About Book Marks
Cory Oldweiler
Recent Reviews
Karen Jennings
Positive The Star Tribune Much of the story reads like an allegory, but Jennings, despite her insight, never implies that Samuel\'s actions are generalizable to a nation. This is simply how isolation, humiliation and disappointment at the hands of friends, family and institutions crafted one man.
Julia Glass
Rave Boston Globe It is impossible to hide in a small town ... Many of the passionate, mysterious, and mysteriously passionate characters in Julia Glass’s new novel, Vigil Harbor, foolishly try to flout this almost axiomatic principle of small town life, creating an intimate and satisfying tableau of humanity as their deceptions trickle out and the deceivers are tracked down ... Glass ensures that the various voices telling her stories sound distinctive, something ignored by too many authors writing from multiple points of view, which adds a lushness to the relatable stories they tell about the stresses of relationships, security, parenting, and trust ... While the novel’s dramas play out mainly on the small stage of Vigil Harbor, its themes arise from global and even existential events, with Glass drawing on a richly imagined world some dozen years in the future. Sad to say, that future does not look bright ... After all the trauma, several characters question how comfortable they feel in Vigil Harbor, but readers should enjoy the time they spend there due to Glass’s felicitous attention to the nuances of small town life, from the pleasure found in pageantry to the nearly mythic status of longtime teachers. But ultimately this is a story about people, about understanding and acceptance, about love and violence, and about how no matter where we live, we need each other, especially when times are tough.
Jennifer Close
Positive The Star Tribune ... lovingly lived-in ... These three, and indeed all their friends and family, are intensely recognizable characters, funny and flawed, angry and desperate, and much of the novel is dedicated to their engaging development — or lack thereof. The story accelerates in the final section owing partly to an all-too-real scandal surrounding consent, harassment and the internet, particularly acute issues in the sleazy klieg lights of the 45th president ... The conclusion is too neat, perhaps, but the characters acknowledge the privileges that made it possible. And they also realize that just because there are things that can be saved, it\'s often better to throw it all out and start from scratch.
Jennifer Close
Positive The Star Tribune ... lovingly lived-in ... These three, and indeed all their friends and family, are intensely recognizable characters, funny and flawed, angry and desperate, and much of the novel is dedicated to their engaging development — or lack thereof. The story accelerates in the final section owing partly to an all-too-real scandal surrounding consent, harassment and the internet, particularly acute issues in the sleazy klieg lights of the 45th president ... The conclusion is too neat, perhaps, but the characters acknowledge the privileges that made it possible. And they also realize that just because there are things that can be saved, it\'s often better to throw it all out and start from scratch.
John W. Reid and Thomas E. Lovejoy
Rave The Boston Globe John Reid and Thomas Lovejoy argue persuasively in their wide-ranging and earnest new book ... Ever Green diligently lays out the science supporting forest preservation, starting with the crucial role trees play in capturing and processing carbon, which contributes to rising temperatures if left floating freely in the atmosphere. But the book’s best moments come when the authors talk about the forests themselves and the luxuriant diversity of life—animal, plant, and human—that can be found in them. The result is an appeal to both the mind and the heart. We must preserve the forests to survive, and we must preserve the forests because it is a moral imperative ... Cultural anthropology dominates Ever Green, to its great benefit and readers’ enlightenment, but ultimately this is a book about climate change.
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
Rave Star Tribune Spectacular ... An intensely evocative and gorgeously written coming-of-age story ... Gorcheva-Newberry suffuses her story with Russian color ... And she has a genuine gift for metaphor ... Life indeed holds many sorrows for young eyes, sorrows that will fill readers\' eyes with tears and wonder at Gorcheva-Newberry\'s magnificent tale.
Joe Mungo Reed
Positive The Washington Post Joe Mungo Reed’s Hammer has a lot to say about the role that art plays in the world at large ... The novel gains lamentable timeliness from a late plot twist involving Ukrainian independence and Vladimir Putin’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, but Reed sensitively handles those issues while steadily raveling his characters’ increasingly disparate lives into an intricate look at politics, morality and coming to terms with one’s past.
Jennifer Haigh
Mixed The Boston Globe It has to be difficult to fashion entertaining or edifying fiction from the freighted world of abortion politics, and Haigh succeeds only sporadically. In attempting to portray both camps, she falls into caricature, particularly in the character of Victor, an unremittingly hateful and ignorant abortion opponent. This is not to imply that he is unrealistic or unfamiliar; sadly, he is neither. But reading about people who solely elicit revulsion is both exhausting and not terribly interesting ... Surely there are clinics that only serve at-risk populations, but the dour mood feels at odds with the book’s dedication \'to the one in three,\' cited in the text as the percentage of American women who \'would, at some point, terminate a pregnancy.\' Clearly women seek an abortion for reasons besides being homeless or addicted or underage or living with a murderer; many do find a happy ending ... Claudia and Victor are on a collision course, one abruptly averted via lazy deus ex machina. An extended saccharine epilogue closes Claudia’s story with an upbeat bow, and allows Victor more unwanted bile, but the attempt at a happy ending seems, particularly in 2022, incredibly unlikely and far away.
