About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Charles Baxter
Positive Booklist A deeply funny, profound, and timely comedy about the contemporary overreliance on data to predict everything and anything, Baxter’s latest is another excellent tale to add to his much admired and enjoyed body of work.
Jean Hanff Korelitz
Positive Booklist Korelitz presents a compelling and worthy sequel, another rip-roaring thriller full of very amusing scenes of delusional writers and their awful prose and many twists and turns.
Tony Tulathimutte
Rave Booklist Thoughtfully and artfully constructed and outrageously entertaining.
Richard Flanagan
Positive Booklist This meditative, often beautiful, deeply introspective, and unusual book is one that only Flanagan could produce.
Kevin Barry
Rave Booklist A sterling work of historical fiction and a picaresque love story that is brutal, hilarious, and fabulously entertaining.
Rosalind Brown
Positive Booklist This novel announces a unique and exciting new talent in British fiction.
Andrew O'Hagan
Positive Booklist In this Jonathan Franzenesque tale (this is a social realist novel with a moral core), O’Hagan explores the vacuous attempts of the British aristocracy to maintain their wealth and prestige at the expense of others in this kaleidoscopic exploration of post-pandemic and post-Brexit Britain.
Joseph O'Neill
Rave Booklist This is a wondrous novel, full of insights, one that leaves the reader questioning why there isn’t more fiction about the world’s most popular sport.
Gabriel Smith
Positive Booklist Picaresque ... Written in short, clipped chapters and featuring uproarious dialogue (especially with Gabriel’s brother), this is a darkly comic and brilliantly unusual debut.
Daniel Handler
Rave Booklist Dazzling ... Thought-provoking, deeply personal, and like few other memoirs in the range of topics covered, Handler’s mix of the personal and the literary is as compelling as his gloriously off-beat fiction.
Neel Mukherjee
Positive Booklist Probing and ambitious, this is an engaging work from a fabulously gifted writer.
Ferdia Lennon
Rave Booklist Wonderfully odd, riotously funny ... Though it may not take hold of the reader right away, once it does, it does not let go as this superb novel builds to a page-turning crescendo that evokes the great tragedy the men stage.
Andrew Boryga
Positive Booklist Superbly written, this is a darkly funny, searing exposé of the contemporary appetite for trauma narratives and the ill-informed responses of many institutions to issues of racial justice.
Isabel Waidner
Rave Booklist Particularly superb in its portrayal of the personal connection many feel with celebrities, this is a short, delightful, and singular novel from one of the most profoundly different writers around, a worthy follow-up to Waidner’s prize-winning Sterling Karat Gold.
Molly McGhee
Rave Booklist Sparkling ... The unreality of the setting is expertly used to suggest the inhumanity of many accepted norms, and the narrative unfurls into a superlative state-of-the-nation novel like no other. Full of astoundingly resonant and eminently quotable points about labor, capital, and depression, this wondrous literary creation brilliantly captures the excessive demands of contemporary work.
Isle McElroy
Positive Booklist Compelling, hilarious, and thought-provoking, this is a fascinating Freaky Friday-like thought-experiment that questions the performance and expectations of gender roles, the body-mind puzzle, how class can define a person’s perspective, and the definition of identity.
Julie Schumacher
Positive Booklist Schumacher’s trilogy brilliantly skewers the soulless, administrator-led world of contemporary universities, concluding with this edifying and satisfying novel.
William Boyd
Positive Booklist While the authorial intrusions feel tacked on, this is a fine novel, and it is a pleasure to be immersed in Boyd’s wry prose. As over-the-top as Cashel’s life is, his failings and romantic ideals render him compellingly and endearingly human.
Elliot Ackerman
Positive Booklist Speculative ... The prolific Ackerman uses an alternate world for a thoughtful and fascinating thought experiment, one that explores mortality, fate, and the malleability of historical memory.
Jess Row
Rave Booklist Stupendously good ... Each character’s story is a fascinating portal into contemporary life, adding up to a deeply moving, wonderfully engaging, and truly remarkable novel of the times.
