Fiction
1. A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré
(7 Rave, 6 Positive)
“A Legacy of Spies brings it all back, as fresh and as rancid as ever, in a tale that shows the master in the full vigour of his old mastery … satisfies not only by being vintage Le Carré, which it is, but in the way in which it so neatly and ingeniously closes the circle of the author’s long career.”
–John Banville (The Guardian)
*
2. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
(8 Rave, 3 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“As long as America has novelists such as Jesmyn Ward, it will not lose its soul … Sing, Unburied, Sing is nothing short of magnificent. Combining stark circumstances with magical realism, it illuminates America’s love-hate tug between the races in a way that we seem incapable of doing anywhere else but in occasional blessed works of art. But first, it tells a great story.”
–Pamela Miller (The Minneapolis Star Tribune)
*
3. Grace by Paul Lynch
(5 Rave)
“Though grim in subject, Grace is a moving work of lyrical and at times hallucinatory beauty … The result is a bleak picaresque that reads like a hybrid of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road … Lynch does not devote much of his narrative to the political and economic causes of the Great Hunger (don’t look for a history lesson here), but there is an undercurrent of populist ire that resonates with our own turbulent times.”
–Jon Michaud (The Washington Post)
Read an excerpt from Grace here
Read an essay from Paul Lynch here
*
4. The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
(5 Rave, 1 Positive, 1 Mixed, 1 Pan)
“…ranks among Rushdie’s most ambitious and provocative books … Given its themes, the novel is a somber departure from the fable-like, comic style that has been Rushdie’s signature since his 1981 breakthrough, Midnight’s Children. But The Golden Housestill displays the quicksilver wit and playful storytelling of Rushdie’s best work.”
–Mark Athitakis (USA Today)
Read an interview with Salman Rushdie here
*
5. A Life of Adventure and Delight by Akhil Sharma
(2 Rave, 2 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“This slippery tone — at once amused and critical, resigned and outraged — infuses each of these eight haunting, revelatory stories. As in so much of contemporary American fiction, the attention here is on the conflicts and consolations between couples and family members in a naturalistic present day. Throughout, Sharma adheres unwaveringly to Raymond Carver’s dictum of ‘no tricks,’ telling his stories with bracingly direct, unassuming language.”
–Adrian Tomine (The New York Times Book Review)
Read an excerpt from A Life of Adventure and Delight here
**
Non Fiction
1. Life in Code by Ellen Ullman
(2 Rave, 4 Positive)
“Like all great writers, she finds the universal in the specific, mixing memoir with industry gossip (cameos by Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, a wry Microsoft dig) and ancillary tales of house cats, dairy farmers, and Julia Child. Code is illuminating and unfailingly clever, but above all it’s a deeply human book: urgent, eloquent, and heartfelt.”
–Leah Greenblatt (Entertainment Weekly)
*
2. Freud: The Making of an Illusion by Frederick Crews
(2 Rave, 2 Positive, 2 Mixed)
“Writing in 1922 to Sigmund Freud, the disgruntled husband of a woman undergoing psychoanalysis challenged the famous psychologist: ‘Great Doctor, are you a savant or a charlatan?’ In this devastating exposé, Crews answers that question with stunning clarity … Crews relentlessly shreds the deceptions that Freudians even now try to maintain.”
–Bryce Christensen (Booklist)
Read an excerpt from Freud: The Making of an Illusion here
*
3. After Kathy Acker by Chris Kraus
(2 Rave, 2 Positive, 1 Pan)
“Kraus’s prose glides by without feeling rushed. By seamlessly intermingling excerpts from Acker’s novels, interviews, and correspondence into her narrative, Kraus’ style mimics how Acker’s identity and art reciprocally fed off of each other in a way that made discernment between the two difficult. In lesser hands, this archive-rich biography might have wound up a convoluted narrative. But Kraus gives us a finely ordered account of Acker’s life that still acknowledges the challenge of telling a story that draws heavily from biography and experience. It is a book brimming with moments where reality and fiction meet, the boundaries between the two often blurred.”
–Megan Pietz (The Chicago Review of Books)
Read an excerpt form After Kathy Acker here
*
4. Hail to the Chin by Bruce Campbell
(5 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“Campbell sheds further light on the (decidedly unglamorous) existence of a B-list actor, and fans of his work will undoubtedly be excited to read more from the enigmatic movie star … Chock-full of amusing anecdotes about the underappreciated B-list movie industry. Hand to admirers of Campbell’s previous book and fans of the talkies.”
–Library Journal
*
5. Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
(4 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“Although AI is drawing many scientists into its web, his background in cosmology gives him a special perspective, as he examines the constraints that the natural universe and the laws of physics would place on a super-intelligent civilisation seeking to expand out into the galaxy and beyond.”
–Clive Cookson (The Financial Times)
***
