1. Milkman by Anna Burns
12 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
“…offers an extraordinary glimpse into the perils of being a woman during the tail end of an armed conflict, when boundaries remain dangerous … Page by page, its narrator takes in a big lungful of narrative air and spins out one gorgeous, syntactically perfect loop of story after another. This a dense, musical book that sounds in the head like a symphony played by a soloist whose dazzling energy and elliptical progression create the unusual feeling of there being a crowd of musicians producing its rich sound … Few works of fiction see as clearly as this one how violence deforms social networks, enhancing, people’s worst instincts. And yet it would be unfair not to remark upon—maybe even end with—how this book is also bursting with energy, with tiny apertures of kindness, and a youthful kind of joy.”
-John Freeman (The Boston Globe)
Read an excerpt from Milkman here
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2. Broken Ground by Val McDermid
5 Rave • 3 Positive
“In Broken Ground, Val McDermid returns to one of my favourite characters of hers, detective chief inspector Karen Pirie, of the Historic Cases Unit … The DCI – ‘a dumpy wee woman with bad hair and terrible dress sense’ who can pull out ‘the kind of smile that makes small children whimper and cling to their mother’s legs’ – is as intuitive, courageous and grumpy as ever, and McDermid’s plotting is top-notch. There is nothing more gratifying than watching a master craftswoman at work, and she is on fine form here.”
–Alison Flood (The Observer)
Read Val McDermid on the Remarkable Rise of Public Noir
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3. Bleak Harbor by Bryan Gruley
4 Rave 3 Positive 1 Mixed
“Who is victim and who is antagonist in this story? … This reviewer prides herself on weeding out the ‘villain of the piece’ long before the author’s disclosure. Not this time. In Bleak Harbor, Bryan Gruley truly has an ace up his sleeve, for the person behind Danny’s abduction is, a surprise that will shock some while others will applaud its brilliance. It’s a truly exceptional suspense story with a unique protagonist who isn’t to be underestimated.”
-Toni V. Sweeney (The New York Journal of Books)
Read “How to Write Small Town Crime Fiction” by Bryan Gruley here
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4. The Day the Sun Died by Yan Lianke, Trans. by Carlos Rojas
4 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“…this exuberant but sinister fable confirms its author as one of China’s most audacious and enigmatic novelists … With its yarn of a single night of mayhem, and its naive but perceptive narrator, The Day the Sun Died achieves a focus and momentum not always found in Mr Yan’s work. His writing—resourcefully translated by Carlos Rojas—feels both ancient and modern, folkloric and avant-garde. He honours the modern Chinese experience of living in two worlds, two epochs, at once.”
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5. Revolution Sunday by Wendy Guerra, Trans. by Achy Obejas
3 Rave • 4 Positive
“Revolution Sunday is a complicated book, and a challenging one. It mixes poetry and prose, autofiction and hyperrealism, intense sensory detail and complete logistical vagueness. It has a plot, but not one that provides much momentum, or even meaning … Achy Obejas does an exceptional job translating Revolution Sunday, especially as the novel turns inward. Her English prose is as intense and reckless as Cleo’s Havana. In a less confident translator’s hands, Cleo would lie flat on the page. Thanks to Obejas, she shimmers with life … Revolutionary Sunday is a dirty novel, full of corruption, deception and betrayal. Guerra is a fearless writer, and she’s lucky to have a fearless translator. Together, they make Revolution Sunday more vivid than life.”
–Lily Meyer (NPR)
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1. Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Gaston Dorren
3 Rave • 3 Positive
“Babel is an endlessly interesting book, and you don’t have to have any linguistic training to enjoy it. Dorren has a talent for explaining even the most difficult linguistic concepts in a way that’s easy to understand, and he includes helpful charts at the beginning of each chapter, listing notable facts about the language he’s about to write about … But the great thing about Babel is that you don’t have to agree with Dorren’s conclusions to enjoy it—it’s a book that’s as joyful as it is educational, and above all, it’s just so much fun to read.”
–Michael Schaub (NPR)
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2. The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga, Trans. by Jordan Stump
4 Rave • 1 Mixed
“The Barefoot Woman by Scholastique Mukasonga… is a loving tribute to a strong mother and a striking work of memoir … Extraordinarily, this story is at times horrifying in its content and at other times playful; lyric in its style and tender in its handling of the central character. While the reader’s knowledge of the genocide to come hangs over the narrative, the everyday events often retain a quotidian feeling … As a literary work, this establishes a rare balance. Jordan Stump’s translation from the French beautifully conveys this sense of both tragedy and day-to-day joy … This is an adoring, gorgeously rendered memorial to a mother and testimony to a people.”
-Julie Kastner (Shelf Awareness)
Read an excerpt from The Barefoot Woman here
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3. Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler, Trans. by Katy Derbyshire
2 Rave • 3 Positive
“Geissler’s aim is to communicate that beneath this abstraction, however, laborers are individuals. In that sense, Seasonal Associate belongs to the long literary tradition of social-problem novels, which includes Charles Dickens’s Hard Times,Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath—all of which attempt to reveal, in their careful, humanizing treatment of character, fully realized protagonists caught within stultifying and impersonal industrial mechanisms. In a contemporary case like Geissler’s, this kind of project is no less urgent.”
–Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
Read an excerpt from Seasonal Associate here
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4. Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters, Ed. by David Kipen
2 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“…what Dear Los Angeles: The City in Diaries and Letters 1542 to 2018 shows us is that L.A. is a place that can’t be rationalized, explained or excused … Kipen’s new compendium collects fragmentary views of Los Angeles, from nearly 500 years of letters and diaries, turning the City of Angels into a city of angles, glimpses, shards of perception, like a million little slivers of a broken mirror, all reflecting different images of our disparate city back to us … A number of the fragments in Dear Los Angeles are master classes in micro-storytelling.”
–Tyler Malone (The Los Angeles Times)
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5. All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson by Mark Griffin
1 Rave • 3 Positive • 2 Mixed
“It’s surprising that in the three decades since Hudson’s death, there has been little written about him that could be considered comprehensive. Previous biographies came from past lovers and friends, and each seemed to have an agenda, often salacious. Griffin goes a long way toward rectifying this issue, casting a respectful light on some fresh as well as familiar details. Throughout, [Griffin] provides a balanced, multifaceted view of his subject … An engrossing and carefully documented account of a beloved film icon’s life.”
–(Kirkus)