Sandro Veronesi, Tr. Elena Pala
Mixed Los Angeles Review of Books The Hummingbird, as the novel is titled in Elena Pala’s uneven English translation, is an intricately executed work, told via letters, emails, text chains, transcribed conversations, and traditional narrative, all of which are jumbled up and presented out of chronological order, particularly in the first half of the book ... Despite readers being prepared for Irene’s death, Veronesi’s execution of the scene is shattering ... The chapter is a truly brilliant piece of narrative and a high point of Pala’s translation, hitting countless emotional beats and conveying the deliberate pacing of Veronesi’s original ... [a] potential hurdle for American readers is the unmistakably British, and sometimes Irish, texture of Pala’s prose, which her editors seem not to have adjusted at all for the US publication ... None of these peccadillos constitutes a fatal flaw, of course, and yet their accretion, coupled with the strength of Veronesi’s original, convinces me that readers deserved a bit more attention from both the translator and her editors. Consider this criticism simply a bit of a spoiler—which I guess makes me, in many eyes, an insensitive monster trying to ruin your fun. I won’t succeed. Veronesi’s execution is too strong.
Gunnhild Øyehaug, Tr. Kari Dickson
Rave The Star Tribune ... heartfelt and heartbreaking ... Dickson, who translated Øyehaug\'s two prior English-language books, repeatedly evokes these \'infinite universes\' in luxuriant sentences that often spill across entire pages. And she beautifully conveys the soft emotions characteristic of Øyehaug\'s writing through evocative phrases ... It is a complex web of ideas ... Øyehaug\'s utterly unique novel will sit with you long after you finish playing your part.
Gish Jen
Rave The Star Tribune ... a jewel box of creativity and a joy to uncover. Across 11 synergistic stories about interconnected families, Jen creates a sort of episodic epic spanning 50 years, from Nixon\'s historic visit to China in 1972 through the umbrella protests in Hong Kong early in the pandemic ... Jen subtly draws attention to all these perceptions of difference, those based on race as well as on age, values, class and immigration status ... These stories offer valuable insight into our world, which feels increasingly divided in countless ways. Surely everyone—us and them, whoever they are—would benefit if together we read what Jen has to say.
Aysegül Savas
Rave The Star Tribune Savas\' luxuriantly meditative new novel, White on White, again zeroes in on...elemental interpersonal themes ... The narrator\'s research into the historic ties between touch and narrative is almost unwittingly fueled by Agnes\' compulsion to bare herself metaphorically. While we see the \'physical aspect\' of nakedness the same as it has been for centuries, our current \'perception of being unclothed might hold entirely different meanings, like a thin film obscuring the subject from view\' ... The many correlations between that \'thin film\' and the \'pleasingly thin\' Agnes, so desperate to have someone slip inside her skin and understand her, make Savas\' lyrically spare gem shimmer with richly complex insights on communication, family, love and friendship.
Porter Fox
Rave The Boston Globe ... alternately alarming and adventurous ... Fox has amassed a truly anxiety-inducing blizzard of data, at one point facetiously likening his book to a \'flaming bag of apocalyptic dog feces.\' And he’s not entirely wrong. There is a lot of gloomy research on display here ... If the book were nothing more than a litany of doomsday data points, it would be important reading, though hard to recommend to any save masochists ... But Fox is a seriously terrific writer and an utterly madcap reporter, qualities that allow him to leaven the weighty with the whimsical, the threatening with the thrilling. He is not content to simply interview leading scientists in their labs, but instead follows them to where they work ... Fox has assembled an entertaining cast of characters to help tell his tale, any of whom could carry a standalone profile ... As for the scientists, Fox is an able interpreter of not only their research, like the self-sustaining cycle of forest fires, but the consequences of what they have found. It’s not all immediately comprehensible though.
