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Bethany Ball
Positive The New York Times Book Review Like any Jewish story worth the salt that Lot’s wife became, it’s admirably and quite beautifully rooted in 20th-century history — and yet, at the same time, it largely steers clear of the politics that, from one angle or another, drag down so many contemporary novels ... Ball’s story swivels its spotlight from one twisted character and association to another. She works hard to render each with sensitivity and respect, a dedication that also makes her fabulously unafraid to mark her characters with signs of psychosis and brutality ... The humor here is finely wrought and often provides satisfying relief from the characters’ struggles, but it is not in fact one of the book’s overriding features. Rather, emotional insight is clearly the currency that matters most to Ball ... Unfortunately, not everything in What to Do About the Solomons works equally well. Some plot threads are too short, others too long ... Despite their collective penchant for psychodrama, there’s something profoundly lovely — and loving — about the Solomons. And about Bethany Ball’s debut.
George Prochnik
Positive The New York Times Book Review To describe it as part biography and part memoir is to miss the point; it is instead a hunt through the crevices of one life in search of clues that might unlock the mysteries — intellectual, religious, political and psychological — of another ... Most of the first two-thirds of Stranger in a Strange Land is taken up by an often painfully detailed description of Scholem’s life and the slow birth of his religious and political principles — more cogent versions of which can be found elsewhere. Still, it serves a purpose here, which is to make readers fluent in the language Prochnik will use to describe his own unfolding religious and political drama ... In the end, Prochnik seems to experience release from the Venn diagram of his personal and political entanglements. Indeed, the last 20 pages beam with light — a radiant justification of the preceding darkness that comes close to, well, perfect.
Geraldine Brooks
Rave The New York Times Book Review The Secret Chord — a thundering, gritty, emotionally devastating reconsideration of the story of King David — makes a masterly case for the generative power of retelling.