Brigitta Olubas
Rave Booklist Exhaustively researched ... Olubas constructs a fascinating portrait of Hazzard’s early life in Australia, and throughout she weaves in astute suggestions of biographical experiences that influenced Hazzard’s fiction ... While sometimes too detailed, this is an impressive, revealing, and worthy biography of one of the most important writers of the last century.
Andrew Sean Greer
Positive Booklist The star is the narrator, Freddy, whose wry, loving perspective means Less’ quirky antics are always grounded in some seemingly fathomable logic. Full of riotously funny scenes—particularly around Less’ overconfidence in his German-speaking abilities—this is a worthy follow-up to the magnificent and much-lauded Less, and it is a joy to once again accompany Arthur on his travels.
Jonathan Dee
Rave Booklist Compelling and thrilling ... Dee’s impressive versatility is on display once again in this scintillating and entertaining tale.
Ian McEwan
Rave Booklist McEwan returns to his forte, the sweeping family drama ... This is a tale focused on a few characters that reveals much about the way the world has changed in McEwan’s lifetime. It is a rapturously enjoyable journey and one that demonstrates why McEwan is still one of the most engaging writers around.
Kimberly Garza
Rave Booklist Garza’s excellent debut paints a rich portrait of the inhabitants of Galveston and other parts of southern Texas ... Garza also captures the effects of many real events. There are numerous veterans of the Iraq war, and Hurricane Ike looms over much of the novel. Written in lyrical, nearly hypnotic prose that makes the reader feel the Texan humidity, this is a brilliantly plotted, startling, and richly rewarding exploration of the myths that bind people together, generational traumas, and the remarkable adaptability of humans.
Julian Barnes
Rave Booklist Merging the ear for voice, language, and character Barnes displays in his fiction with the exhaustive research he conducts... this is a lyrical, thoughtful, and intriguing exploration of love, grief, and the collective myths of history. Barnes adds yet another remarkable title to his astoundingly remarkable body of work.
Jordan Castro
Rave Booklist With a wry knowingness reminiscent of Ben Lerner’s characters, Castro’s protagonist spends more time texting friends about his ablutions than writing and even more time fantasizing about completing his novel than writing it ... The metafictional elements do work supremely well. This is a confident, unique take on autofiction, a form that lends itself well to Castro’s focus on the endless distractions of modern life, and it is hilarious and enthralling, to boot.
Peter C Baker
Positive Booklist ... beautifully written ... In a tale that unfurls like a thriller across these two narratives, Baker is subtly indignant about the entire neoconservative project. This assured debut is a timely reminder of the traumas caused by many post-9/11 policies.
Chuck Klosterman
Rave Booklist Klosterman makes compelling connections ... His writing is strongest when he looks at moments through a contemporary lens ... Wonderfully researched, compellingly written, and often very funny, this is a superb reassessment of an underappreciated decade from a stupendously gifted essayist.
Shahriar Mandanipour, Tr. Sara Khalili
Rave Booklist Across this startling, unnerving, and haunting collection, Mandanipour...explores the many traumas of recent Iranian history ... Dostoyevskian in their density and black humor, Mandanipour’s stories capture the Iranian experience of constant upheaval in a brilliant translation that allows the English-speaking world to experience this gem of Iranian literature.
Jennifer Egan
Rave Booklist ... this novel excoriates the desire of tech companies to quantify everything and warns about unthinkingly taking a bite from the seemingly free \'candy house\' offered by such companies. Haunting and often hilarious, this is a wondrous, riotously inventive work of speculative fiction that celebrates the power of the imagination in the face of technology that threatens to do our thinking for us.
David Sanchez
Positive Booklist ... startling, superbly written ... Wonderfully evocative of the seedy underbelly of Florida’s Gulf Coast, Sanchez’ s tale follows David as he cycles through recovery, relapses, homelessness, and rehab, yielding a stunningly written depiction of rock bottom. The prose flows like the water that surrounds the coast, occasionally crashing over the reader with arresting descriptions of drug-induced paranoia. Such passages hark back to Burroughs, while the way David’s love of literature helps his sobriety is deeply moving. Even when describing horrors, Sanchez’s rich, stylish prose is a treat to read. This is a brilliant, harrowing, and unflinching depiction of a journey to the brink and back.
