Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives, Jung Chang’s Fly, Wild Swans, and Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
1. This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin
(Knopf)
10 Rave
“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)
2. Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
5 Rave • 3 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)
3. The Hitch by Sara Levine
(Roxane Gay Books)
3 Rave • 2 Positive
“Boisterously comic … This novel isn’t a simple, fun ride but an unpredictable and rewarding journey that will have readers thinking about their own relationships, assumptions and limitations.”
–Lauren Bufferd (BookPage)
**
1. 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)
2. 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)
3. Winter: The Story of a Season by Val McDermid
(Atlantic Monthly Press)
2 Rave • 3 Positive
“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)
