MixedWashington PostIt’s an unusual way in...and it seems to promise a book that will confront the genre. But the framing is a Trojan horse ... While his candor is admirable...it also sometimes obfuscates what the author wants his readers to take away from his stories ... I don’t fault Lennon for having empathy...but he did not persuade me to feel the same ... Ultimately, it is never entirely clear why he chose to profile these three men in particular ... One challenging aspect of The Tragedy of True Crime is that it doesn’t really pick a lane. Though the book is framed as a takedown of true crime, it only fleetingly engages with such criticism at the beginning and end, which is mostly for the best.
RaveThe Washington PostTense and absorbing ... Purvis sets the stage masterfully early in the novel ... Purvis’s peripheral characters give her story its richness and depth ...
These are familiar themes, with echoes both historical and contemporary of violence against women and girls who refuse to behave in the ways that men expect them to. But the territory that Purvis explores is still rich, and her story transcends its antecedents, evolving into something more ambiguous and unexpected.
MixedThe Washington PostThe fact-checker’s efforts to find out if anyone’s heard from Sylvia are amusing and picaresque—and indeed, The Fact Checker is a comic novel—but I still found myself yearning for more intrigue, for the drama and absurdity to be ratcheted up. By the time the fact-checker has made it to New Egypt’s farm in New Jersey, ready to cause some real trouble in the name of his quest, much of the novel’s space has been taken up by quiet misadventures, and the big finale doesn’t quite land as hard as it should ... Still, the narrator of this debut novel has a cutting, incisive voice, and his shaggy story entertains—akin to something a friend might tell you over a couple of beers. He’s an interesting guy to spend time with, even if his story falls a bit flat on the page.
PositiveThe Washington PostLipstein is such a gifted writer that he shifts nimbly between Reuben’s and Cecilie’s inner worlds ... But Lipstein’s very talents as a storyteller render some of the book’s clunkier notes that much more discordant. Reuben’s cancellation, and the downfall of his career, is a tantalizing premise for a novel. But when we finally find out what he did, it’s a bit of a letdown ... At other points, Reuben engages in morally relativistic, ends-justify-the-means thinking that falls short of profundity ... Lipstein, for all his wonderful writing, dispatches with the possible complexities of his narrative a little too breezily.
Joshua Prager
PositiveThe New RepublicPrager excels in revealing the messy, complicated people at the heart of America’s abortion fight; their motives, he seems to say, are much more tangled than any of them would likely admit ... None of the people who populate this book is a perfect hero, nor are there perfect villains: Prager makes the convincing case that Mildred Jefferson, who became president of the National Right to Life Committee and whom Ronald Reagan credited with awakening him to the horrors of abortion, found her way to a career as a pro-life spokesperson in large part because of racism ... a fascinating portrait of a woman whose life was shaped by the abortion debate.
Becky Cooper
RaveThe Washington Post... exhaustive and extraordinary ... The most noteworthy element of Cooper’s book might be its reportorial ambition. Over 400 pages, she doggedly tracks down primary sources and digs for decades-old documents. It is a testament to her skills as a writer that she is able to connect the threads of the cold case to larger cultural issues ... Cooper has made a welcome entry into the annals of true crime ... [Cooper] carefully investigates every lead, reports every fact and contextualizes for the reader the culture that gave rise to the original story. If it is possible to write responsibly about the past, then surely [Cooper\'s] done it.