Sasha Fletcher
Positive Booklist Fletcher’s unusual debut novel evokes a surreal, heightened version of reality ... described in exacting detail by the narrator, whose voice and opinions often take over the novel. The digressive prose of the narrator is relentless, hyperactive, and indignantly and understandably angry at police brutality, student loans, and the many under-acknowledged horrors of American history ... Strange and glib, this is a Lynchian love story that captures the relentless ridiculousness of the contemporary moment.
Francesco Pacifico, Tr. Elizabeth Harris
Rave Booklist Beautifully translated by Elizabeth Harris, this is an entrancing novel, one that is full of complex and brilliantly realized characters.
Mike Decapite
Rave Booklist Wistful ... In clipped, stylized prose, this novel whisks through a decade of Mike’s life ... Effortlessly drifting through the years and narrative forms...this is almost a sepia-tinted look back at a man’s life and a past New York. DeCapite is a phenomenally skilled writer: Little happens here, but the dialogue is rich, believable, and often very funny, and this is a wonderfully unusual meditation on nostalgia and love.
Donald Antrim
Rave Booklist [A] marvelous, heartbreaking, and beautifully revealing memoir ... Antrim magnificently captures the self-loathing many depressives constantly feel ... While it is emotionally draining—Antrim does not shy away from the realities of his condition—his honesty is in some ways comforting, and this painstakingly and gloriously written work might make some readers feel less alone.
Calvin Kasulke
Rave Booklist In this gloriously inventive debut, Kasulke has constructed a funny, tender, and compelling novel that consists entirely of messages on the workplace app Slack ... This is a workplace comedy that brilliantly captures the era of remote work ... Kasulke turns what sounds like a gimmicky premise, and a limiting one at that, into a poignant depiction of the always-on nature of the contemporary workplace. Kasulke’s ear for dialogue is remarkable as he truly captures the in-jokes, asides, and odd language of Slack communication. Funny, relatable, and incredibly timely, this is a hugely entertaining read.
Andrew Palmer
Rave Booklist [A] quiet, meditative, and fascinating debut novel ... Thoughtful, often very funny, and full of amazing passages that capture how engrossing reality television can be, this a sterling and moving debut.
Matthew Specktor
Positive Booklist Across these essays, which create a fascinating blend of memoir and criticism, he weaves his experiences of divorce and loss between profiles of creative Los Angeles figures and their successes and failures ... Specktor provides his readers with a voluminous list of recommended books and films to complete this engagingly conversational, confessional, rueful, and wonderfully researched work.
Rosecrans Baldwin
Positive Booklist After discussing Hollywood, Baldwin mesmerically captures the horrors of recent forest fires and the 2018 mudslides, events that have scarred the landscape and its residents. In the final section, perhaps the strongest, Baldwin looks at the tragic and inexcusable inequality that divides L.A. Full of surprising facts and anecdotes, this is a compelling, thoroughly researched, and lovingly crafted chronicle of how Los Angeles came to be.
Alex McElroy
Positive Booklist Framed as Sasha’s memoir and switching between the cult’s development and Sasha’s earlier years, the novel’s pacing is beautifully unhurried. Exploring the complexities of friendship, a culture of toxic masculinity, and the perils of constantly being online, this is an ambitious, timely, and dazzling debut.
Jean Hanff Korelitz
Positive Booklist Korelitz effortlessly deconstructs the campus novel and, much like Michael Chabon in Wonder Boys (1995), acerbically mocks the publishing industry. Fearless Korelitz presents a wry and unusual joyride of a thriller full of gasp-inducing twists as it explores copyright, ownership, and the questionable morals of writers.
