RaveThe Boston Globe... luminous ... Livesey’s language is crystalline-clear and immersive, replete with vibrant imagery and echoes that play particularly effectively in her portrayal of Duncan, whose vivid imagination stymies him during class ... Ultimately what keeps Livesey’s novel aloft is that it is full of kindnesses ... Like so many other moments in this novel, that description nails the moment, the character, and the elemental aspect of the book in one fell, satisfactory swoop.
Laura Zigman
PositiveThe Boston GlobeIf Separation Anxiety has ineluctable threads of grief running through it, it also imparts a life-affirming vigor. This is partly thanks to Glenn’s wise, cut-to-the-chase ways, but also because Judy is a natural comedian and Zigman has gifted her with a fiercely singular voice ... If the book nails life’s more challenging moments, it also captures an astonishing level of empathy.
Meg Gardiner
PositiveThe Seattle Review of BooksGardiner’s latest is yet another terrific – and terrifying – chapter in her UNSUB (unknown subject) series, currently being developed by Amazon Studios for our small-screen delectation.
William Gibson
RaveThe Boston GlobeGibson brings contemporary San Francisco, future London, and their inhabitants to tangible life ... As people in two different time zones work together to save at least one future, we glimpse the human experiment through Gibson’s unerring gaze ... Gibson’s brief chapters with their brusque headings match the urgency of the novel’s action — there’s no time to lose, no time to waste. A semi-sequel to 2015’s The Peripheral,Agency stands on its own, too — as well it should, given the title — as an immersive thriller, fueled by an intelligent, empathetic imagination.
Kate Weinberg
RaveThe Boston Globe... lavishly laced with references to disappearances and vanishings, from the image of Amelia Earhart on the wall of Georgie’s dorm room, to the oft-told tale of Agatha Christie squirreling herself from sight when her husband told her he had fallen for another woman ... positively reverberates with echoes of deceit, both purposeful and self-inflicted ... emulates a nigh-on perfect slow burn, generating a pace that makes room for unexpected tragedies as well as silly student antics, drawing out multiple threads of deceptions and lies and a nearly unending river of narrative twists. As Jess, Georgie, Nick, and Alec immerse themselves in their growing friendships, their star-crossed love affairs, and explosive emotional fallouts, Weinberg reveals that she has more than a few tricks of her own up her authorial sleeve ... is also generously peppered with lively and evocative details ... The primary characters are so acutely drawn that, even those with the most irritating traits become intriguing enough to spend time with, and Weinberg brings otherworldly landscape of East Anglia to beautifully bleak and eerie life ... a stark reminder that storytelling, so often considered a magical form of communication, can just as easily represent a far less positive departure from the truth.
Cheryl Strayed
RaveThe Independent (UK)Cheryl Strayed\'s Wildis nothing if not visceral: from the harrowing scene in which she and her brother have to put down a horse, to the state of Strayed\'s feet when mutilated by too-small boots, her in-your-face narration is completely immersive; a dynamic reading sensation that belies the fact that these events are two decades old ... It is thanks to Strayed\'s cogent, generous voice that Wild retains its direction, never losing itself in murky personal-growth territory.
Erica Wright
PositiveThe Seattle Review of BooksA motley cast of colorful characters — including a hallucination-inducing jellyfish and a surprisingly non-carnivorous shark – and Stone’s super-snarky observations, gift Wright’s third novel with substance, entertainment, and chills-a-plenty.
Robert Galbraith
RaveThe Boston GlobeThe case of murdered model Lula Landry, chronicled in 2013’s The Cuckoo’s Calling, raised Strike onto a level of fame, though things have calmed down somewhat, and ‘[s]trangers were once again doing what they had done most of his life: calling him some variation on ‘Cameron Strick.’ ’ Luckily, the glut of work flowing his way hasn’t slowed … Rowling weaves a pleasurably wicked literary murder mystery with all its attendant aspects of publishing politics, from the peevish to the pompous, into Strike’s personal and professional lives … While the gruesome mystery is both unnerving and good fun, the subtle but unmistakable heft in this book comes from the fact that we get more — though, tellingly enough, not all — of the regular characters’ back stories, quirks, and foibles.
Christopher Brookmyre
RaveThe Boston GlobePart-Mission: Impossible, part-Ocean’s Eleven, part-Die Hard, part-To Catch a Thief — and containing winks to all four — The Last Hack delves into industrial espionage and hacking culture, demonstrates some seriously impressive social engineering at work, and fiercely embraces those old-fashioned qualities of loyalty and unconditional love. A highly entertaining writer — his books have won awards for their comic as well their crime-fiction elements — Brookmyre is tenacious when it comes to exploring the most cynical aspects of his characters while peppering his writing with amusing and spot-on details.
Zadie Smith
RaveEntertainment WeeklyIn Zadie Smith’s marvel of a debut novel, White Teeth, London’s cultural melting pot festers and thrives as the millennium — or possibly the apocalypse — approaches … Smith’s ear is sharply tuned to the playful possibilities of language … Reminiscent of both Salman Rushdie and John Irving, Teeth is a comic, canny, sprawling tale, adeptly held together by Smith’s literary sleight of hand.
Lisa McInerney
PositiveThe Boston GlobeThe novel’s searing take on contemporary Cork is elegantly leavened by empathy and humor ... Lacing her prose with tactilely tart phrases McInerney keeps the tale’s momentum fizzing and bubbling along with sharp-as-spears digs at the accepted levels of injustice permeating her characters’ lives on a daily basis ... The Glorious Heresies is no fairy tale, but McInerney’s characters are vibrantly-drawn, richly-rendered, and wonderfully full of surprises.
Etgar Keret
RaveThe Boston GlobeReviewing Etgar Keret’s new volume of mini-memoirs poses something of a pleasant conundrum: What can you add to the reading world when you’ve just turned the final page of a book in which a writer has managed to say so much, so movingly, so concisely, and so entertainingly? ... The delightful reality is that Keret brings the same surreal edge and black-as-pitch humor to these nonfictional musings as he does to his short stories. Even their shape — small, perfectly-formed — mirrors the feel of his fiction.
Helen Macdonald
RaveThe Boston GlobeWith a writer-magician’s deft hand, Macdonald weaves the highly specific worlds of historical and contemporary falconry seamlessly together with a haunting memoir of mourning ... Assured, honest and raw — she manages to keep her grief at bay until she doesn’t — Macdonald’s book is full of poetry, ranging from unfettered elemental grief, frustration, and rage, to pinnacles of liberating exhilaration. Much like Macdonald’s description of Mabel, H Is for Hawk is a soaring wonder of a book, 'a thing of perfect triumph.'”
