PositiveBookPageVivid ... The structure of Rejection is distinctive as well, riddled with group text messages, acronyms and the jargon of those raised with the internet.
Elif Shafak
RaveBookPageSpellbinding ... Like water itself, There Are Rivers in the Sky seeps into the cracks and crevasses of our humanity, unlocking a sense of wonder.
Helen Phillips
PositiveBookPageAs dystopias go, reasonably breezy; it’s suitable for a coast-to-coast airline flight or an extended stay on the beach as an antidote to binge-watching the latest season of your favorite TV show. For those just dipping their toes into speculative fiction, the setting is relatable enough to not make you feel like (ahem) a stranger in a strange land.
Rachel Khong
PositiveBookPageAt once complex and compelling, as science and philosophy sit cheek by jowl with history and elements of magic. As the three narrative strands merge, their denouement is unexpected yet perhaps predestined: the fruit of a seed planted long ago.
Francis Spufford
PositiveBookPage\"The book’s debt to the likes of Raymond Chandler is evident throughout, as Detective Barrow steps into the hallowed role of the untarnished, unvarnished romantic who makes his way doggedly down these mean streets. And on occasion, Spufford’s language equals that of noir masters of yore: \'He had opened the box at the city’s heart, and found it contained a secret, and a dark one, a grim sacrifice, but not a snake or a scorpion, not anything beyond the reach of the hope that every morning upholds hearts and cities. And now he was free to go. The city was done with him.\' There’s a bit of a learning curve for the reader, as unfamiliar language and culture weave through the intricately plotted narrative, but Spufford propels the Jazz Age action to a climax that is at once unanticipated and seemingly inevitable.\
Claire Oshetsky
RaveBookPage\"If there is such a thing as a sophomore slump, Oshetsky has deftly sidestepped it, producing a tale that both enchants and perplexes ... Oshetsky deftly pulls aside the curtain to show us Margaret’s struggle to reconcile her emotional, subjective history with the persistent, objective one that keeps intruding on her psyche. Ultimately, even if the details are somewhat suspect, emotional honesty may earn Margaret the right to the forgiveness she so desperately craves, and convince Poor Deer to trot back into the subconscious forest from which she sprang.\
Tom Hanks
PositiveBookPageHanks’ familiarity with the filmmaking process and keen eye for detail make his first novel (with comic book panels illustrated by R. Sikoryak) a joy for anyone who loves the art of cinema. Hanks retains a childlike sense of wonder even as he moves among adults whose powers, like movies themselves, are just illusions that we will ourselves to believe.
Asale Angel-Ajani
RaveBookPageAngel-Ajani’s unflinching portrait of this hypernuclear family is captivating and complex, with a richly drawn supporting cast and occasional arch humor that leavens the intensely emotional backdrop. A Country You Can Leave gives voice to a group of star-crossed characters.
Geetanjali Shree, trans. by Daisy Rockwell
PositiveBookPageShree drops us into the deep waters of her expansive stream-of-consciousness novel ... This is a novel that rewards patience and leisurely reading ... Not a simple, linear book. It requires attention, and unless you’re fluent in Hindi, you can expect to be Googling some passages. But if you can strap yourself in, you’ll find yourself taken for an enchanting ride.
Deepti Kapoor
RaveBookPageRiveting ... The story bounces back and forth between the three main characters’ narratives and across five consequential years that will alter all of their futures irrevocably. Along the way, Kapoor paints a mesmerizing picture of violence and decadence, of struggle and hope, of corruption and redemption. At 500-plus pages, you may find Age of Vice difficult to pick up, but it’s also impossible to put down.
S. E. Boyd
RaveBookPageA bawdy...romp ... The dialogue crackles, the zip line plot slings the reader from one hilariously fraught incident to the next, and the conclusion is as emotionally satisfying as ever an author—or three—could have concocted. Like a perfectly seared slice of foie gras with a dollop of lingonberry jam on an artisanal toast point, The Lemon simply cannot be put down, and when you’ve finished it, you’ll want more.
Amanda Svensson, trans. by Nichola Smalley
PositiveBookPageDeft ... Admirable ... Straddles science fiction, whodunit and soapy drama. While all of the main characters are deeply—really deeply—flawed, Svensson has you rooting for them through their highs and lows.