Deirdre McNamer
Positive Booklist McNamer masterfully swoops in and out of the experiences of a varied cast of characters ... The early scenes evoke a wistful sense of loss, grief, and abandonment reminiscent of Kate Walbert’s Our Kind (2004) before the narrative smoothly transitions into a fascinating whodunit. McNamer weaves into this narrative the ripple effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the mismanagement of retirement communities, a setting that is particularly relevant now considering the way COVID-19 has ravaged these communities. With beautifully realized characters, a wonderfully constructed plot, and some understated but powerful prose, this novel is a delight from start to finish.
Elliot Ackerman and James Admiral Stavridis
Rave Booklist ... chilling yet compulsively readable ... the action in this near-future world is grounded in contemporary events ... The story focuses not only on the decision-makers, but also on the soldiers asked to carry out each mission, humanizing the horrors of war. Ackerman and Stavridis have created a brilliantly executed geopolitical tale that is impossible to put down and that serves as a dire, all-too-plausible warning that recent events could have catastrophic consequences.
John Lanchester
Rave Booklist Lanchester uses gothic tropes and settings to explore contemporary concerns ... Across these immensely enjoyable and varied tales, Lanchester embraces the camp silliness of the gothic sensibility, while also making astute observations about our ever-developing digital reality.
Richard Flanagan
Rave Booklist The analogy between the life-support system used to sustain Francie and the current economic system perpetuating environmentally destructive industries may be obvious, and Flanagan’s point is not subtle. Unless radical changes are made, we face a bleak, unimaginable world in the near future. Like Richard Powers’ The Overstory (2018), this is a timely, unforgettable work of climate fiction, unrelenting in its focus on the horrors of climate change, but one that also offers some hope.
Peter Mendelsund
Rave Booklist The graceful economy of language and a setting that feels almost like the real world are reminiscent of Kafka, while the halting prose echoes David Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress. But as well as being a fable set in a semi-recognizable place, this is also a vivid depiction of what it means to be a delivery driver in a world of casualized labor. Like Johanna Stoberock’s Pigs (2019), Mendelsund’s novel is not only a parable of contemporary capitalism but also a wonderful story, one that just as it begins to sag instead launches into a magnificent final act. This is an assured, hugely enjoyable novel full of grace and wit from a writer with a unique vision of what fiction can be.
Jim Carrey
Positive Booklist Throughout, Carrey has flashbacks to his Canadian childhood, which are some of the most interesting parts of the novel. Reminiscent of Mark Leyner’s absurdist depictions of wealth...and with a similarly otherworldly depiction of L.A. in A. M. Homes’ This Book Will Save Your Life (2006), this is an engaging, fun tale that plays with the public perceptions of celebrities, questions our compulsive need to view, and contains a gloriously off-the-wall conclusion.
Charlie Kaufman
Positive Booklist While convoluted (even for Kaufman), this novel is magnificently imaginative, bringing to mind Beckett, Pynchon, and A. R. Moxon’s more recent The Revisionaries ... With this surprisingly breezy read, given its length, Kaufman proves to be a masterful novelist, delivering a tragic, farcical, and fascinating exploration of how memory defines our lives.
Elliot Ackerman
Positive Booklist Ackerman’s trademark prose, defined by stillness and rich descriptions, evocatively captures the strained nature of contemporary Turkish life. While markedly different from Ackerman’s earlier fiction, this slow-burning novel of intrigue deftly hints at a shadowy world that exists just out of frame and is one that lives long in the memory.
Adam Levin
Rave Booklist ... another monumentally imaginative novel ... While the influence of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest looms large—there are long descriptions of movies, Jonboat’s intoxicatingly beautiful wife, a vividly imagined alternate history, and a focus on the costs of entertainment and pleasure—Levin’s vibrant voice is unlike anyone else in contemporary fiction. While breathtakingly bizarre, this relentlessly inventive novel teems with humanity, humor, and pathos like few other recent works and is a book many will obsess over and delight in.
