcomings of subpar guys ... While in many ways this book is a rejection of men—at least, the ones who lack empathy and maturity, the ones who have called her crazy—that rejection is peformed through an overfocused lens.
Chris Harding Thornton
RaveThe Star TribuneIn this debut novel, Thornton has skillfully created a hyper-detailed setting of the Nebraska plains ... a gripping mixture of cop procedural and a psychological story of rebirth that gives one man the chance at leaving his past behind. Suspense builds as Harley realizes that redemption hides in the unlikeliest of places, and that the call is coming from inside the house — or in this case, a farmhouse on the edge of town.
Jamie K. McCallum
MixedThe Washington PostThis points to McCallum’s central goal, which is to reduce working hours. He advocates a movement to shrink our time on the clock while reducing pay barely or not at all, although he doesn’t quite explain how that would work. The ideal is not a country that hardly works, but one where employees work less and have more control over their working time ... Do all of McCallum’s ideas have enough fuel to fly? Maybe some, but others not so much. The universal basic services proposal, for example, seems to rely on a socialist government that we don’t have. As for reducing working hours, it would be, he admits, a long and difficult struggle requiring much solidarity among working Americans who have not yet been radicalized to the cause. It’s a delicious promise, but whether American workers — battered, politically polarized and out of work in great numbers — can take on a fight of this nature at this moment is doubtful. Still, workers of the country need bold ideas like those McCallum offers.
Leslie Jamison
MixedThe Washington Post... presents a curiosity cabinet of topics ... These pieces have only the barest of connective tissues: Jamison wrestling with herself to find common ground with other humans or, as she puts it, \'writing about lives or beliefs that others might have scoffed at\' ... [Jamison] comes off as sheltered ... After a quickie marriage, [Jamison] finds herself a stepmother overnight. What follows is a piece grappling with the complications of that new role. She overthinks this one: We don’t need a history of stepmother-related folklore or a Pew Research Center study to understand the very primal situation of a woman taking care of a child that isn’t hers. We only need Jamison’s heartbreaking anecdotes about being scolded by a stranger for buying her stepdaughter too much ice cream, because she doesn’t know what was \'too much ... If this book has a through-line, it’s the idea of wonder.
Steven Greenwood
PositiveThe New RepublicAs Greenhouse chronicles alternate and nontraditional ways of organizing, the overarching lesson of the book is that virtually everybody ends up better off from mobilizing—even if they don’t add their names to union rolls ... While Greenhouse gives us some history lessons...the most engaging parts of the book recount those nontraditional fights ... Ultimately, Greenhouse equates strong unions, or at least worker power, with democracy itself, and he sees very few limits on what a successful and healthy labor movement could achieve. The union movement could also \'champion universal health coverage, free community college, free public universities, more and better apprenticeships, paid paternal leave, a fairer tax system … affordable housing, first-class public schools, excellent transportation, and clean air and water,\' he writes ... It’s a ridiculously bold list, and it’s meant to be. Greenhouse wants to see labor involved in every part of American life, building a stronger social safety net and fighting for everyone.
Yuko Tsushima Trans. by Geraldine Harcourt
PositiveVulture\"Territory of Light broke taboos back then, but it feels in many ways like it could have been written today ... There is no cultural recipe for happiness to be found in the narrator’s situation. So Tsushima had to create one. Her characters were women on the outskirts of society, but unlike, say, Lucia Berlin, a contemporary who wrote about similar types but tended to end on bleak, Carver-esque notes, Tsushima gently allowed them to find their own sort of happiness. What ultimately made her unique among her feminist peers was an unwillingness to punish her women.\
Karen Thompson Walker
PositiveThe Washington Post\"Most captivating is a paranoid doomsday-prepper who lives with his two young daughters—and has been waiting for a day like this ... Walker uses evocative language to describe the almost bewitching nature of contagion ... The novel reads like a thriller, with every chapter—sometimes every scene—ending on a cliffhanger.\
Bill Cunningham
PositiveBarnes and Noble ReviewThe book illuminates one of the fashion and newspaper world’s most quietly influential sensibilities. Cunningham’s point of view is singular not just when it comes to fashion ... Fashion Climbing begins with a formative event that reads like something out of a dark fairy tale.
Tsitsi Dangarembga
PositiveThe Washington PostAuthor Tsitsi Dangarembga, who lives in Zimbabwe, writes this often grim story with a great deal of wit ... Dangarembga gives us something rare: a sparkling antiheroine we find ourselves rooting for ... Tambu can be seen as a symbol as well as a character: Her striving to become prosperous amid dysfunction echoes modern Zimbabwe’s ongoing struggle to outgrow stifling corruption.