Gabino Iglesias
RaveBookPageSpellbinding ... The novel\'s interweaving of fantastical elements with sudden and savage violence will leave unwary readers stunned ... Iglesias does masterful work with Mario\'s internal narration as he puzzles over which of his partners poses the greatest potential threat. Much of the novel switches back and forth between Spanish and English, and both languages are integral to the story, making them all the more worthwhile to comprehend ... The world of The Devil Takes You Home is harsh and unforgiving, its desert the most treacherous terrain. Iglesias does such a place justice in his brawny, serpentine and remarkably poignant novel.
Sloane Crosley
PositiveBookPageThrough Lola, Crosley wields language like a rapier, slicing off layers of self-delusion and self-doubt to find even more layers underneath. Lola needs to make some hard decisions about her spouse-to-be-or-not-to-be, but in order to do that, she must uncover the secret at the heart of her guru’s creation. Does Golconda, like Lola’s checkered past with men, carry within it the seeds of its own destruction? If it implodes, can she withstand the fallout? And will the universe call her back before it’s too late?
Michelle Huneven
PositiveBookPageHuneven is uniquely suited to undertake a novel like this; not only did she study at the Methodist Claremont School of Theology and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, but she’s also a James Beard Award-winning food journalist. She gleefully digs into the sausagemaking of a New-Agey church committee trying to reach consensus ... Here Huneven sparkles, with chop-licking descriptions of their potluck delectables, and as a bonus, she includes a baker’s dozen recipes as appendices ... But there’s also a profoundly spiritual dimension to Search. It raises difficult questions about living one’s beliefs in a faith-based community and doesn’t flinch when principles and practice come into conflict. Like a challenging sermon or a great restaurant’s tasting menu, Search leaves the reader hungry for more.
Heather O'Neill
PositiveBookPageThese perversely fascinating characters are filled with guile and bile and many things vile, and even though it’s virtually a certainty that they are star-crossed, it’s impossible to tear one’s gaze away ... O’Neill is sufficiently deft to keep the reader in suspense ... This is not a book for the faint of heart or Victorian sensibility, but it does encompass a fair amount of sugar . . . and spice.
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry
RaveBookPageIf there is such a thing as clear-eyed sentimentality, The Orchard evokes it, with its warts-and-all recollections of youthful passions, when the road ahead seems like one endless string of possibilities ... Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry does the reader a great service, offering a peek behind the Iron Curtain and its veil of propaganda.
Erika Robuck
RaveBookPageSurvival is a minute-by-minute endurance test, and Robuck wrings out every sweat-laden drop of emotion from their plight. You can almost feel your stomach growl when she describes the half-pint of thin rhubarb soup allotted to the prisoners each day. Horror pervades every corner of the camps, yet Robuck manages to keep humanity’s candle flickering at the gates of hell ... Violette and Virginia are two women whose stories needed to be told, particularly now that most of the people who fought in WWII are gone. Robuck has done their memory great honor.
Jonathan Evison
RaveBookPageEpic ... Readers are treated to seemingly unrelated vignettes that jump back and forth across time and space. Piece by piece, Evison successfully corrals this sprawling history into a cohesive whole, coalescing it into a vivid mosaic ... Part of the reason this 480-page book seems like a novel half its girth is Evison’s ability to drop the reader into a scene ... Throughout it all, Evison underscores a sense of a shared America, not so much in the kumbaya mythology of the melting pot but a feeling—oft-neglected these days—that we are all in this nation-building adventure together. That’s a destiny worth manifesting.
Claire Oshetsky
RaveBookPage... if you don\'t mind a little unexpected violence set in a surreal landscape, it will be right up your alley ... Oshetsky shows an exceptional talent for keeping the reader off balance. Is Tiny hallucinating? Is she in hell? Is this a metaphor? Is any of the story actually happening in the manner it\'s being told? The ambiguity is tantalizing, even mesmerizing, and if your internal gyroscope is sufficiently operative to keep you from slipping off the edge, Chouette will richly reward your attention.
Mina Seckin
PositiveBookPageLike the Russian soap operas that Sibel and her grandmother watch devotedly, The Four Humors unfolds at a leisurely pace, with an extensive cast of characters and a multigenerational plot that demands your attention. Once you fall into its rhythm, you\'ll find yourself hooked.
Ryka Aoki
RaveBookPageIn addition to the novel’s all-the-feels poignancy, Light From Uncommon Stars is also very, very funny ... Without straining the metaphor too much, Aoki gets every element of mise-en-scène note-perfect, and her prose is as exacting and precise as the techniques Shizuka is trying to impart to her young charge. Readers can feel the steam emanating from the kitchens of Aoki’s San Gabriel Valley noodle joints, hear the scrape of a freshly rosined bow across recalcitrant strings and experience the acute anguish of having one foot anchored in one world while the other is desperately trying to move forward.
