Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky, Katherine Bucknell’s Christopher Isherwood: Inside Out, Yoko Ogawa’s Mina’s Matchbox, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Survival is a Promise all feature among August’s best reviewed books.
1. The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya
(Pantheon)
6 Rave • 8 Positive
“Glides among time frames and points of view … Formal complexity is what elevates The Hypocrite from a straightforward novel of prosecution and rebuttal … Is instead invested in the phenomenon of subjectivity, portraying a world of mutual self-involvement in which people are not only driven but tragically blinded by their individual truths. As such, The Hypocrite elevates style above argument, and its pleasures are in the swift, agile way that Ms. Hamya flits between the characters’ thoughts and the past and present.”
–Sam Sacks (The Wall Street Journal)
2. There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
(Knopf)
9 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 2 Pan
“The risk with multiple overlapping narratives is that the reader can become more invested in one. The pace of the longer descriptive passages is slower than the character-driven sections, but no less forceful or imaginative … This novel moves between continents, centuries, cultures and communities with intelligence and ease. Shafak raises big ideas around artefacts and ownership of cultural heritage and handles them with care … A tribute to the power of language.”
–Henrietta McKervey (The Irish Times)
3. Mina’s Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa, trans. by Stephen B. Snyder
(Pantheon)
8 Rave
“Not only a compelling tale, but it is also beautifully written and constructed. The prose is clear, graceful, and engaging. Ogawa deftly weaves various motifs and themes throughout the novel.”
–Ariel Balter (The New York Journal of Books)
4. Hum by Helen Phillips
(Mary Sue Rucci Books)
5 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an interview with Helen Phillips here
“Intense and propulsive … Reads like a work of beautifully observed contemporary realism, an intimate and tender portrait of one mother’s day-to-day struggles to keep her children safe, and to find a little joy, in a damaged and dangerous world … This sleek ride of a novel further cements Phillips’s position as one of our most profound writers of speculative fiction.”
–Karen Thompson Walker (The New York Times Book Review)
5. Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen
(St. Martin’s Press)
4 Rave • 2 Positive
“Pedersen maintains a sense of doom, building suspense and expectation … Pedersen weaves eerie sentences together from archaic language, and the novel builds with a gruesome, anxious energy as the author reveals its connection to Chinese mythology … The novel’s final pages are a wild frenzy of beauty, vengeance and viscera.”
–Heather Scott Partington (The Los Angeles Times)
**
1. The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss
(Viking)
11 Rave • 1 Positive
“A spirited defense … Friss’s book is organized like the best of such literary emporiums: a little higgledy-piggledy, with surprise diversions here and there … Considers how little overhead is required to nourish the fundamental human hunger for knowledge.”
–Alexandra Jacobs (The New York Times)
2. Christopher Isherwood: Inside Out by Katherine Bucknell
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
7 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Christopher Isherwood: Inside Out here
“Bucknell goes beyond the diaries, gathering up the many strands of the writer’s personal and public lives to create a nuanced, masterful portrait of a brilliant, insecure, charismatic seeker of artistic truth and personal freedom … As Bucknell’s definitive wide-screen biography shows us, Isherwood’s struggles were transmuted into lyrical fiction that never stopped questioning what it meant to be a man in the 20th century, and thus his art became our gift.”
–Marc Weingarten (The Boston Globe)
3. A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson by Camille Peri
(Viking)
6 Rave • 3 Positive
Read an excerpt from A Wilder Shore here
“Engrossing … Her richly researched and vivid double portrait makes a convincing case that Fanny pulled off a rare feat, enabling Louis’s genius to mature while releasing his boyish energies … Peri does not often venture into extended discussion of Louis’s literary work, but when she does, it can be fascinating … I am grateful to Peri for telling the story of their marriage, in all its complexity, with sympathy and spirit.”
–Phyllis Rose (The Atlantic)
4. Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
(Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
5 Rave • 3 Positive
Read an excerpt from Survival Is a Promise here
“An unabashed celebration of Lorde … There is no room for Lorde’s flaws in this book; she is a goddess, an avatar, an icon. As an entry point into Lorde’s poetry, though, Gumbs’s persuasive close readings create a virtuous circle, shining a light on how the life generated the poems, which now elucidate that life … Gumbs honors Lorde’s desire for an expansive legacy.”
–Ayten Tartici (The New York Times Book Review)
5. Earth to Moon: A Memoir by Moon Unit Zappa
(Dey Street Books)
3 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“For such a thoroughly dispiriting saga, Earth to Moon is somehow an unconscionably entertaining read. This is in no small part thanks to the prose … She emerges to claim her own narrative at last. And what a narrative it is.”
–Nick Duerden (The Guardian)