Edward Dolnick
Positive The Star Tribune ... [a] meticulous new book ... At the heart of this sprawling account full of astonishing takeaways are two \'rival geniuses,\' Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion ... Dolnick treats their efforts like a thriller, with both men making game-changing breakthroughs, benefiting from shrewd guesses, and being hampered by preconceptions or bad luck ... While the codebreaking chapters captivate, the supporting material—covering the development of writing, the history and culture of ancient Egypt, Napoleon\'s military campaigns in the region, the academic milieu of the early 19th century and more—can be every bit as entertaining. Dolnick is a diligent researcher ... He can be didactic and tends to overdo it on the metaphors explaining the challenges confronting Young and Champollion, but he seems genuinely awed by his subject, reflecting on humanity\'s approach to knowledge, how we judge discovery, and why we either venerate or denigrate what we do not understand. It is indeed a remarkable tale[.]
Jon McGregor
Rave The Star Tribune The novels of British author Jon McGregor are distinguished by their enlightening perceptions of both human nature and Mother Nature, and by their restrained prose, as potent as it is subtle. His latest, Lean Fall Stand, employs these talents to tell the profoundly affecting story of a man who has lost his ability with language ... It\'s a story that would be worthwhile even if delivered by a less skilled writer, but McGregor\'s facility with language gives a power and a poignancy to this tale about language\'s loss that make it unmissable.
Jon Kalman Stefansson, Tr. Philip Roughton
Positive The Star Tribune ... [a] wistful and whimsical novel ... While Stefánsson\'s observations about heartache, loneliness and yearning can be incisive, his male characters\' desires are too often reduced to a wearisome fixation on women\'s breasts. Generally, however, his writing is fertile, yielding extraordinary imagery ... There are many tears in these stories and in this village, but there is also hope, because even unfulfilled dreams offer guidance, \'they evaporate and settle like dew in the sky, where they transform into the stars in the night.\'
Jo Lloyd
Rave Los Angeles Review of Books ... entrancing ... nine rich and stylistically diverse stories. These characters are all strivers, toilers, and dreamers who never quite grasp the brass ring, never become successful or find the happiness they crave ... Lloyd dexterously dictates the pace of her storytelling by varying her sentence lengths, deploying fragments, allowing run-ons, and even enforcing a kind of enjambment with her punctuation ... At other times, Lloyd unspools clause after clause, allowing her sentences to cascade down the page, pulling the reader along. And she has a knack for indelible phrasing ... The shift in tone...across the volume as a whole, is remarkably broad, revealing what may be Lloyd’s most valuable gift: an ability to travel seamlessly wherever she wishes, her agile eye confidently guiding her characters—and her readers—as they chase the almost tangible hope that something wonderful lies ahead.
Bill François
Positive The Boston Globe François eschews the usual roundup of career achievements and research milestones in favor of a compendium of observations and anecdotes from an earnest aficionado, an environmentalist devoted to the seas. It’s a voice that suits him well, and his enchantment with and affection for the watery world about which he writes radiates from every page ... Such humanizing sentiments abound in this book...Early on it can be hard to accept just how genuine he is, yet his fervor is infectious and rather refreshing ... Some autobiographical episodes are melodramatic...And his ardor can be overwrought at times...But these are peccadillos of passion ... And that passion is a distinct advantage when discussing the damage that humans are causing to the sea and to the creatures who live there ... there will probably be some readers who find François too effusive or hippie-dippie, but that says more about them. For his part, François just wants to spark a discussion.
Ellen Airgood
Positive The Star Tribune It\'s a familiar story, hardworking single mom strives to do good by her child, but the unique environment, which Airgood fleshes out with convincing local characters and nods to area history, makes for a satisfying and enjoyable read. The many nods to nature would not be nearly as satisfying, however, without them being seen through the 10-year-old eyes of the precocious, curious and earnest Skye. She is a joy, and more mature than her age would imply ... A strong supporting cast enriches Gallion and nearby Waiska ... Airgood is an ideal guide ... If you\'ve been to the U.P., you will recognize it in this loving portrayal; if you haven\'t, you will immediately want to visit.
Edith Widder
Rave The Star Tribune ... enthralling ... The science throughout the book is fascinating as Widder repeatedly revolutionizes her field, but there is much more than science here. Widder is also an explorer, an inventor and a captivating storyteller whose life has been uncommonly adventurous, both on land and at sea ... Widder offers a forceful critique of our current mismanagement of the oceans.
Tim Parks
Positive The Star Tribune Parks\' route is gleaned from historic accounts by participants in Garibaldi\'s retreat, as well as later works of scholarship, but despite his genuinely transparent and occasionally (melo) dramatic storytelling, the only real adventures come with Garibaldi. Parks\' comprehensive knowledge leads to overindulgence or name-dropping at times, but Eleonora acts as an able stand-in for the reader, providing valuable prompts such as \'get on with it\' ... Rich characters ... even with the relatively pedestrian nature of the present-day pilgrimage, Garibaldi\'s heroic journey and Parks\' enthusiastic guide work make this a trip well worth taking.