Jaime Cortez
RaveBookPageLike Diane Arbus or Weegee, Cortez depicts warts-and-all moments of vulnerability precisely, sometimes even harshly, and without sentiment. Unlike Arbus and Weegee, his camera is the printed word, rather than a Nikon or Speed Graphic ... Cortez is native to this locale, and it shows. He succinctly portrays a largely overlooked California landscape that’s as far removed from the worlds of Silicon Valley and Hollywood as it is from the 14 moons of Neptune. What ultimately draws the reader in, though, is the book’s emotional honesty. Gordo is no smarty-pants, wise-beyond-his-years kid; even as he grows up, he’s often puzzled by life’s abundant mysteries. The characters in and around his life exhibit kindness and cruelty in fluid motion. Cortez artfully frames these characters’ daily struggles and captures them in the freeze-frame flash of a master at work.
Leila Slimani tr. Sam Taylor
RaveBookPage... an unabashedly feminist novel of outsiders ... doesn’t wrap up its myriad messy conflicts, but it does conclude in an emotionally satisfying way while leaving the door open for its next two chapters.
Semezdin Mehmedinovic, tr. Celia Hawkesworth
PositiveBookPage... includes the mundane and the astonishing ... The poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen once observed that \"There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.\' As we can see from My Heart, this is also how the warmth gets out.
Ladee Hubbard
RaveBookPageIn the era of the belated (and semi-involuntary) retirement of the likes of Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima and Mrs. Butterworth, The Rib King could hardly be more prescient, as it centers on a Black man who is the face of a food brand ... Hubbard’s depiction of a shadow economy bracketed by race is compelling and insightful, reminiscent of playwright August Wilson’s finest work. Woven into this narrative is a captivating depiction of Black feminist agency at a time not long after white women had gained the right to vote. It’s little wonder that Hubbard won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for debut fiction in 2018. Ultimately the reason to read The Rib King is not its timeliness or its insight into politics or Black culture, but because it accomplishes what the best fiction sets out to do: It drops you into a world you could not otherwise visit and makes you care deeply about what happens there.
Sarah Moss
PositiveBookPage... slender yet weighty ... Every other chapter extracts a stream-of-consciousness core sample from the rich vein of a character’s internal monologue ... nothing sets up a potential catastrophe better than the combination of outsiders and wilderness, and on this point Moss does not disappoint. Like Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy, it happens \'gradually, and then suddenly.\'
Sarah Moss
PositiveBookPage... slender yet weighty ... Every other chapter extracts a stream-of-consciousness core sample from the rich vein of a character’s internal monologue ... nothing sets up a potential catastrophe better than the combination of outsiders and wilderness, and on this point Moss does not disappoint. Like Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy, it happens \'gradually, and then suddenly.\'
Jane Smiley
RaveBookPageWe humans like to imagine that we know what our animal friends are thinking, but in Perestroika in Paris, Jane Smiley actually burrows into the craniums of a menagerie that includes a horse, a dog, a raven, some rats and the humans they interact with, resulting in a remarkable novel that splits the difference between Charlotte’s Web and Animal Farm ... To call this book \'charming\' might be damning it with faint praise, but Smiley has created an otherworldly universe in which her makeshift animal family supports one another in an environment that, while not necessarily hostile, is certainly hazardous. Perestroika in Paris takes its place alongside the likes of Through the Looking-Glass, in that it will reward both precocious young readers and their parents with a sense of wonder and whimsy.
Jennifer Givhan
RaveBookPageGivhan, who, like her protagonist, is a poet, paints a surrealist canvas with vivid colors, even invoking images from artists such as Frida Kahlo and Remedios Varo. The richness of her language and her eye for nuance animate her depictions of both the bleak exterior landscape of California’s Imperial Valley and the bleak interior landscape of Bianca’s damaged soul. Through it all, Givhan has forged a compelling tension between psychological drama and romance that makes for a riveting read.
Peter Cameron
PositiveBookPage...cascades into a series of Waiting for Godot-esque moments in which anticipation is frequently met with frustration and further delay ... It’s a weirdly compelling mix of all the elements that make us human and all the situations that test our humanity.
