PositiveShelf Awareness... a crime thriller with characters as ugly and beautiful as the landscape of the Kentucky hills ... Offutt writes in the classic detective genre with clarity and ease, providing the structural satisfactions of a mystery unfolding into a taut climax, and possesses the kind of sophisticated language and human insight only a fine writer can deliver. Enriching the story are arresting turns of phrase and intricate details, such as gorgeous descriptions of birds and trees, mushrooms and plants and the way the sun looks as it falls across the forests, meadows and hills. It is a world of startling beauty and cruel violence, its harsh truths unsparing, unemotional and unredeemed.
Elizabeth Hardwick, Ed. by Alex Andriesse
RaveShelf Awareness... makes a fine companion to her Collected Essays, selected by Darryl Pinckney and published in 2017 ... In their range of subject matter and length, these essays demonstrate Hardwick\'s ability to illuminate with both high-beam headlights and pocket flashlights, to digress articulately at length and compress immense thoughts into curt phrases. Every piece contains sharp observation and analysis. But Hardwick\'s writing is also full of keen feeling, lively curiosity and deep concern for the world\'s many people, places and things. Hardwick may have led the enviable life of a New York City intellectual, but she always carried with her the critical eye of an outsider. Her essays bring to life the perspective of one equally at home in the salon parlor and on the sidewalks of Main Street ... This collection may be read from front to back or in any order. No matter how readers choose to dive in, these essays deliver the enlightenment and pleasure that only a brilliant mind unfurling itself on the page can offer.
Kali Fajardo-Anstine
RaveShelf AwarenessCombining extensive research with a propulsive narrative that spans decades, Fajardo-Anstine delivers a historical novel that never feels like a history lesson. She does so in prose often joyous and warm but unsparing in its depiction of oppression based on race, gender and class. Mysterious and vivid, Woman of Light is an extraordinary painting of a vibrant world both old and new.
Don Lee
PositiveShelf AwarenessFor readers to whom Don Lee is a new author, The Partition is the perfect place to start. Lee, the author of four novels and a collection of short stories, transports readers around the world in this short story collection, which shines a light into the nooks and crannies of contemporary life and Asian American experiences ... Not only are these nine stories illuminating, but they are told in fine prose, clear and full of precise details ... At the heart of every story is a compelling human life.
Mieko Kawakami, trans. by Sam Bett and David Boyd
PositiveShelf Awareness... a deeply serious meditation on modern womanhood; its colloquial, confessional and conversational style and wondrous discourses on the nature of light lend an atmospheric tone devoid of melodrama. By portraying the specific with such intricacy, Kawakami invites all readers in.