Emma Brodie
Positive The Boston Globe ... delightfully engaging ... Brodie, a longtime editor in the publishing world, plays all the right chords in her debut, even if an occasional note (or sex scene) feels off (or like it was written by a different author). Familiar music bio boxes from the creative dynamics of the recording studio to the enticing and acrimonious highs and lows of touring, on-stage and off, are all entertainingly ticked. But what makes Songs in Ursa Major really sing is Jane, and Brodie knows just when to leave the road and focus the spotlight directly on her star, what she wants, what she needs, and what she is willing to give up or give away ... Aside from her clear affinity for her characters, Brodie also lovingly renders Bayleen Island, a thinly veiled stand-in for Martha’s Vineyard. Some specifics feel a bit more 2019 than 1969, but she nails the overall aura of island life ... a great opening act to the summer.
Lana Bastasic
Rave The Star Tribune Catch the Rabbit, the spectacular debut novel from the Yugoslavian-born Lana Bastašić, uses...quieter consequences of the war and its aftermath to bolster a fantastically genuine yet gently fantastical story of female friendship ... Bastašić, who also translated the book into English, is a glorious writer, approaching even familiar emotions with a unique vibrancy, and if Catch the Rabbit simply followed Sara and Lejla as they drove from, say, Minneapolis to St. Louis, it would still be well worth your time. But the novel\'s true brilliance lies in the many ways that the war, though rarely explicitly named, infuses and enhances every aspect of Sara\'s narration ... There is no historical hand-holding here, however, rather breadcrumbs that lead to unavoidable conclusions about Sara and Lejla\'s lives. And while readers unfamiliar with the war or the region may miss out on some of those insights, the main messages in this unmissable novel are clear[.]
Mieko Kawakami, tr. David Boyd and Sam Bett
Mixed The Star Tribune ... a swift nine-chapter story whose second half grows oppressively dark and humorless, the narrator\'s terror radiating off the page, the children from the initial chapters subsumed almost entirely in polemic ... Both tracts that Kawakami treads—the well-crafted narrative as well as the aspirational philosophizing—deserve exploration, particularly by such a skilled author. But the ambiguous focus of Heaven makes it a rather frustrating experience as a novella. The text feels both overly formulated and half-formed, the story that initially draws readers in almost a charade. The extreme violence and Kojima\'s submission-is-strength arc may cause some to abandon the book. And those who do finish it may find the brief final chapter utterly jarring ... These ideas are disquieting, and being forced to confront them is devastating. But maybe making you watch is Kawakami\'s real coup in this flawed but vital work.
Chloe Angyal
Positive The Boston Globe ... incisive and unsparing ... Some chapters recount sadly familiar scandals but readers familiar with these stories won’t really learn anything new. And a late chapter on the pandemic, featuring two choreographers and four dancers, feels a bit tacked on ... While not every point raised is as irrefutable as it is presented, Angyal provides enough compelling evidence and makes enough strong arguments that the book is an important read for ballet lovers and an essential part of any conversation moving forward. Some of Angyal’s prescriptions, such as cross-gender casting and delaying the age that girls go on pointe, would fundamentally alter the art form; others, such as radically expanding diversity and inclusivity — from corps members to corporate suits — should be indisputable in 2021 ... Angyal has written movingly elsewhere on the beauty of ballet and her hope that it will endure, but she eschews any easy encomiums here in favor of tough love. It is a plea not that ballet’s beauty will endure, but that its many harms will be consigned to the past.
Federico Falco
Rave On the Seawall A brief collection, no story stretching beyond 45 wide-margined pages, and can easily be enjoyed in a single sitting. But try to resist such temptation. Every word and sentence, including those of Croft’s sincere and illuminating note \'On Conversation\' that concludes the volume, should be savored, consumed in a rush only during those moments when you’re flying down the summer streets with Silvi on her bicycle as she searches for the boy she believes she loves.
Ross King
Positive The Star Tribune ... as this is a book about books, Ross wrangles myriad details about their creation, including producing parchment, inks, illuminations, bindings, movable type and paper (sometimes from the wardrobes of Black Death victims!), as well as innovations in typography and layout. And for bibliophiles who are also word nerds, there\'s lots of juicy etymology.
