RaveThe Chicago Review of Books\"...carries the author’s essential voice into new and familiar territories ... Yet billing this story as a whodunit thriller is a disjustice to Nolan’s astute understanding of character psychology and political landscapes ... Each introspective passage, too, peels away at a larger picture hidden beyond the individual. Nolan is careful to expose the circumstances of societal structures that harm these characters ... The ultimate draw of the novel is a recurring fascination in Nolan’s work: the notion of personal context and how it shapes a human life.\
Melissa Chadburn
RaveThe Chicago Review of Books... actively works to balance sensitivity and realism ... skillfully folds a character-centered story about a biracial young woman’s fate into the real-life crimes of a Canadian serial killer. In creating a fictional character within a factual scenario, there is no ethically questionable retelling of a victim’s reality, but rather an acknowledgement of missing stories ... is at its best during these brief asides, which combine moments of heightened tension of the narrative past with observations and scenes that provide clues to readers wondering both how the characters got to where they are and what will happen next. This offers a similar gratification to true crime fans, who might actively collect evidence to solve the murder as the narrative unfolds. Chadburn’s unique voice, too, shines in these standalone passages ... run-on sentences create a playful and intense tone at once, favoring a punk ethos as chapters swing back and forth among memories of joy or heartbreak. Acts of sexual assault and homicide and addictive behavior are not sugar-coated—the details are grueling to read. Yet what violence is included feels necessary rather than gratuitous for the sake of shock value. The reality is that violence will be jarring no matter the situation; its occurrence cannot be written off as an isolated event. Nor is it merely an effect of poor decisions ... If any aspect of this novel veers away from the fine line of realism and storytelling, it’s the final pages. Fiction readers like myself can find comfort in a satisfactory ending, but a tidy conclusion might also feel disingenuous to the reality it represents ... as sensational as it is heartbreaking because it does what true crime narratives sometimes forget to do, which is leave space for loss. The novel does not ask us to solve a crime, fictional or otherwise.
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
PositiveChicago Review of BooksThe Orchard is a novel that engages with the paradoxical way in which youth opens one up to the world and that same quality is lost within it ... This story does not offer an in-depth history lesson for its readers, nor does it parse political moves marked with terms such as perestroika and glasnost. Any wisdom offered is in retrospect ... The importance of female relationships and stories is also supported by the reality that inspired the events in The Orchard.
Claire Keegan
RaveThe Chicago Review of BooksKeegan may be telling a fictional story, but the complicit silence of an ordinary individual faced with a corrupt institution is an authentic scenario, particularly for those living in Ireland during the operation of Magdalene laundries ... Keegan’s decision to portray the horrors of a Magdalene laundry through the exterior lens of an unassuming male character, rather than fictionalizing first-hand experiences, is a clever device which avoids shock value and instead questions how the morality of the everyman is shaped by culture ... a slim yet evocative book that honors the small things that make a difference while also showing that communities determine which traditions to celebrate or reform, to uphold or rewrite.
Ruth Ozeki
RaveThe Chicago Review of BooksIf A Tale for a Time Being is a novel concerned with a continuum of moments folding around one another, A Book of Form and Emptiness is its energetic, matter-focused parallel ... Ozeki’s books are compassionate toward individuals relegated to the periphery of society, perhaps low-income persons or differently-abled bodies, surviving in a world seemingly not made for them. The cacophony of object-voices also invites a meditation on American consumerism, a preoccupation that propels tragedies onto those unable to meet its impossible standards ... Despite an unabashed inclusion of modern events and problems, Ozeki presents facts without erring into didacticism...Such moments are fleeting on the page, and it’s up to the reader to give weight to what is placed before them ... not a sedentary read. Use of second-person \'we\' when Book speaks summons the novel’s reader inside of an ongoing narrative, allowing them to become both a character and the writer of the story they’re simultaneously absorbing and anticipating as they turn the page ... nurtures stories of human connection—not excluding those inherited through things both collected and discarded—as well as the transcendent magic that so many words can conjure. If one accepts that a novel and its counterparts, limited by form, cannot act as a true looking glass for its reader, then the value of a book is instead measured by a limited number of words that seek to convey and impact our shared realities. In the liminal space of form and emptiness, it is stories, especially those bound safely inside books, that tether us to life. Ozeki’s novels tend to speak for themselves.
Emily Austin
RaveChicago Review of BooksThe story unfolds through Gilda’s macabre, yet darkly humorous interior monologue ... Austin skillfully writes in short bursts with restrained, mordant prose to produce a breathless quality analogous to the character’s frequent panic attacks ... Austin’s limited descriptions also allow Gilda’s story to be an accessible, though exceptional, scenario for the novel’s audience ... Ultimately, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is about the fragility of being human and surviving in a world that can sometimes feel overwhelmingly sad and troubled. The close of the novel may leave readers on a hopeful note.