A. R. Moxon
Rave Booklist ... sprawling, mesmerizing, unforgettable ... bizarre happenings set in motion an astonishing narrative that encompasses a huge sweep of history, from America’s founding to the present, and involves a series of magical realist events, including a fantastical circus and an underground world of crime. With typographical changes indicating switching between characters, Moxon’s intricately constructed apocalyptic caper is teeming with philosophical concepts. For fans of Mark Danielewski, David Foster Wallace (particularly Infinite Jest), Sergio De La Pava, and other fiercely ambitious writers, it sometimes feels like Moxon is a puppet master who has lost all control, only to masterfully pick up the strings to get his marionettes dancing again in an entirely unexpected way. Delving into memory and belief as well as complex questions about authorship and ownership, Moxon’s astounding novel, bursting at the seams with ideas and pathos, is a breathless demonstration of masterful storytelling.
Matthew Dicks
Positive Booklist Dicks manages to create tension, pathos, humor, and some searing melodrama in a novel written entirely in lists ... Through lists, Dan’s rich, sympathetic voice shines, and as he organizes his opinions about music, his love of his wife, and his many vices and neuroses, he is funny and insightful. Like Benjamin Kunkel’s Indecision (2005) and Joshua Ferris’s To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (2014), this tale explores the struggles of a man attempting to navigate contemporary adulthood and his fear that he is unable to function like everyone around him. Often moving, sometimes shocking, always entertaining, this superbly crafted work emphasizes the incalculable variety of the novel form.
JP Gritton
Positive Booklist In this throwback to 1980s dirty realism and a novel reminiscent of Frank Bill’s fiction, Gritton evokes a beautiful rural landscape and people struggling with the cards they’ve been dealt, creating a rollicking portrait of a compelling and complicated man who is the product of his choices as much as his circumstances.
Sara Wheeler
Rave Booklist Wheeler carves a unique portrait of Russia, one informed by a genuine affection for the food, culture, and landscape. A journey through time, space, and personal, culinary, and literary history, Wheeler’s latest is a joyous demonstration of how brilliantly immersive travel writing can be at its very best.
Dexter Palmer
Rave Booklist ... a brilliant work of historical fiction ... like the historical fiction of Hilary Mantel and Caryl Phillips, Palmer does not shy away from the depravity of the past, particularly the violent desires of London’s elite. Expertly utilizing an actual bizarre historical event to explore faith, reason, and the foundations of our current economic system, this exhaustively researched and dexterously constructed novel is another triumph to add to Palmer’s incredibly diverse corpus of works.
Johanna Stoberock
Rave Booklist ... extraordinarily imaginative ... This is an allegorical text that brings to mind Kafka’s darker stories or Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), not only for some shocking violence and some beautiful prose, but, also like Kafka and McCarthy’s fiction, because the intended allegory is opaque, so the novel can be read in several ways, as about the climate crisis, generational debt, immigration, and much more. But perhaps most remarkable is that as well as building a rich, fable-like world, Stoberock simultaneously weaves an engrossing and breathless narrative about the human capacity for both destruction and survival.
Caleb Crain
Positive Booklist ... a fascinating depiction of the Occupy period, a moment that popularized a stronger critique of capitalism and led to even more overt forms of surveillance. As the characters’ friendships strain, Crain offers many wonderful turns of phrase that evocatively demonstrate how surveillance affects how all of us think, relate, and communicate. Crain also pertinently explores the legal and moral challenges of the digital age.
Christopher Benfey
Positive Booklist In this unusual biography, Benfey...persuasively argues that Kipling’s rarely discussed decade in America, from 1889 to 1899, made an indelible imprint on not only his writing but also American culture ... In slightly disjointed but nonetheless illuminating chapters, Benfey places Kipling’s work and often deplorable political views in the context of American society in the late nineteenth century, and he offers many insightful readings of Kipling’s enduring stories and poems ... [a] wonderfully approachable piece of scholarship...