Emma Chapman
Rave The Star Tribune These first stars...have never been seen, and Chapman\'s new book, First Light: Switching on Stars at the Dawn of Time, does a great job explaining why they\'ve proved so elusive. But don\'t worry if you can\'t recall your high school astrophysics; Chapman is a sure-footed and entertaining guide ... As you might expect, there are plenty of mind-blown moments throughout ... Her everyday examples of complex concepts are conversational, witty and elucidating ... Even her footnotes house fun facts ... Chapman\'s most valuable asset here, aside from her obvious expertise, is her enthusiasm ... it is such a treat to have someone of Chapman\'s stature willing to carry us along as she reaches for these ancient stars.
Una Mannion
Positive The Star Tribune \"While this uneasy intro has serious consequences and drives thriller-like plot points, Mannion is not concerned only with what happens to Ellen. The main story, and what makes this debut so engaging, is the affecting portrait of adolescent uncertainty confronting the novel\'s narrator ... A Crooked Tree is particularly welcome at the end of an exhausting year when so many of us have become inextricably linked to technology. It takes place in 1981, when computer screens and cable TV were in their infancy, and kids roamed outside all summer long, from dawn till long past dusk. It\'s a coming-of-age tale with the heart of a serious thriller and some YA/after-school-special lessons tossed in. Put simply, it\'s a good story told by a smooth, genuine writer. In a time when so many of us would like nothing more than a bit of escape, those qualities are incredibly appealing.\
Jan Swafford
Rave The Star Tribune This book is not just Amadeus for aficionados. It is, as Mozart characterized two of his midcareer piano concertos, \'a happy medium between what\'s too difficult and too easy … there are passages here and there that only connoisseurs can fully appreciate—yet the common listener will find them satisfying as well\' ... These wondrous early tales are a highlight of the book, but they are not just solo performances ... Swafford contextualizes Mozart\'s development as a composer with helpful historical primers but keeps it interesting with countless anecdotes ... The stories behind and between the music generally hold sway, but at times the musical theory can dominate the narrative ... A point Swafford hammers home is that Mozart, unlike artists of today or even his near-contemporary Beethoven, was not writing for posterity or \'trying to express [himself]\' with his music; he simply wanted to make people \'happy with his notes.\' Mozart provides numerous opportunities to reflect on how often Mozart the composer achieved his goal.
Ben Wilson
Positive The Star Tribune Reading Metropolis, Ben Wilson\'s ambitious history of the city writ large, is akin to confronting all this urban potential energy. Chapters are tied to specific times and places, but the scale of the undertaking and the interconnectedness of the globe mocks a truly linear approach ... Overall there is more to recommend Metropolis than to fault it, however, and Wilson has done an admirable job wrangling his topic down to an easily digestible size. And like any trip to the city, there will be spots you want to revisit, and others you\'re happy to never see again. It doesn\'t mean you shouldn\'t make the journey.
Jesse Ball
Positive amNewYork Dystopian fiction resonates when we feel the shadow of our own society’s failings creeping coldly off the page. Jesse Ball’s affecting new novel, The Divers’ Game, is uncomfortably familiar ... Ball can be obliquely philosophical, but generally this is blunt stuff presented clearly and poignantly ... should certainly make you question what kind of world we are preparing for the generations to come.
Zadie Smith
Positive amNewYork ... vividly showcases [Smith\'s] fluent imagination, exploring the realm from traditional narrative to metaphorical exposition, from fiction to nonfiction ... When she’s at her best, Smith can subsume the reader into her worlds from the outset. You almost feel as if you’re reading a novel, only to be shocked — and occasionally disappointed — when a story is over too quickly ... The previously published stories are generally lengthier and feel more developed. They are often splendidly good.
Jacqueline Woodson
Rave amNewYork ... tender and evocative ... should be required reading for any author who believes a successful multigenerational saga must be sprawling and unwieldy ... Music infuses the novel, from the Prince tune of the opening party to Aubrey’s absent jazz trumpeter father; from Melody’s very name to the vivacious rhythm of Woodson’s words. Her writing sings out, impassioned, drawing you on, varying and expanding themes, until you’re immersed in these lives.
Salman Rushdie
Mixed amNewYork The novel begins promisingly...And then [Rushdie\'s] omnivorous imagination gets the better of his storytelling skills and it comes a bit unsprung ... by turns audacious, ridiculous and perceptive. Rushdie aims to encompass not just politics and culture in the U.S., but the U.K. and India as well. His text is a thicket of song lyrics, literary references, pop culture totems and factoids. But in attempting to include so much, everything suffers. Plot threads are dispatched cursorily. Incisive analysis boils down to correlation equals causation. Social commentary turns cartoonish ... Rushdie isn’t totally to blame, however, as reality today has become so implausible that true satire is difficult to conceive without pushing the boundaries into the realm of folly.
