RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThere are few more skilled practitioners of the craft of summer fiction than Beatriz Williams. Her latest is both a spy thriller and a Romeo and Juliet tale of would-be lovers torn apart by fate and circumstance ... Enriched by fascinating historical details and an espionage theme ... Williams has crafted a layered narrative celebrating a heroine who embodies verve, pluck and courage. Ultimately The Beach at Summerly is an ode to a season and a feeling. If our summers past represent a paradise lost, as selves that once were, or might have been, then in Williams’s pages we may briefly recapture the delicious freedom we used to feel when the days became longer and warmer, and we were young and in love.
Molly Prentiss
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThough sprinkled with references to poetry and the vagaries of capitalism, this [first] portion of the novel feels as if it may be headed into rom-com territory...But Prentiss has something less predictable in mind. We soon embark on a quest narrative where Emily’s desire for the maternal love she never felt, even with a devoted adoptive mother, is bottomless ... Old Flame is that rare novel whose author—as well as her protagonist—gains wisdom and authority as the story unfolds, never failing to remind us that while loss and grief are inescapable, joy and fulfillment are possible.
Hanna Halperin
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewAching and tender ... Halperin’s radiant second novel walks the fine line between the longing for couplehood and the torture of codependency ... Halperin writes from a millennial point of view, probing themes of social anxiety and intense trepidation about the future. But Halperin’s take on love sets her apart: As misguided as Leah’s feelings for Charlie may seem, they are pure and hopeful — about as untainted by cynicism as it is possible to be.
Ann Patchett
RaveOprah DailyRadiant ... It’s a playful, if at times melancholy, collection of essays that confide in the reader; like Patchett herself, they are the opposite of pompous ... This is far from a light book. At every turn, Patchett is cognizant that life is fleeting ... Patchett’s stalwartness, though, always allows room for tenderness ... Stoic, kindhearted, fierce, funny, brainy, Patchett’s essays honor what matters most \'in this precarious and precious life\'.
Maggie Shipstead
RaveOprah Daily... sumptuous ... The novel has a radical streak ... [Shipstead] expertly moves from narrator to narrator and even into the 21st century ... The most exhilarating sections of the novel, though, occur when Marian is aloft, circumnavigating the globe over the North and South Poles, attempting to fulfill her lifelong goal of achieving what no pilot has before. She and her lone navigator fly that plane as if fleeing the world itself. They are exuberant, reckless, unstoppable—and always on the edge of mortal fear. But that fear fuels them, and makes them feel more awake than ever before ... What Maggie Shipstead has done with this book is deliver a series of ahas, of sweet, provocative points of contemplation that make the reader feel as alive as Marian did in that plane.
Barack Obama
RaveO The Oprah Magazine... remarkable for its precision and thoroughness, as well as for its honesty, humor and thoughtful perspective. President Obama’s skill as a writer, and his generosity in sharing his doubts and disappointments as well as his accomplishments and convictions, make the memoir a must-read for all those who wonder why character matters and what true patriotism looks like. And for political junkies, there are nuggets on each and every page.
Jess Walter
RaveO: The Oprah Magazine... expansive, beguiling ... In Flynn, Walter has found a sublime heroine: outspoken, brave, and beautiful, too. She takes on Spokane’s brutal and corrupt establishment with the kind of bravura that makes us yearn for her to time-travel to our era ... Walter does a masterful job of using historical events and characters to draw parallels with what we face today, but the greatest triumph of The Cold Millions is how it mines literary realism but remains optimistic even in the face of tragedy. It’s a thrilling yarn that simultaneously underscores the cost of progress and celebrates the American spirit.
Margaret Atwood
PositiveThe Oprah MagazineWill Aunt Lydia continue to go along in order to get along? That’s among the novel’s key questions—one that will keep you glued until the very end ... what’s fascinating about [the other narrators] is how each represents a different thread in the fabric of Gilead’s history, threads they must pull at to unspool the systematic damage that’s been done over the course of a generation. Is there hope for freedom? Is a post-Gilead society possible? If there is, the book seems to be saying, maybe there’s hope for us too, now.
Helen Phillips
PositiveThe Oprah MagazineThe novel is both an ode to motherhood and a nightmarish rendering of its \'pleasures\' and pains ... Phillips structures her astonishing fifth book in edge-of-your-seat mini-chapters that infuse domesticity with a horror-movie level of foreboding, reminding us that the maternal instinct is indeed a primal one.
Angela Flournoy
RaveO: The Oprah MagazineWhat is most exciting about Angela Flournoy’s debut novel, The Turner House, is that while history is everywhere in it—haunting its characters, embedded in the walls of the titular house and in the crumbling streets of Detroit-the book tingles with immediacy. Flournoy has written an epic that feels deeply personal ... In the end, it is Flournoy's finely tuned empathy that infuses her characters with a radiant humanity.
Molly Prentiss
RaveO: The Oprah Magazine[Prentiss's] sensual linguistic flourishes exquisitely evoke the passions we can feel for people and places we've known or are discovering ... There are riveting plots and subplots. A mother is separated from her child. A brother abandons his sister. An artist is rendered unable to paint. A city sells its soul. Still, the book's magnificence remains in its shadings, descriptive and emotional. Toward the end, you'll find yourself turning the pages slowly, sorry to realize you're almost finished.
Jhumpa Lahiri
PositiveO: The Oprah MagazineThis linguistic autobiography feels urgent and raw. Through it, Lahiri appears to forge a new sense of belonging. Using discomfort to shatter her own status quo, she produces a startlingly different voice—still Lahiri's, but stripped down to its essence.
Laura Secor
RaveO: The Orpah MagazineChildren of Paradise takes a historian's view of Iran, a nation that has long perplexed—even scared—Americans. But Secor is also an entrancing storyteller. In her hands, clerics, scholars, and others who helped Iran morph into a republic where mosque and state are inseparable are like larger-than-life characters from an epic novel, with thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Karl Marx playing supporting roles.
Austin Reed
RaveO: The Oprah MagazineThere are many reasons this book is remarkable, not least that while Reed is brutalized regularly, he remains triumphantly defiant. Though the only formal education he received was while in the House of Refuge, he writes with a novelist's sense of nuance and adventure—or misadventure. The memoir anticipates that the American penitentiary system would become a kind of successor to slavery's shackles.
