RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewValiant and timely ... Lydia Reeder tells Putnam Jacobi’s story with uncritical enthusiasm and relies heavily on the work of previous scholars. She digresses at length into the lives of parallel figures, tangling her chronology, and she indulges in sentimental moments of seeming speculation ... With relentless hard work, hard science and sharp analysis, Putnam Jacobi changed the ancient narrative that men had written for women. Writing a better narrative for women remains an urgent task.
Elinor Cleghorn
PositiveNew York TimesThe British scholar Elinor Cleghorn makes the insidious impact of gender bias on women’s health starkly and appallingly explicit: \'Medicine has insisted on pathologizing ‘femaleness,’ and by extension womanhood.\' ... Cleghorn is unsparing in her examples of women suffering unimaginable and unnecessary horror at the hands of doctors who were unwilling either to listen closely or to admit when they were stumped ... It’s impossible to read Unwell Women without grief, frustration and a growing sense of righteous anger. Cleghorn’s prose is lively, and she has marshaled an enormous amount of material. But her decision to organize it chronologically rather than thematically can slow her momentum, forcing her to circle back to certain topics repeatedly.
Janice P. Nimura
PositiveDiscoverThe Blackwell sisters, who in 1857 opened the first women-run hospital in New York City, set forth a precedent for health care that would transform a traditionally male-focused practice. Nimura shocks and enthralls with her blunt, vivid storytelling. She draws on the writings of Elizabeth and Emily in an intimate way that makes it feel like she knew the sisters personally. Alongside glaring descriptions of culturally ingrained sexism and discrimination, the biography also touches on how our standards of medicine have changed over the decades, showing how even the most scientific of professions are subject to major culture shifts.
Christine Wunnike, Trans. by Philip Boehm
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThere is little that is fixed in Christine Wunnicke’s glittering, absurdist jewel of a novel ... Wunnicke paints nightmarishly hectic European scenes in a palette of absinthe and Toulouse-Lautrec, and alternates them with nightmarishly static scenes of Shimamura’s declining, colorless present in Japan. Connections proliferate like reflections in a house of mirrors, fascinating and also vaguely queasy — the narrative is disorienting in every sense of the word. But absurdist fiction, like psychotherapy, requires an investment of energy and a suspension of judgment. The Fox and Dr. Shimamura is worth the effort.
Kenzaburo Oe, Trans. by Deborah Boehm
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewTrue Oe devotees may find this thrill in Death by Water, but thrilling or not, it remains a thoughtful reprise of a lifetime of literary endeavor. It’s like the story of the emperor’s new clothes, only with the man in question gazing calmly at his audience and declaring yes, it’s true, he’s completely naked and he wouldn’t have it any other way. You have to admire his serene and total conviction, even if you flinch from the view.
