Laura Zigman’s Small World, Janet Malcolm’s Still Pictures, Leigh Bardugo’s Hell Bent, and Paul Auster’s Bloodbath Nation all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.
1. Small World by Laura Zigman
(Ecco)
5 Rave • 2 Positive
“Zigman weaves incisive, revealing glimpses into Joyce and Lydia’s early family life, their shared childhood that included both benign and active neglect … This is no pity party, however. Zigman is terrific at melding heartbreaking situations with humorous, evocative details without once veering off into saccharine sentimentality. The Mellishman sisters’ story is alive with vibrant details … In a tale that’s partly about fraught and ruptured relationships, Zigman’s ability to elicit the transformative magic that happens when people find true connection with others makes these pages glow.”
–Daneet Steffens (The Boston Globe)
2. Ghost Music by An Yu
(Grove)
2 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Spellbinding and atmospheric … With its quiet, dreamy bending of reality and its precise depiction of many different strains of alienation, Ghost Music is an evocative exploration of what it means to live fully — and the potential consequences of failing to do so. Yu braids the mundane and the magical together with a gentle hand … There’s something here of early Murakami’s graceful, open-ended approach to the uncanny, as well as the vivid yet muted emotionality of Patrick Modiano or Katie Kitamura. Like these skillful portraitists of alienation, Yu conjures a visceral in-betweenness where the worlds of matter and spirit meet in a shared, suspended space … Ghost Music inverts the tropes of the ghost story, which often feature spirits acting out in the violent, passionate way of the living…instead drawing the familiar world of human life closer to the enigmatic realm of the dead.”
–Alexandra Kleeman (The New York Times Book Review)
3. Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
(Flatiron)
5 Rave
“Once again, Bardugo shows she’s one of the best world builders in the business. Her version of Yale and its people is so richly rendered, it’s difficult to tell what’s real and what’s imagined. Not a page goes by without a line from Yeats or a fact about the architectural history of New Haven or a bit of biblical allusion. And yet, the book whizzes along, marvelously balancing these details with The Da Vinci Code-esque clue-hunting, demonic rituals and lectures from a particularly uptight school administrator. Gut-wrenching and deeply human, this book will tug at your heartstrings even as it chills you to the bone … Standing head and shoulders above the already impressive Ninth House, Hell Bent is one of the best fantasy novels of the year.”
–Chris Pickens (BookPage)
**
1. Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory by Janet Malcolm
(FSG)
5 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Superb … How could a writer so famously, effectively skeptical of subjective stories write an autobiography? Malcolm solves the problem with characteristic elegance: Nearly every short chapter of Still Pictures is headed by a grainy black-and-white photograph, whose calls to memory she heeds, repels and bargains with in turn by subtle turn. Her comfort with incompleteness becomes a virtue … Most of this memoir consists of appreciative and often very dryly funny memories of her devoted, literate family … Still Pictures has the clarity and brevity of a book by a writer who knows that time is short, and that there’s much to say, much to convey, which will otherwise be lost forever … A lot gets lost in that transition, Malcolm argues in this final, splendid, most personal work of her long career. A lot—but not everything.”
–Charles Finch (The New York Times Book Review)
2. The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise by Pico Iyer
(Riverhead)
6 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an excerpt from The Half Known Life here
“In Iyer’s hands, the search for paradise, the way out of the ego, doubles as an internal journey … No stranger to the travel genre, the prolific Iyer is after something more here. His chronicle, which begins with an appreciation of the sophistication, beauty and culture of Iran, becomes a requiem for a world—and an existence—estranged from itself … A lonely, nostalgic and haunted quality emerges as Iyer casually intersperses bits of his personal history. There is a formula to many of the chapters … Empathy is not the only thing going on; Iyer is also looking within. And as he looks, things get dizzier and dizzier.”
–Mark Epstein (The New York Times Book Review)
3. Bloodbath Nation by Paul Auster
(Grove)
3 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed
“Brief but remarkably moving … Though Auster’s arguments will be familiar to anyone who has followed gun control debates closely, the author’s overview is exceptional in its clarity and arresting in its sense of urgency … A harrowing, haunting reflection on the routine slaughter wrought by guns.”
