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Barbara Kingsolver
Rave New York Journal of Books A social justice novel all her own, one only she could write, for our time and for the ages. Master storyteller Kingsolver has given the world a book that will have a ripple effect through the generations ... Like all stories that stick with you, this one is both universal and decidedly personal ... The author’s superb foreshadowing helps anticipate the next dip in the road ... This isn\'t always a pretty book to read any more than drugs and poverty are pretty, but it\'s sprinkled with a creative boy\'s sarcastic southwestern Virginia humor and the beauty of the mountains. Do not let the length of this novel dissuade you. It’s needed for the breadth of the message and the vivid rendering of the story.
Christina Baker Kline
Rave The New York Journal of Books The writing is vivid, visual, real. And gut-wrenching. The plot twists will shock you ... This novel would be a page-turner if not filled with dark despair at almost every turn, if not its graphic depiction of the raping of land and women. The faint of heart or empathic may need breaks from the pain etched on nearly every page ... Christina Baker Kline’s acknowledgements prove this novel may be her most well-researched, historically true publication to date. She\'s also a great storyteller who engages you with a character and place fully, making you love them, making it very difficult to lose them ... The author’s quest for complete authenticity will be evident to all readers of historical fiction. It’s amazing these characters are based on real women from this era who bequeathed today’s women freedom by their lives well lived at all costs ... This is a novel for our times, and a novel that will stay with you. It\'s a perfect book club read. Save it for a time when you feel grounded, safe, but do read it ... The author\'s ability to weave fact with fiction, tragedy with moments of hope, and the everyday with the universal will leave you immersed, wanting more. You’ll open this novel because of history, read on because of story, and close it knowing more about your own life, right here, right now. Realizing that moments of facing fear head-on lead to moments of the greatest ecstasy and empowerment, that our courage today means more than we could ever predict—to our daughters, and their daughters, to the future of the world.
Saud Alsanousi Trans. by Sawad Hussain
Positive The New York Journal of Books It may be tough to read complex novels in these days of social media platforms and fast food fiction, but Mama Hissa\'s Mice is worth your time ... Some of this novel\'s long cast of characters are more memorable than others ... It would be remiss not to speak about the strong treatment of women in this novel, but there\'s good reason Mama Hissa is its namesake ... Sawad Hussain does an admirable but direct translation of the original Arabic novel. You will hear the lilt of Arabic in her English translation of this war saga, taking place over 42 years and four generations ... The novel is intermittently sarcastically comic and harrowingly tragic. Interspersing past and present, the author shows how the every day, every action reverberates into the future. Thus, this book is both a coming of age novel and a contemporary look at the ongoing violence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf States ... The list and names of characters, the Arabic words, the alternating points of view, and the long phrasing of sentences may make an unmotivated reader close the book. You may feel ungrounded in the juxtaposition of time and place at first. Yet those who persevere will be rewarded with a thorough (though fictionalized) rendition of the history that led to current Middle East politics and violence. This novel should be used in classrooms to educate students about what got the world to this place. The novel has a place on the general reader\'s bookshelf because of lovable Katkout and his desire to do the right thing despite every reason to do the contrary.
Deborah Levy
Rave The New York Journal of Books ... a work of philosophy and art ... examines how our perception alters the very little we actually do observe and how our recollections, as time and space elapse, are more about personal narrative than reality. Its disjointed recapitulation of details is a circular, labyrinthian puzzle, taking the reader deeper each time without giving absolute clarity ... Complex in theme and symbol, this story packs an entire world—in fact, different versions of this world—into 200 pages ... The author accomplishes this through incisive use of sensory detail, creating a multi-dark-and-light-layered cake of a sort, in which each layer is a different rendering of one life\'s most defining moments ... Most will appreciate Levy\'s subtle management of metaphor and theme: how life reflects art, and art, life; how time changes our experience, our memory, our history—whether personal or political, local or global. And how our perceptions, often blocked by roads and walls, are the key to connecting it all, connecting us all ... Each novel Man Booker finalist Deborah Levy writes comes nearer perfection. Reread The Man Who Saw Everything for the deep pleasure of it, but also to savor each scene\'s multiple meanings.