Ivy Pochoda
RaveBookPagePochoda buttresses her narrative with a distinct and empowered group of women, and it is refreshing to see women in a murder mystery all acting with agency. Even the dancer is cognizant of her choices and acts only through the compulsion of her history, not controlled by some man. Not since Kem Nunn’s Tapping the Source (or perhaps Pochoda’s own Wonder Valley) has a mystery author so successfully and unflinchingly delved beneath the surface of a Southern California subculture to render a portrait that readers will find arresting—no matter the season.
Clare Pooley
PositiveBookPageThe secret sauce that spices this book is that all the diarists are busybodies to some degree, so they wind up interacting in strange and unexpected ways. Much like a Twitter or Facebook feed, the book is composed of fairly short chapters (each from a different character’s point of view), and while it moves along at a bracing clip, the thread is always easy to follow ... The story’s confessional tone is in many ways a logical extension of Pooley’s popular pseudonymous blog, Mummy Was a Secret Drinker, but TMI is always balanced by TLC. And while Pooley’s characters’ lives, much like our own, often look better from the outside, they all ultimately reconcile what they pretend to be with what they actually are.
Marie Ndiaye
PositiveBookPageIt seems unlikely that the Goncourt Prize-winning author Marie NDiaye set out to be the Camus of cuisine, but her latest novel, The Cheffe, brings to mind a number of parallels with the much-revered 1942 French novel The Stranger. First of all, its narrative is laid out in the first person, entirely in flashback. Second, the loner narrator seems to have an ambivalent relationship with his memory. And third, the novel is populated with somewhat astringent characters who aren’t much on small talk ... The Cheffe herself is somewhat inscrutable in a quintessentially Gallic way; obviously passionate about her food, but outwardly indifferent to the response it gets ... And like a great meal, The Cheffe leaves us pleasantly sated but still wanting more.
Cathleen Schine
PositiveBookPage... alls to mind the likes of Nora Ephron or Joan Didion. It’s not every verbal stunt pilot that can bring a mid-novel excursus about the differences between Webster’s Second and Third editions to a safe landing ... As for the sisters, Schine renders a note--perfect portrait of how shared DNA can foster a ferocious internal rivalry, while it renders the pair nearly impervious to attack from the outside world.
Leila Meacham
PositiveBookPageMost people in America—and for that matter, most people in Paris by this point—have never lived in an occupied city. Meacham’s impeccable pacing and razor-wire tension evoke the daily drama of life under a Reich whose French reign might have lasted little more than four years but felt like the thousand years that it threatened to endure.
J. Ryan Stradal
PositiveBookPageJ. Ryan Stradal ventures back into the kind of kitchen that made his debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, a success—and from there into the ever-evolving world of beer culture ... Stradal artfully keeps the suspense brewing for over 300 pages ... this book tastes great, is quite filling and never bitter.
Jeanette Winterson
PositiveBookpageIn many ways...the story is just a pretext for extended meditations on the meaning of love, the meaning of life and the coming \'singularity,\' in which consciousness can be uploaded like so many data points to be retransferred to a previously frozen human body or to a \'more human than human\' replicant à la Blade Runner ... Much like its spiritual predecessor, B.F. Skinner’s 1948 novel, Walden Two, Winterson’s book occasionally sets up straw men to knock down, but also like Skinner, she may turn out to be more prophetic than she, or we, imagined.
Billy O'Callaghan
PositiveBookPageWhile some will likely draw comparisons with the work of Colm Tóibín, American readers might find Pat Conroy to be a more immediate touchstone. O’Callaghan has a keen sense of observation for emotional nuance, and his use of language is simply a delight to the mind’s ear; it’s impossible he could be anything other than Irish ... perfect for reading next to the fire on a gray day, snuggled under a blanket with a cup of tea or something a little stronger, as the wood and your dreams give off their last bit of heat before turning into smoke.
Niklas Natt Och Dag
PositiveBookPageThe sense of a ticking clock pervades Niklas Natt och Dag’s swift-paced, cinematic first novel, which was named Best Debut by the Swedish Academy of Crime Writers last year. Though they seem to be the oddest of couples—one a man of action, the other a man of deliberation—Cardell and Winge prove to be an effective team as they crisscross political, cultural and economic strata to establish the dead man’s identity, and ultimately try to effect some rough form of justice ... In some ways, The Wolf and the Watchman calls to mind another auspicious debut murder mystery set in an unfamiliar place and time: Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. It’s been nearly 40 years since that foreign-language historical thriller captured the world’s imagination, thoroughly engrossing readers and propelling its author into international stardom. So we’re about due, and Natt och Dag is certainly a worthy candidate.