Caleb Crain
Positive AM New York The book asks cogent philosophical and ethical questions about privacy and our right to—theoretically—public information, but drags at times under the weight of the story ... Crain...is at his best here, as he was in his first novel, when doing character work — Matthew’s feelings for Leif, Leif’s faith in his abilities, Julia’s delightfully self-involved crusade. The legal ramifications of the hack can be a bit of a slog and several characters act in ways that are difficult to understand or even justify. Crain offers compelling discussions about what to expect from the surveillance state in which we already live[.]
Joy Harjo
Positive amNewYork ... both history lesson and traditional collection ... While the focus is on the past, the present does not go unnoticed ... It is notable that Harjo — perhaps — remains hopeful about the nation\'s future, as she didn’t title this collection An American Sunset.
R. L. Maizes
Pan amNewYork ... has a few intriguing and promising entries, but ultimately doesn’t have much impact ... The subject matter is well worn ... The title story should feel current since it concerns a boy deciding to come out to his parents (and everyone else) at his bar mitzvah. But it comes off as almost old-fashioned, like something from an ’80s film, albeit the hope that the moment will generate a viral video ... More interesting are those stories that concern the supernatural ... Like seemingly every collection these days, most of these stories (eight out of 11 in this case) have already been published, online or in print, in various journals. This is not necessarily a problem, but it can become one when authors or publishers reach too far into the past for material. Two particularly old stories here (Couch from 2010 and L’Chaim from 2012) could have been omitted without readers missing out on anything ... Overall, this feels a bit like watching Maizes still trying to find her voice. Her first novel, which is due out next year, will hopefully more closely resemble her edgier work here.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Positive amNewYork As expected from an intellectual like Coates, there are few easy dichotomies here. Cruelty abounds, but few characters are purely evil. Hiram and others have close, complicated relationships with their owners, and even freedom comes with its shackles ... Parts of the plot are muddled and characters’ actions are often difficult to reconcile, but it is an undeniably compelling idea with some moving scenes. The irony is that Coates’s own ability with nonfiction narrative is already close to a superpower, so hopefully his future efforts will be concentrated there.
Tope Folarin
Positive amNewYork [A] strong debut ... Folarin questions the reliability of memory, and biography in general ... The novel threatens to devolve into juvenile pining for a first love, but Folarin rescues it with a touching, almost illusory coda.
Rion Amilcar Scott
Rave amNewYork With his new collection, The World Doesn’t Require You, Scott has delved into the viscera of Cross River, exploring its passions and darkest secrets. These 11 genre-spanning stories, plus an intricate novella, take more risks both stylistically and thematically ... Scott uses not just prose passages, but emails, diary entries, academic essays, even a slide presentation, to initiate a wide-ranging, nuanced discussion of scholastic integrity, loneliness, love, toxic masculinity, gender norms, and appropriation of other‘s stories ... fascinating and fantastical ... hopefully, Scott has more of its stories to tell.
Peter Orner
Positive amNew York ... like a window into a writer’s mind ... Rather than discard the short shorts — many of which are forgettable — for a stronger, more compact volume, Orner leaves it all on the pages, almost mimicking the memories one accumulates over a lifetime: one story about this person, a fragment of that event, a scrap of the time such-and-such occurred ... All this consistency is great news for Orner’s fans, but perhaps represents a bit of an Achilles’ heel for the author, as there is little that feels new in this new book ... Orner is a skilled writer who can be incredibly moving ... With so much exciting contemporary fiction, do we really want to revisit Fall River?
Richard Russo
Pan amNewYork ... a well-intentioned, easy thriller about a missing person, but is marred by its formulaic plotting and outmoded ideas about gender ... These men are rather dull archetypes ... The biggest problem, however, is the attitude toward women, especially Jacy, who for most of the book is little more than a \'braless\' bauble the men covet. Gendered bromides litter the text...There is the seemingly obligatory reference to the 2016 election, which amounts to little more than Lincoln musing that he could never vote for Hillary ... It’s not that aging white men who think like this don’t exist; it’s whether or not you really care to read their stories anymore.
Karen Dukess
Positive amNew York A lightweight love story with some lessons learned and a glimpse of the artist as a young woman, it’s ideal for a trip to the beach or a weekend getaway ... The novel is genuine, not pretending to be anything other than the slightly nostalgic coming-of-age story about another time, both in publishing and in youth, that it is ... The dialogue can be a bit clunky and a side story...doesn’t do much, but Dukess moves her main story along. You probably know where it is headed, but the lovingly created mood, particularly in Truro and its surroundings, makes it easy to keep turning the pages.
