RaveEntertainment WeeklyWhat, you don’t want to read nearly 200 pages about vaccination? The subject might sound dry to anyone who hasn’t been fiercely debating it in her mommy group. But consider this: Eula Biss’ fascinating pro-immunization book features a chapter on vampires ... it’s the creative thinking that makes On Immunity so compelling. Biss can turn practically anything into a metaphor for immunity: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Occupy Wall Street movement, immigration policy, Greek mythology. And her theories about why anti-vaccine crusaders remain more afraid of inoculation than of disease itself are just as surprising as they are convincing ... This is a deeply philosophical book, one that’s less concerned with pure science than with the elemental fear that we can never protect our children from the world. In fact, Biss believes, no one can ever truly be inoculated from other people — nor should anyone be ... On Immunity will make you consider that idea on a fairly profound level.
Adelle Waldman
MixedEW...should be a revelation — finally, a takedown of literary jerks by a writer who’s probably dated her share! — or at least a sharp psychoanalysis of how men like Nathaniel P...differ from womanizers of generations past ... What could’ve been an American Psychofor hipsters feels like a traditional romance as Nathaniel attempts to make things work with a fellow writer named Hannah...get over his ex Elisa, and stop flirting with the prospects at the bar. Nathaniel’s fights with Hannah are so realistic they feel familiar, and Waldman captures the casual nature of modern relationships well. (Nathaniel doesn’t date so much as hang out.) But most of his failed relationships boil down to one problem: He just isn’t that into her, her, or her. Same as it ever was, ever since Don Juan. You don’t need a female writer to figure that out.
Cheryl Strayed
PositiveEWWith its vivid descriptions of beautiful but unforgiving terrain, Wild is certainly a cinematic story, but Strayed’s book isn’t really about big, cathartic moments. The author never \'finds herself\' or gets healed. When she reaches the trail’s end, she just buys a cheap ice cream cone and continues down the road. \'When you’re actually out there, taking one step after the other, it’s not romantic,\' she says now. Maybe not, though it’s hard to imagine anything more important than taking one boring step at a time. That’s endurance, and that’s what Strayed understands, almost 20 years later. As she writes: \'There was only one [option], I knew. There was always only one. To keep walking.\' ... A rich, riveting true story...
Heidi Julavits
PositiveEntertainment WeeklyIt’s no accident that so many of her entries describe dinner parties, because Julavits sounds like the ideal dinner-party guest, always regaling you with exotic travel tales, dishy gossip about her friends, and funny stories—such as the time she tried to urinate into an airsickness bag on a plane. At its best, The Folded Clock is what all great diaries end up being: a profound meditation on the passing of time.
Megan Abbott
RaveEntertainment Weekly\"Dare Me is billed by its publisher as a \'Fight Club\' for girls, but calling them \'girls\' might be underestimating the binge-drinking, lunch-vomiting, social-climbing queen bees in this dark high school thriller ... what’s exciting about Dare Me is how it makes that traditionally masculine genre feel distinctly female. It feels groundbreaking when Abbott takes noir conventions — loss of innocence, paranoia, the manipulative sexuality of newly independent women — and suggests that they’re rooted in high school, deep in the hearts of all-American girls.\
Esther Gerritsen, Trans. by Michele Hutchison
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewIs this...meant to be funny, or disturbing, or both? It takes work to figure out how to read Craving...but that work is extremely rewarding. Gerritsen’s stark prose leaves a lot of space for interpreting and reinterpreting [protagonist] Elisabeth’s tone and motivations, which feels generous, both to the reader and to the characters ... Before you judge these characters, check your own empathy levels. Craving ends up offering some deep insights into the ways women process emotions—or fail to process them—during difficult times ... Droll and horrific and incredibly moving, the ending makes you feel the full weight of...\'light words.\' Is this...meant to be funny, or disturbing, or both? It takes work to figure out how to read Craving...but that work is extremely rewarding. Gerritsen’s stark prose leaves a lot of space for interpreting and reinterpreting Elisabeth’s tone and motivations, which feels generous, both to the reader and to the characters ... Before you judge these characters, check your own empathy levels. Craving ends up offering some deep insights into the ways women process emotions—or fail to process them—during difficult times ... Droll and horrific and incredibly moving, the ending makes you feel the full weight of...\'light words.\'
Claire Vaye Watkins
PositiveEntertainment WeeklyWatkins has been praised for evocative landscapes and environmentalist themes, but she can get bogged down in John Muir-style cataloging of flora and fauna. She’s more gifted at writing characters like Ig, a defenseless child whose everyday thirst is devastating. Watkins knows that if you want to save the world, you first have to make readers care about saving the humans.
Mary Gaitskill
PositiveEntertainment Weekly...caring for a child can also be thankless work, and the parallels between raising horses and teenagers are sometimes too neat. (The Mare is a play on mère, or mother.) But the novel is still a deeply affecting tribute to basic human connection. As it turns out, the ending is neither triumphant nor depressing—it’s a truthful meditation on the limits of birth motherhood, surrogate motherhood, and mothering yourself.
