RaveThe Chicago Review of Books... a slow-burn marvel, carefully connecting sections of Warhol’s complicated life which at first glance don’t seem to interlink. The result is a revealing, cohesive whole ... Gopnik establishes throughout the biography the ways Warhol blazed a trail for the gay community to recognize and celebrate each other during a time when being out might lead to bodily harm, or worse ... an engrossing, comprehensive look at the twentieth century’s most famous artist, who \'always wanted to make work for a world where x and not-x could be true at the same time.\' In Gopnik’s expert hands, we’re able to see the contradictions and possibilities in Warhol’s work.
Charles J. Shields
PositiveThe Millions\"Through exhaustive research and sharp prose, Shields has composed a portrait of the complicated author and the particular darknesses that drove Williams to write, to overcompensate, to philander, to mansplain. Shields’s framing device is simple but effective ... Shields pulls no punches in these depictions [of Williams and his world] ... One of the many strengths of Shields’s biography is the duality with which it may be read: Depending on one’s outlook, Williams’s aggressive need for validation may be as a result of his upbringing—or it may be symptomatic of a typical white male privilege.\
Jeff Jackson
PositiveThe Chicago Review of Books\"With so much exposure, so many pings and notifications, boxes full of emails waiting to be annihiliated like weeks, Destroy All Monsters rails against its own titular notion – it’s better to create than destroy. Its sharded optimism is a balm for these increasingly fractious times.\
Stephen King
RaveThe Chicago Review of Books\"King’s expository writing has always been strong, and what we read in the The Outsider is no exception ... In some novels King has stumbled with endings, tending to focus too much on the supernatural. Here, he understands that less is more. There’s no reliance on portals to distant lands or repetition of incantations. Instead we’re given solid detective work that pieces together the mystery of El Cuco while connecting it to Terry Maitland. The otherworldly is kept to a minimum, allowing readers to envision horrors on their own. The Outsider is taut throughout despite coming in at more than 550 pages. Both longtime readers and neophytes with a taste for terror will find this to be a rewarding read.\
Barbara Comyns
PositiveThe Chicago Review of BooksTo say that the narrative style is stream-of-consciousness isn’t quite right, but it’s close — there is an underlying structure, but developments occur with the same suddenness as thoughts … Comyns infuses her work with a sense of isolation and creeping dread. It’s easy to forget the book’s setting — whole chapters go by without technological markers, leaving you with the feeling that it could take place in the 1880s instead of the 1980s. This odd timelessness is a reminder of the book’s take on the Brothers Grimm, and coupled with Bella’s matter-of-fact narration of her hardships, heightens tension. Just as Comyns allows the narrative to veer in unexpected directions, she isn’t concerned with a typical narrative arc … Comyns’ prose can be difficult at times, despite its plainspoken manner. This style, though, suits Bella Winter, who has not had an easy life by any stretch of the imagination.
Ryan Gattis
PositiveThe Chicago Review of Books...a lean and frenetic read that leaves you satisfied with no guilty aftertaste. And several elements not typically found in crime thrillers make this one distinct ... Gattis is an expert in rhythm and cadence. Both characters deliver their own stories throughout Safe with a style reminiscent to the work of George Pelecanos and Richard Price, always distinct and from the hip. Through their deliveries we see the moral ambiguity of their respective trades ... If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s that I put the book down for a few days and had to backtrack to pick up some of the plot’s threads again. And I’m Gattis’s target audience for punk — early mentions of San Pedro (home of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE) had me nodding — but I wonder about the punk subplot’s efficacy. With that said, Safe, a finely-crafted whiplash of a crime staccato, is still a great way to spend the waning days of summer.
Ron Currie
PositiveThe Chicago Review of BooksCurrie’s three prior novels are expert blends of comic absurdity and calamity. It’s no surprise, then, that The Great False Binary is just one of the stops on The One-Eyed Man’s flinty path between hilarious and tragic ... K. and Claire travel, and are filmed when they get into scraps, like a more confrontational Jackass. The morality of such a show doesn’t escape Theodore, owing to the Great False binary... This complicity is intertwined with Einstein, whose biography K. has read and refers to throughout ...we’ve been reading that irony is dead, even as layers have subsequently been draped or slathered on even more heavily ...is rueful and unpredictable and honest and side-splitting in its depiction of our common struggle with the confines of truth and the defective airbag that is irony. His protagonist evokes a Kafkaesque maze of the mind, in the pitfalls and hazards of both isolation and speaking out.
Katie Kitamura
RaveThe Chicago Review of BooksA Separation is fraught with sleights and nods. It seems simple, yet throughout the book, Kitamura adds gossamer layers and funhouse mirrors which yield haunting echoes, demanding rereading ... Perhaps itself a lie, or a slip into professional mourning, or perhaps the invisibility of slipping into something already decided, A Separation is a gorgeous treatise of feasibilities and trajectories, of guise and finally of narrative, invention.
D. Foy
MixedThe Chicago Review of Books""...there’s much more to this one than brutality for its own sake: fragmented reportage becomes something resembling cohesive redemption by its end ... The series of anecdotes and vignettes presented to us can be taken as standalones or as part of a bigger, messier whole, which we’re to understand may be colored by some combination of bias, inebriation, or simply the passage of time. Or trauma ... blood-and-guts details which are hard to look away from, fascinating like a car crash in their descriptive excess.
But after a time they’re hard to read—the feelings become rote, the topic of ‘I hate my dad’ nestling up on the sizable pile of freshman fiction axe-grindings. Too often the titular patricide is a one-way street.""