Jess Row
Rave Booklist Utilizing a stunning range—one paragraph moves effortlessly from Nas to Jacques Derrida—Row exposes how many writers use space, time, and style to enact these flights ... Perhaps most interesting is the assertion that shame is a key component of these texts, particularly visible in the works of David Foster Wallace. But Row does not only issue blistering critiques, he also provides hope. Drawing on his personal experiences and the work of James Baldwin and other authors, he develops the idea that interracial art represents the possibility of \'reparative writing.\' Full of brilliant readings and beautifully written, this mind-altering work of criticism establishes Row as one of the preeminent cultural critics of our age.
Chuck Klosterman
Positive Booklist ... a delightful grab-bag of ideas, characters, and fantastical plots, all in prose that jumps off the page ... these vignettes, often with Twilight Zone- or Black Mirror-like premises, are both profoundly weird and weirdly profound. Some take the form of long-form jokes, some are more like parables, but in each, despite its brevity, Klosterman develops a stunningly complete world. At times it feels like Klosterman is channeling David Foster Wallace, Lorrie Moore, and/or Tom Robbins, and though some stories feel a bit gimmicky, the collection is, overall, quite remarkable. Designed to be dipped in and out of in short bursts, this book of quirky tales from a supremely confident writer is moving, funny, and ceaselessly entertaining.
C.J. Hauser
Rave Booklist ... glorious ... Reminiscent of the family explorations of Rick Moody, Jennifer Egan, and Lauren Groff, this tragicomic novel explores climate change, family ties, and the millennial generation’s feeling that they have arrived late to the party, that humanity and the environment appear to be declining before their eyes. Full of brilliantly realized characters, Hauser’s latest is profound, often incredibly funny, and captures the times like few other contemporary novels.
Elliot Ackerman
Rave Booklist [A] searing, contemplative, and unforgettable memoir-in-essays ... Deeply personal yet never losing sight of the big, historical reasons for recent events, this collection recalls Michael Herr’s classic Dispatches ... perhaps the finest writing about the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts that has been published to date.
Robert Menasse, Trans. by Jamie Bulloch
Positive Booklist ... utterly unique ... Menasse pairs a hapless Belgian detective story line along with satirical depictions of the modern workplace that bring to mind Joshua Ferris’ Then We Came to the End (2007). In constantly blending styles and genres, Manasse captures the wonderful diversity of cultures that the EU has brought together. Winner of the German Book Prize, this is part celebration of the EU and part farce, a strange, timely novel emphasizing the benefits of international institutions at precisely a moment when they are increasingly under stress.
Ian McEwan
Positive Booklist \"While the alternate history is at times clunky and distracting, the comparisons between contemporary British politics and the 1980s are apt. McEwan makes an odd but inventive premise work spectacularly well; it enables him to explore nearly every hot-button issue, and it is fascinating to witness one of the finest living novelists delve into topics of such pertinence and complexity.\
Brad Leithauser
Rave Booklist \"Like Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Less (2018), Leithauser’s journey novel wonderfully mixes pathos and comedy, and Louie, as he struggles for a sense of value and self, is endearingly and wonderfully human at every moment.\
Chris Rush
Positive Booklist \"Rush is brutally honest about his experiences with his family, sexuality, and drugs. In this mix of morality tale and Thoreauvian meditation on the American landscape, Rush brings the conspiracy-laden world of the early 1970s counterculture vividly back to life; each page provides a fascinating window onto not only a tumultuous period of his life but also, more broadly, the American experience. This is a confessional and thoughtful memoir of the highest order.\
Takis Wurger, trans. by Charlotte Collin
Positive Booklist \"Würger’s international best-selling debut is a timely, beautifully paced novel about class and prestige in the #MeToo era ... In a campus novel that echoes the detective structure of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History... Würger cycles between each character’s voice to brilliantly evoke the medieval unreality of Cambridge and the almost comical wealth of the students. There is much to dissect in this concise and dramatic tale.\
Peter Mendelsund
Positive Booklist Like an ever-shifting Rubik’s Cube, Mendelsund’s narrative blends influences and genres at will: it begins as an sf dystopia, unfurls like a mystery, and includes some deeply insular sections reminiscent of the late David Markson. Using a setting and themes similar to Don DeLillo’s Zero K (2016), Mendelsund has created a dense, complex, and rewarding novel that explores the ever-hazier distinctions between copying and creating, between ourselves and our ubiquitous devices, and between what is real and what is simulated.