Elizabeth Letts
RaveBookPageIn some ways reminiscent of Jerry Stahl’s excellent I, Fatty, Letts’ Finding Dorothy combines exhaustive research with expansive imagination, blending history and speculation into a seamless tapestry ... It’s a testament to Letts’ skill that she can capture on the page, without benefit of audio, that same emotion we have all felt sometime over the last 80 years while listening to \'Over the Rainbow\'[.]
Sergey and Marina Dyachenko, Trans. by Julia Meitov Hersey
RaveBookpageThe novel belongs to an expanding Ukrainian genre known as fantastyka, encompassing science fiction, fantasy, horror and folkloric traditions. Much of this genre has not yet been translated into English...Kudos are due to translator Julia Meitov Hersey, whose task cannot have been a simple one, given Vita Rostra’s complexity and sophistication. I realize that this is a bit of a tease, but if you are at all intrigued by the phrase, \'Time is a grammatical concept,\' you will find yourself swept into this book’s estimable vortex from page one.
Ann Mah
PositiveBookpageAt the beginning of Ann Mah’s second novel, The Lost Vintage, protagonist Kate Elliott has committed to an extended visit with extended family in Meursault, France, in the hopes of shoring up her knowledge of French wines in advance of her third—and final—sitting for the test ... Meanwhile, her erstwhile French paramour Jean-Luc has drops back into her life, and it’s unclear whether his presence will turn out to be boon or bane. ... Mah’s scholarship and knowledge of French history and viticulture figure significantly in the novel’s storyline, but The Lost Vintage never feels forced or heavy-handed, and her vivid prose unlocks the musty aromatics of a long-abandoned cellar full of secrets for even the least sophisticated of palates. Drink deep.
Preti Taneja
PositiveBookPage\"Take Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, King Lear, The Jewel in the Crown, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Wounded Civilization; pass them along to DJ Danger Mouse for a bit of a mashup; and you’d have a sense of the shape and scope of Preti Taneja’s debut novel, We That Are Young ... Much like some of the most thrilling novels of the past decade, We That Are Young relies on individual narratives that are self-serving and suspect ... Factor in the casual and untranslated bits of Hindi, and this epic novel announces itself from the outset as no beach read or airplane book; it demands (and rewards) one’s full attention.\
Heather Morris
RaveBookPage...[an] extraordinary debut novel ... While Lale’s story is told at one remove—he held his recollections inside for more than half a century, fearing he might be branded as a collaborator—it is no less moving, no less horrifying, no less true ... it is a story that desperately needs to be read.
Maria Hummel
RaveBookPage\"Like Chandler, Hummel is capable of limning out a ripping yarn replete with high fashion, high finance and high society ... It would be damning with faint praise to call Still Lives a contender for best beach read of the year—like calling Pablo Picasso a really good painter—but Still Lives is both that and so much more.\
Rachel Joyce
RaveBookPageAfter Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, is there any other book written by any other Brit about the intersection of love and vinyl records that’s worth reading? Why, yes, there is. And Rachel Joyce’s magnificent The Music Shop is it ... it’s worth noting that Joyce’s novel is intellectually and emotionally satisfying on every possible level. If you love words, if you love music, if you love love, this is 2018’s first must-read, and it will be without question one of the year’s best.
Ivy Pochoda
RaveBookPagePochoda is a master at homing in on the details of both exterior and interior landscapes and crafting characters so palpable that you can feel blood throbbing in their temples and rivulets of sweat evaporating off their necks. It’s not a far stretch to consider Pochoda to be in the company of James Ellroy, Michael Connelly and T. Jefferson Parker, but the two novelists that most often leap to mind as peers are Walter Mosley and National Book Award finalist Kem Nunn. It wouldn’t be a big surprise to find Wonder Valley on the short list for several awards itself.
Maja Lunde
PositiveBookPageAt the outset, the connections between the three are opaque, but Lunde’s compelling narrative draws the reader in—more like a spider than a bee, actually. Much as in Ray Bradbury’s famed story 'A Sound of Thunder,' the 'butterfly effect' is in full effect, as decisions made long ago and far away influence outcomes in unpredictable but realistic ways. And while it might be putting too fine a point on it, Lunde demonstrates how our social order mirrors that of the bees: Some of us are workers, some drones and a lucky few queens, but each contributes to the upkeep of the hive in ways we may never understand.
