Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel, Helen Garner’s How to End a Story, Karen Russell’s The Antidote, Torrey Peters’ Stag Dance, and David Sheff’s Yoko all feature among March’s best reviewed books.
1. The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami
(Pantheon)
8 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The Dream Hotel here
“Powerful, richly conceived … Lalami skates along at the height of her powers as a writer of intelligent, complex characters … Although it relies on a speculative technology for its plot, The Dream Hotel is astounding, elegantly constructed, character-driven fiction.”
–Anita Felicelli (The Los Angeles Times)
2. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
(Random House)
11 Rave • 1 Mixed
“Peters excels at plumbing the murky hearts of queer people … A great Torrey Peters story feels like punching yourself in the face, laughing at the bleeding bitch in the mirror and then shamefacedly realizing you’re aroused by the blood on your lips. The four pieces in Stag Dance will leave you bruised, broken and wanting more.”
–Hugh Ryan (The New York Times Book Review)
3. The Antidote by Karen Russell
(Knopf)
9 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an interview with Karen Russell here
“Russell constructed a novel underpinned by an elaborate embroidery of social, geological, historical, and environmental research on the impact of American Western expansion … She effortlessly weaves in other characters whose unique gifts shed light on the lacunae of history … If this sounds like a dense novel, you’re only halfway right. The book is threaded with more subplots and histories as well as characters than I can elaborate upon here. However, her sharp narrative grasp guides the reader from character to character as the book unfolds. Russell’s vivid characters retain an element of mystery, which speaks to the novel’s larger point.”
–Lauren LeBlanc (The Los Angeles Times)
4. Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One by Kristen Arnett
(Riverhead)
7 Rave • 5 Positive
Read an excerpt from Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One here
“Wild, luxurious and absurd is also a killer (clown) description of Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, a novel in which Arnett’s craft and her comedy are on full and feral display.”
–Annie Berke (The Washington Post)
5. Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah
(Riverhead)
8 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“There’s something almost disorienting about Gurnah’s narrative as he moves from one person to the next, willfully thwarting our desire to settle on a protagonist … Delicate … Karim develops into a dashing, volcanic, morally compromised character who catches the eye. But Gurnah’s heart—and ours—lies elsewhere in this novel. Writing a story around a young man as subtle and apparently insignificant as Badar is a kind of argument about the value of true character.”
–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)
**
1. Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton
(Pantheon)
9 Rave • 1 Positive
“There is something both wonderfully archaic and utterly contemporary about Chloe Dalton’s memoir of finding and raising a baby hare … One of the great glories of the book, beautifully illustrated by Denise Nestor, is the way in which Ms. Dalton records the appearance, movement and behavior of the growing leveret … Dalton has given us a portrait, both ephemeral and real.”
–Karin Altenberg (The Wall Street Journal)
2. How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978-1998 by Helen Garner
(Pantheon)
6 Rave • 1 Positive
“It gets off to a tentative and makeshift start … By a quarter of the way in, I was utterly in her hands … Garner has an ideal voice to express late-night pangs of precariousness and distress, some more comic than others. Her prose is clear, honest and economical.”
–Dwight Garner (The New York Times)
3. Yoko: A Biography by David Sheff
(Simon & Schuster)
1 Rave • 7 Positive • 2 Mixed
“Sheff’s most important accomplishment may be taking this reframing a step further. By explaining Ono’s personal history and artistic path, he builds the case that she, not Lennon, was more damaged career-wise by their union … The first significant biography … The strength of Sheff’s book is simple journalism, connecting the dots that existed only vaguely before Yoko.”
–Geoff Edgars (The Washington Post)
4. Firstborn by Lauren Christensen
(Penguin Press)
4 Rave • 2 Positive
“Radiant, rigorous, heart-rending … It is a testament to Christensen’s storytelling talent that the book’s sense of suspense is nonetheless acute … I will never forget Simone or the lodestar that is Firstborn.”
–Priscilla Gilman (The Boston Globe)
5. When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines by Graydon Carter
(Penguin)
2 Rave • 5 Positive
“At its best when Carter is the underdog biting at ankles, or a Don Quixote who learns to tilt at the right windmills … Catnip for those of us still addicted to magazines, who still harbor the delusion that we’ll get to that pile on the table as soon as we can. Carter seems to know how fortunate he was to ride the wave and thrive as a shot-caller back when that meant something more than it does today. The going was indeed good.”
–Chris Vognar (The Los Angeles Times)
