Julian Barnes’s Departure(s), Val McDermid’s Winter, Ben Markovits’ The Rest of Our Lives, and Jung Chang’s Fly, Wild Swans all feature among January’s best reviewed books.
1. Departure(s) by Julian Barnes
(Knopf)
8 Rave • 10 Positive
“The whole package is a culmination of sorts, shimmering with his silky, erudite prose; beneath the suave surface is an earnest investigation into the mysterious ways of the human heart … Absence itself—absence of love, absence of the beloved—becomes a crucial locus of meaning.”
–Adam Begley (The Atlantic)
2. The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
(Summit Books)
9 Rave • 5 Positive
Read a conversation with Ben Markovits and Jonathan Lethem here
“Wry, poignant … For middle-aged, passive-aggressive men playing out the clock in dismal marriages, reading The Rest of Our Lives may feel like performing open-heart surgery on themselves. But anyone willing to consider the thicket of fears, affections and recriminations that grows through the cracks of a long relationship will find in these pages an almost unbearable tenderness … Not a heavily plotted novel, but it accrues an irresistible momentum of sympathy … Devastating.”
–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)
3. This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin
(Knopf)
10 Rave • 1 Positive
“Sensitive and powerful … The women in This Is Where the Serpent Lives are sharply drawn, but their roles are more circumscribed … The magic in This Is Where the Serpent Lives is the up-close work. Mueenuddin makes the reader care about the romantic relationships, and the pages turn themselves … A serious book that you’ll be hearing about again, later in the year, when the shortlists for the big literary prizes are announced … I wish it were more unbuttoned.”
–Dwight Garner (The New York Times)
4. Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
7 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an interview with Madeline Cash here
“Delightfully cracked … Cash attends to the family crises with a winning mixture of black comedy and innocent sweetness … It’s an engaging, slightly cartoonish story that shows off Ms. Cash’s talent for producing rapid-fire dialogue and amiably oddball characters. It helps that the author has clearly enjoyed herself.”
–Sam Sacks (The Wall Street Journal)
5. Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo
(Grove/Black Cat)
8 Rave • 1 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an excerpt from Call Me Ishmaelle here
“A triumph … There is so much pleasure to be had in rereading old favorites—and part of the joy is meeting beloved characters, who have been updated or somehow arrive in a new form to resist old tropes and types. Guo’s recasting of Ishmaelle is no exception.”
–Leanne Ogasawara (The Los Angeles Times)
**
1. Winter: The Story of a Season by Val McDermid
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
6 Rave • 3 Positive
Read an essay by Val McDermid here
“An odd, unexpected and quite lovely book from McDermid … More than her memories; it is a celebration of all things cold, dark and Scottish. In short, evocative chapters McDermid slides gracefully from topic to topic … It’s a pleasure to move with McDermid … A memoir of her heart.”
–Laurie Hertzel (The Washington Post)
2. Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood by William J. Mann
(Simon & Schuster)
6 Rave • 2 Positive
“Admirably researched and generous … Does Mann solve the crime? I think so—or at least he comes as close as one can to finding a plausible solution so many years after the fact.”
–Dennis Drabelle (The Washington Post)
3. Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China by Jung Chang
(Harper)
5 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Fly, Wild Swans here
“By far her most painfully personal yet—an unflinching assessment of her life and career and the role those dearest to her played in both … In simple, straightforward prose, Chang describes in new detail the horrors her parents suffered through during China’s Cultural Revolution … It is also a book of enduring filial love … Chang has a talent for tapping the history of the individual to speak to the broader societal forces at play around them.”
–Emily Feng (NPR)
4. The Flower Bearers by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
(Random House)
6 Rave • 1 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan
“Elegant and juicy … Storytelling unafraid of poetry. Like a pudding, the prose here is both plain and rich … It’s a lot, but it’s also gratifyingly lush. Griffiths gives us romance and romanticism.”
–Danyel Smith (The New York Times Book Review)
5. The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game by C. Thi Nguyen
(Penguin)
5 Rave • 1 Positive
“Brilliant and wildly original … Profound, rigorous and frequently beautiful … Even without [the] larger argument, The Score would brim with local insights … Socially attentive, historically literate and imbued with sensual glee. It is exuberantly eclectic.”
–Becca Rothfeld (The Washington Post)
