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Recent Reviews
John Wray
Rave The New York Times Book Review As terrifying as the novel becomes, it’s also, at its core, a lot of fun. Its characters are kids hurling themselves at the world, escaping their past as much as finding themselves. They are reckless and headstrong but relatable. Each is essentially powerless when the story opens: traumatized, poor, displaced, angry, yet freed by the force of the music they mainline together. Gone to the Wolves is an anti-establishment treatise, bildungsroman and extreme love letter to the flame of youth.
Gabriella Burnham
Rave The New York Times Book Review Burnham’s artful tapestry of a novel...concerns Linda’s relationships with other women ... The nested stories of Marta and Celia—delivered as notes to epic phone conversations, and intimate monologues in the kitchen—capture the oral systems of information-sharing and storytelling passed among women throughout history ... descriptions of São Paulo’s neighborhoods, the rural town of Atibaia and the beaches of Trindade bring the reader into sensory contact with the setting. As well, her descriptions of the domestic sphere show us the subtle power dynamics at play there. Clear and intricate prose delivers such fresh phrases ... This is a remarkable story of secrecy, discovery and self-expression, delivered by a skillful observer.
Pauline Delabroy-Allard, Trans. by Adriana Hunter
Rave The Observer (UK) Here’s a novelty: a book about love as utter abandonment of the self, love as capitulation, love as not only obsession but possession, which manages not to be overwrought. ... Delabroy-Allard succeeds by keeping things simple and using repeated phrases to layer the story ... The second half of the book is even more satisfying than the first, as the narrator flies to Italy, stays with a friend, and keeps moving to prevent the settlement of thoughts she would rather not face. The sentences and sections become longer, reflecting the scurrying activity of her mind ... The persuasive translation by Adriana Hunter does occasionally let an awkward word poke through its straightforward language ... But these don’t diminish the pleasures of a book that reads at times—this is high praise—like a new iteration of Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body (absorbing passion, illness, separation) and that moves impressively from the chaos and noise of love, to silence and solitude, like a spun coin settling.
Pauline Delabroy-Allard, Trans. by Adriana Hunter
Positive The New York Times Book Review The hyperbolic emotion of this novel sometimes tips into cliché, but Delabroy-Allard insists on holding space for an unfiltered expression of pain. Melodramatic expressions are interspersed with straightforward pieces of wisdom ... Hunter’s translation highlights the inertia and cycling of the absolutist thought patterns of love, with simple language that moves out of the way of its subject. This poetic and mystifying debut draws blood.
Sanaë Lemoine
Rave The New York Times Book Review It’s impossible not to love Margot’s delicate mixture of maturity and naïveté; her probing curiosity, as much for culture as for other people; and her tender, minute examinations of inner, and interpersonal, space ... Lemoine’s descriptions are embroidered and sensory, delivering exquisite details ... This is a startling, affecting first book by an author who is confident in her craft, who knows that a loving portrait includes flaws.
Emily Temple
Rave The New York Times Book Review It’s a teen thriller in the vein of the ’90s horror movie The Craft, only instead of a Los Angeles high school this one is set at what Olivia calls “Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls.” But it’s also a beautiful meditation on meditation, with readings of sacred texts and light Buddhist history ... This book — frequently hilarious, and thoughtful throughout — also transcends expectations at its end.
Noy Holland
Rave The New York Times Book Review The writing is hallucinatory, musical and intimate. It pulls you through, like the wind that blows through Bird’s life, like time rushing past us, unable to be held. There’s a sense that Holland’s sentences are alive, and that life starts here — with the stories we tell ourselves.