Regina Porter
Pan amNewYork ...while there are compelling and moving episodes, the narrative is so piecemeal and rushed that any cohesive story is extraordinarily elusive, particularly if you don’t read the book in one sitting. The result is a novel that manages to be both skeletal and repetitious ... chapters skip around in time, bouncing from person to person. There is no apparent stylistic or narrative benefit to this approach; it simply feels like the chapters were dropped on the ground and picked up at random ... Certainly nothing says a novel need be organized linearly, or even coherently, but when the reader must still refer back to that cast of characters at the end of the book, the author has missed the mark.
Lauren Mechling
Positive AM New York ... astutely rendered ... Mechling does a remarkable job portraying the shifting realignments of the women’s loyalties, to each other and to their significant others. These are characters who will likely seem eerily familiar to certain readers. This specificity or, less charitably, this lack of diversity, is the novel’s one shortcoming. Mechling chronicles an almost exclusively white, upper middle-class slice of the city, though that relatively narrow focus helps make these portrayals ring so true[.]
Erling Kagge, Trans. by Becky L. Crook
Positive amNew York The book has a bit of everything, including beautiful stories like the all-day walk a 35-year-old blind woman in Kenya took with her 6-month-old child to visit the doctor who was in town for just one day. Kagge philosophizes a bit, refuting arguments that \'risky expeditions [are] playing with death\' ... There’s the obligatory criticism of screen time and the pace of modern life that any writing about something as age-old as ambulation will contain, but this is far from familiar recitation. And above all it’s sincere, Kagge’s love of walking leaping off the page as he argues that \'walking expands time rather than collapses it.\'
Oscar Cásares
Positive amNewYork It is well-researched, not sensationalized and related with a dispassionate yet tender voice ... This is a bleak story, as the lives of Nina and the two boys become increasingly entangled, though Cásares’ narrative soars near the end, with moments of humane beauty.
Colson Whitehead
Rave amNewYork Whitehead’s authority is born not only from historical fact, but from authorial craft. His deliberate, almost stolid, prose lends the horrific events he relates even more weight. The first dark turn in the novel’s narrative approaches so gently that you don’t really notice it until \'the red light of the prowl car\' hits you ... Whitehead again illuminates with incredible force the incomprehensible suffering of black Americans. Their freedoms need to follow faster.
Karen Russell
Positive amNewYork While Karen Russell’s new volume, Orange World and Other Stories, out Tuesday, has no explicit through line, her creativity is so variegated and abundant that it becomes thematic in its own right ... The fantastical is commonplace here, but nowhere is it more affectingly deployed than in the standout The Gondoliers.
Melissa Rivero
Rave amNewYork ...intensely moving ... This is not the usual up-by-your-bootstraps immigrant tale told in fiction ... That a book with such hardship is so engrossing, and indeed enjoyable, is a testament to Rivero’s genuine, complex characterization and her evocative writing, liberally infused with Spanish ... It’s vital and should be required reading for any politician or voter willfully disparaging immigrants and the almost impossible choices they make for a shot at a new life.
Susan Choi
Rave amNewYork ...a fresh, nuanced voice ... Halfway through the book, the narrative perspective switches when a thus-far ancillary character knocks down the fourth wall and starts parsing the events of the novel’s first half. It’s a meta technique deployed masterfully by Czech author Milan Kundera, and Choi uses it effectively, if at times tediously, to direct her reader\'s attention toward consideration of artistic license, how some people appropriate the lives — not to mention pain — of others ... Choi writes passages of real beauty, some of which stumble forth raw and unformed, fragments and observations that double back, accreting. Other times she deploys descriptions that feel more planned out and note perfect.
Siri Hustvedt
Pan amNew York \"... ambitious ... The already disjointed narrative gets bogged down, however, by present-day Minnesota’s digressions on everything from the 2016 presidential election to an utterly opaque episode involving Marcel Duchamp. These numerous asides, combined with appeals to the reader and haphazard narrative switches from first- to third-person, make the whole novel feel at times like one long blog post ... The narrator is also repeatedly emphatic about how many books she has read and how intellectual she is, which is odd because this novel is so clearly the work of someone who has read, written and thought at great length about, well, everything. A less erudite friend might have suggested applying a bit of that tried and true bromide: show, don’t tell.\
Amy Hempel
Positive amNew York \"Amy Hempel writes ideal fiction for our fast-paced times ... The aspirational nature of Hempel’s writing comes from the fact that, unlike social media ephemera, her stories will burrow inside you, dogging your thoughts for days ... Hempel is a skilled stylist, whether building grand structures from spare resources or using a common rhetorical device such as anaphora, the repetition of words at the beginning of successive sentences.\
Chloe Aridjis
Mixed AM New York Calls to mind one of those bizarre bioluminescent fish that live without light, deep below the ocean’s surface. It creeps along slowly, not doing much, but then blazes forth in a fleeting flash of brilliance ... Thermal inversion, ancient Greek astronomical devices, French poets (both Baudelaire and the lesser-known Lautréamont), angsty ’80s music (Depeche Mode and the Cure), the eponymous sea creatures — all are put forth with metaphorical significance, but ultimately none are developed beyond a few paragraphs. The focus turns from Luisa at the end, which is frustrating, because it is her story, even if not much happens.