Joseph Scapellato
Positive Booklist The descriptions of Eastern Europe echo Keith Gessen’s Another Country, and Stanley’s conflicted masculinity as well as the repeated trick of one-sentence chapters bring to mind Ron Currie’s Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles ... Merging the ludicrous and the melancholic, the odd premise provides many laugh-out-loud moments and some curious insights and enables Stanley to explore and understand why he performs the same role each and every day.
Guy Gunaratne
Positive Booklist Explosive ... begins with palpable tension and urgency, a tone reminiscent of early Bret Easton Ellis. The focus on racial bigotry is markedly like that of Kenneth Steven’s 2020, but Gunaratne’s vision is much broader, encompassing the continuing reverberations of British colonialism, ideas of community and identity, and the everyday struggles of his adolescent protagonists. While many will need help decoding the constant slang, Gunaratne’s polyvocal tale, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, etches a rich picture of contemporary London and the recurring, historically rooted racial tensions that dominate it.
Adam Nemett
Rave Booklist Nemett’s incredible debut follows David Fuffman, a comics-obsessed freshman at Princeton ...The novel switches between the perspectives of David, or Infrared, and his old high-school crush, Haley Roth, also at Princeton. As their group grows into a ridiculous cult, and it becomes unclear what is real, there are numerous staggeringly imaginative set-pieces involving a striking cast of characters. With a preapocalyptic setting like that of Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story and soaked in hallucinogens in a way that recalls Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! Trilogy, Nemett’s wondrously fresh novel positively bursts with charm, heart, and invention.
Luce D'Eramo, Trans. by Anne Milano Appel,
Rave Booklist D’Eramo’s stand-in narrator evocatively describes the abject sights and smells of her experiences in a factory, and later in the Dachau concentration camp ... Perhaps most like D. M. Thomas’ controversial The White Hotel (1981), or the unflinchingly brutal realism of Pier Pasolini’s Salò, D’Eramo’s tale is built from disparate memories as they returned to her later in life, and she consciously tries to avoid giving shape or structure to this fictionalization of her experiences. The result is a difficult, disturbing, and yet brilliantly ambiguous exploration of humanity’s darkest time.
Elliot Ackerman
Rave Booklist \"...[a] gorgeously constructed short novel ... Both Eden’s and Mary’s fears and foibles are richly explored to create a deeply moving portrayal of how grief can begin even while our loved ones still cling to life. In this unique Afghanistan and Iraq Wars novel, which joins a growing genre that includes Kevin Powers’ Yellow Birds​ (2012) and Phil Klay’s Redeployment (2014), Ackerman’s focus on a single family makes the costs of war heartbreakingly clear, as does his drawing emotion and import from the smallest of acts with incredible skill. Many will read this wonderful novel in a single sitting.\
Zachary Mason
Positive Booklist Like the ancient texts he is inspired by, Mason humanizes each figure, whether godly or mortal ... some familiarity with these myths is helpful, particularly in order to appreciate his changes. A fractured, multilayered text reminiscent of Alan Lightman’s classic Einstein’s Dreams (1992) and similar to Madeline Miller’s similarly themed Song of Achilles (2012), Mason’s novel is written in beautiful prose that almost reads like blank verse. Mason once again displays his ability to transform classical creations into a tale that is distinctly his own.
Thomas Clerc, Trans. by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Rave Booklist Online ...A Clerc slowly describes every facet of his home in ridiculous, fascinating, often hilarious detail. Treating each object, whether a doorbell, a book, or a kitchen utensil, as equally worthy of attention, he creates a comical forensic analysis of the possessions he has accumulated since moving in on September 11, 2001, while self-consciously imitating and expanding Xavier de Maistre’s classic, A Journey around My Room (1795) ... Challenging to get into yet easy to read, this wonderfully translated, thought-provoking work questions what defines a person, the relationships we have with the objects that define our routines, and what literature can be.
