Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, Jame McBride’s The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, Patti Hartigan’s August Wilson: A Life, Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, and Clare Carlisle’s The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life all feature among August’s best reviewed books.
1. The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
17 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The Bee Sting here
“The Bee Sting…ought to cement Murray’s already high standing. Another changeup, it’s a triumph of realist fiction, a big, sprawling social novel in the vein of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. The agility with which Murray structures the narrative around the family at its heart is virtuosic and sure-footed, evidence of a writer at the height of his power deftly shifting perspectives, style and syntax to maximize emotional impact. Hilarious and sardonic, heartbreaking and beautiful—there’s just no other way to put it: The Bee Sting is a masterpiece.”
–Jonathan Russell Clark (The Los Angeles Times)
2. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
(Haper)
16 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an interview with Ann Patchett here
“A gorgeously told and quietly devastating story of family, love, and identity. The book is unpretentious in its erudition, yet filled with allusions and galvanized by a passion for literature and theater … Chekhovian atmosphere and elements leave their imprint on every page of Patchett’s novel … Throughout Tom Lake, art and life intersect, contradict, and implicate each other, both conceptually and textually.”
–Priscilla Gilman (The Boston Globe)
3. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
(Riverhead)
14 Rave • 1 Positive
“Confirms the abiding strength of McBride’s vernacular narrative. With his eccentric, larger-than-life characters and outrageous scenes of spliced tragedy and comedy, ‘Dickensian’ is not too grand a description for his novels, but the term is ultimately too condescending and too Anglican. The melodrama that McBride spins is wholly his own … If there’s a ramshackle quality to McBride’s plotting, it’s the artful precariousness of a genius. His expansive collection of ominous, preposterous and saintly characters twirls like loose sticks in a river, guided by a physics of chaos beyond all calculation except awe … We all need—we all deserve—this vibrant, love-affirming novel that bounds over any difference that claims to separate us.”
–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)
4. Witness by Jamel Brinkley
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
10 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read a short story by Jamel Brinkley here
“Splendidly thought-provoking stories … Brinkley pierces the superficial and obvious—that what meets the eye is all there is to see—by displaying a more nuanced portrait of how we perceive and are perceived … Stylistically, the beginnings of these stories are akin to being thrust into a moving current—Brinkley doesn’t waste time on unnecessary setup or trivial fluff. His smooth prose rips and slips down the page, getting right to the point … Brinkley is a writer whose versatility knows no boundaries. He can make you laugh, cry, contemplate life’s deepest questions, remember what it was like to be a child, and feel the warmth, or chill, of your own family history. Tapping into the sticky stuff of humanity, each story is a gift of the highest quality, reminding us that we are all both in the audience and on life’s stage, even if we don’t know it.”
–Mateo Askaripour (The New York Times Book Review)
5. Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
(Little Brown and Company)
8 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Donoghue is among the most fearless contemporary novelists we have: an immensely talented writer who is a great storyteller and, based on her extensive body of work, unafraid of subjects that give her less-courageous peers pause … A fascinating story set at an English girls school in 1805 and—wait for it—what we once called an insane asylum in 1815. It has characters with complex internal lives, insights into the human soul, and a wrenching love story that’s both queer and multiracial … Donoghue offers what I am sure Lister herself would view as a ripping good spin on her remarkable story.”
–Chris Bohjalian (The Washington Post)
**
1. The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life by Clare Carlisle
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
8 Rave • 8 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Intriguing, often brilliant … Ultimately, Carlisle’s thoughtful, comprehensive account of this particular liaison exquisitely probes the complex, thorny, and fascinating question: How much does our choice of partner determine who we ultimately become?”
–Jenny McPhee (AirMail)
2. Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder
(Knopf)
9 Rave • 4 Positive • 4 Mixed • 1 Pan
Listen to an interview with Anna Funder here
“With the precision of a historian, Funder cobbles together scant details to reconstruct a life. And with the imaginative force of a novelist, she speculates in clearly sign-posted moments on what that life was like … Considering how little information Funder has to work with, Wifedom is a spectacular achievement of both scholarship and pure feeling.”
–Jessica Ferri (The Los Angeles Times)
3. Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo
(Bloomsbury)
8 Rave • 3 Positive
“Yepoka Yeebo’s riveting Anansi’s Gold traces the outlines of Blay-Miezah’s life, shedding light on how he perpetrated his deceptions for years while living in incredible opulence. The author, a freelance journalist, delves into archives across the Atlantic, digs up criminal proceedings and conducts interviews with victims and associates alike, in the process telling us not just about Blay-Miezah, but about the world that enabled him to thrive … This character study also functions as a key historical text on post-Nkrumah Ghana. We gain behind-the-scenes access to two coups and insight into the functioning of the state intelligence system that ruled before Ghana’s transition to democracy.”
–Anakwa Dwamena (The New York Times Book Review)
4. August Wilson: A Life by Patti Hartigan
(Simon & Schuster)
8 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Masterful … With painstaking research, stylistic verve, and an eye both admiring and exacting, Ms. Hartigan has pieced together the man behind the 20th Century Cycle, bringing Wilson to furious, complicated life … Ms. Hartigan documents with a great sense of the dramatic … Narrated brilliantly.”
–Isaac Butler (The Wall Street Journal)
5. Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith by John Szwed
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
7 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Cosmic Scholar here
“The first comprehensive biography of this hipster magus. It tours his life without ever quite penetrating it. But it’s a knowing and thoughtful book … He wrestles this material into a loose but sturdy form, as if he were moving a futon. He allows different sides of Smith’s personality to catch blades of sun. He brings the right mixture of reverence and comic incredulity to his task … here’s a lot of material to tap into, and you’ll want to. Smith added a great deal to the national stock of peculiarity. He was the worm at the bottom of American culture’s mezcal bottle. You slam the glass down, because his experience still makes you feel alive.”
–Dwight Garner (The New York Times)