Sophie Mackintosh
Rave amNew York \"Sophie Mackintosh’s spectacular debut novel, The Water Cure, has at its core an elemental fairy-tale quality, one that derives more from the menacing forests of the Brothers Grimm than the Technicolor palettes of Disney or Pixar ... The book’s true brilliance comes from its myriad uncertainties. Some are laid bare, others — including what specifically drove them to the island — remain nebular.\
Kristen Roupenian
Pan amNew York \"Roupenian’s debut story collection, You Know You Want This, mines the same territory as \'Cat Person\' — relationships are corrosive — but the nuanced insight of her breakout effort is largely absent, replaced by a reliance on violence to hammer home easy points ... These stories feel unpolished, almost rushed, and their dependence on brutality again and again evokes clickbait more than literature.\
Sally Rooney
Rave amNewYork ...a tremendously fulfilling novel by a writer with extraordinary talent ... The story may be simple on its face, but through this framework, Rooney looks at social and economic divides, the effects of domestic violence, power dynamics in relationships, depression, desire and much more ... Rooney’s writing is a marvel, seemingly so casual and uncrafted that it appears almost elemental ... Her voice is almost gentle, but her characters are intensely emotional ... Honestly, the best way to experience Rooney’s writing is to stop reading my attempt to reveal its magic and to go read her for yourself.
Cote Smith, Zack Akers, Skip Bronkie
Pan amNewYork \"There are so many parallels between the two narratives that it starts to feel more like lazy storytelling than eerie coincidence ... Podcast fans may spot some retcon when it comes to what Lia knew and when, but generally the book effectively enhances Limetown’s mystique. That doesn’t mean readers will come away with any clearer understanding of what actually caused the disappearance or what was going on in the town.\
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Rave am New York \"With his exceptional debut story collection, Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah has unleashed a ferociously indignant howl against America\'s worst impulses ... it is the perversion of the familiar that shocks the most, because while these stories are exaggerated, they are frighteningly recognizable.\
Joanne Proulx
Mixed AM New York Proulx’s novel covers a lot of territory, with several twists and turns, and it is tempting to wish she didn’t try to say quite so much about so many things. Mostly she keeps the balls in the air, but some storylines can feel overdone, especially the misguided machismo from nearly every male character ... That is not to say it is unrealistic, just tiring—which may be the point. The story excels in its depiction of women ... The scenes between Mia and Frankie are the best of the book and offer a glimmer of hope in an otherwise bleak moral landscape.
Deborah Eisenberg
Rave AM New York \"The book, her first new collection in 12 years, comprises six engrossing stories that impart so much, it is hard to believe you have spent just 20 or 30 pages with the characters ... These stories are more bleak than upbeat, but... [are] related with great warmth and beauty.\
Keith Gessen
Rave amNewYork \"Given the news cycle over the last 18 months, the fact that A Terrible Country takes place in Russia might make some people hesitant to read another word about that country, lest unpleasant thoughts intrude upon their summer idylls. But it would be a shame if anyone avoided Keith Gessen’s perceptive and entertaining new novel, because what he has to say is very much worth reading ... Despite dealing with some very literary subject matter, A Terrible Country does not take itself quite so seriously, which makes for a much better story and a much better read.\
Joe Mungo Reed
Positive AM New York Joe Mungo Reed\'s absorbing debut novel, We Begin Our Ascent, combines the drama of the Tour itself with the tragedy of a doping scandal ... Reed’s writing has a hypnotic cadence.
Nafkota Tamirat
Positive amNewYork ...it’s a testament to Tamirat’s storytelling acumen and well-crafted characters that The Parking Lot Attendant works so well ... Tamirat wonderfully captures her narrator’s teenage capriciousness, particularly in her feelings for Ayale, which slew between idolatry, infatuation, anger and disgust. When answers eventually start to come, they often remain vague, which can be a bit frustrating. Part of the tension that could have existed as the story heats up is lost because we know the narrator’s immediate fate from the start: She’s on that island. Ultimately the resolution, much like this enjoyable debut, feels over all too fast.