Keith Gessen
Positive Booklist \"With a realistic approach that nods to William Dean Howells and Tolstoy in equal measure, and like the fiction of his n+1 cohorts Chad Harbach and Benjamin Kunkel, Gessen presents a measured, socially engaged novel that is moving, often funny, and deeply thought-provoking.\
Jim Crace
Positive Booklist Crace’s latest is an ethereal novel that ambles and simmers towards a delightful conclusion ... exploring ideas of myth, grief, and inequality.
Joseph O'Neill
Positive Booklist ...beautifully crafted short stories ... Here, as in his novels, he dissects the granular details of contemporary social mores while global issues flicker in and out of focus ... O’Neill’s tales often echo [David Foster] Wallace’s mixture of humor and profundity, demonstrating a similar, almost preternatural eye for the absurdities of contemporary life.
Brock Clarke
Rave Booklist Online \"Full of sharp left turns and unexpected narrative choices, Clarke’s ... bleak yet hilarious collection constantly mixes the seemingly mundane with the profound ... In trying to illuminate how we discuss race, war, and family dynamics, Clarke shows he is constantly willing to push boundaries. The resulting tales are hilarious, haunting, and original.\
Ted Scheinman
Rave Booklist Online While Scheinman is clearly an astute reader of Austen—he includes numerous analyses of Austen’s life and work that are insightful and often quite funny—this is also a fascinating window into a man’s experience in a largely female realm. Scheinman is a wonderful guide to the world of Austen, and this honest and thoughtful discussion of the role Austen’s works have played in his family will delight any Janeite.
Julian Barnes
Rave Booklist As Paul and Susan plunge ever-deeper into love, Barnes beautifully demonstrates that their romantic fantasy—and, by extension, the novel as a genre focused solely on love—struggles to survive in the face of violence, financial practicalities, and alcoholism. With a narrator every bit as intriguing as Stevens in Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day (1989), the novel slowly unfurls, and the reader drifts along on Barnes’ gorgeous, undulating prose. Focusing on love, memory, nostalgia, and how contemporary Britain came to be, Barnes’ latest will enrapture readers from beginning to end.
Jonathan Miles
Positive Booklist Cleverly shaped as a journalistic report and told in a style similar to that of Ron Currie and John Jeremiah Sullivan, Miles’ tale offers a nuanced and endlessly entertaining exploration of the age-old debate between faith and reason.
Richard Flanagan
Rave Booklist \"In a brilliant third act, Flanagan turns his savage mockery to the recent trend of autobiographical fiction, including the celebrated, multivolume My Struggle by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard. Full of hilarious asides, this sonorous, blackly comic novel offers searing insight into our times.\
Lorrie Moore
Rave Booklist These essays define Moore (Bark, 2014) as a critic of great candor and fairness, and a great champion of female writers ... her incisive readings are a must for budding authors ... Moore, cogent, distinctive, and entertaining, reiterates what great art can do.
Peter Carey
Rave Booklist As Carey guides readers across this vast, often barren landscape and into each character’s complicated personal history, he further delves into his career-long fascination with the dark underbelly of Australian history. Carey is a giant of contemporary fiction, and with this powerful, pertinent exploration of race and national identity, the importance and resonance of his work is freshly and enjoyably affirmed.
Andrew Sean Greer
Rave Booklist While such luminaries as Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, and John Irving have praised Greer’s previous novels, including The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells (2013), Less is perhaps his finest yet ... Through numerous flashbacks, Greer signals his debt to Proust and paints a comic yet moving picture of an American abroad. As Greer explores Less’ lovelorn memories, he also playfully mocks the often ludicrous nature of the publishing industry. Less is a wondrous achievement, deserving an even larger audience than Greer’s best-selling The Confessions of Max Tivoli.