1. Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
9 Rave • 8 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
“I wrote down the microchemical raptures I was having, one after the next, from beginning to end of this revelatory novel … The Lost Children Archives [is] a semi-autobiographical gloss that Lueselli skillfully crafts without dipping into the pedantic accumulations that sometimes overwhelm such books … It is a breathtaking journey, one that builds slowly and confidently until you find yourself in a fever dream of convergences. The Lost Children Archive is simply stunning. It is a perfect intervention for our horrible time, but that fleeting concurrence is not why this book will be read and sampled and riffed on for years to come … The Lost Children Archive contains multitudes, contradictions, and raises difficult questions for which there are no easy answers. It is a great American novel. It is also a great human novel.”
–Rob Spillman (Guernica)
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2. American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
6 Rave • 1 Positive
“American Spy is a beautifully paced spy thriller as well as a promising debut from a writer who’s not content to rely on the settled tropes of any literary genre … Wilkinson packs a lot of plot into American Spy … But Wilkinson handles the several threads in the novel deftly, and she has a real gift for pacing—never once does the book flag or get bogged down, and it’s never needlessly complex or confusing … Wilkinson doesn’t shy away from the moral ambiguity of American adventurism in the 1980s, and neither does her unforgettable narrator … American Spy works on so many levels — it’s an expertly written spy thriller as well as a deeply intelligent literary novel that tackles issues of politics, race and gender in a way that’s never even close to being heavy-handed or didactic. Above all, it’s just so much fun to read … [American Spy] marks the debut of an immensely talented writer who’s refreshingly unafraid to take risks, and has the skills to make those risks pay off.”
–Michael Schaub (NPR)
Read an excerpt from American Spy here
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3. The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
4 Rave • 2 Positive
“Violence, politics, betrayal, love, friendship, encounters with alien predators, and experiences in a dying city entwine to create a conflicted world in an even stronger novel than Anders’ Nebula Award–winning All the Birds in the Sky (2016); a tale that can stand beside such enduring works as Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion.”
–Diana Tixier Herald (Booklist)
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4. Leading Men by Christopher Castellani
2 Rave • 5 Positive
“.. blazing … Writing fiction is to no small degree a confidence game, and Leading Men casts a spell right from the start … What you’ve yet to learn is how reliably tender and evocative Castellani’s onrushing prose can be. His first achievement in Leading Men is to create a world, one inhabited largely by young, charming gay men, that seems to be comprised almost entirely of late nights and last cigarettes and picnics on good blankets and linen suits with the trousers rolled to the knees. This writer’s scenes glitter, and they have a strong sexual pulse … [Castellani’s] second achievement is to pry this milieu open and pour a series of intricate themes into it … This book is a kind of poem in praise of pleasure, and those pleasures are sometimes stern. Its author knows a great deal about life; better, he knows how to express what he knows.”
–Dwight Garner (The New York Times)
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5. Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa
3 Rave • 2 Positive
“… astonishing …The journey recalls Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, the long last ride of Addie Bundren; like Faulkner too, Khalifa employs a shifting array of voices and reflections, moving from perspective to perspective, present to past and back again. The effect is a persistent deepening, as stories are introduced and then revisited, details added through the play of memory … The power of the novel… is that it unfolds within a human context, which pushes against and resists the prevailing social one. What other option do we have?”
–David L. Ulin (Los Angeles Times)
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1. ‘Broadsword Calling Danny Boy’: Watching Where Eagles Dare by Geoff Dyer
3 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed
“The magpie eclecticism of Geoff Dyer is something to wonder at. His books are like party turns, each one different from the last while all bearing his distinctly puckish signature … Dyer makes for a droll guide, combining a scene-by-scene breakdown of the film’s silliness with gonzo riffs on its cultural legacy … less a work of film criticism than a jeu d’esprit … it’s not the movie itself that holds him, or us, but its effectiveness as nostalgia, its throwback to a more innocent time when a man with a Schmeisser machine gun and a length of thin rope could seemingly win the war for Britain and be back home in time for tea.”
–Anthony Quinn (Financial Times)
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2. Parkland by Dave Cullen
3 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Cullen traces the movement from the students’ early meetings in their living rooms and first forays onto Twitter. He marks the instant when their Instagram feeds turned from sunsets and selfies to toe-to-toe battles with the National Rifle Association … Parkland tells their story well and truly. It’s written with the clarity and depth and time—that’s the big thing, time—that the students who died and the students who live deserve, and that the nation grappling with it all needs. I was moved and informed and, most of all, heartbroken by it—even though it’s written with authentic hope.”
–Heidi Stevens (Chicago Tribune)
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=3. The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison
2 Rave • 4 Positive
“In this collection of nonfiction written over the past four decades, Morrison reinforces her status as a piercing and visionary analyst of history, society, literature, language, and, always, race … [Morrison’s] analyses of the role of blackness in the white literary imagination and the limitations placed on black authors are affecting and will be particularly trenchant for those encountering them for the first time … Where the book explodes into pure brilliance, though, is in Morrison’s comprehensive account of her own writing, from its origins in slave narratives, to its philosophical underpinnings, to its artistic influences”
–Rebecca Steinitz (The Boston Globe)
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=3. The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay
2 Rave • 4 Positive
“Ross Gay is known for his poetry, but The Book of Delights proves that he’s also an adept essayist … reflections that are sometimes whimsical, sometimes touching, and always thoughtful … Documenting his travels and encounters over the course of his year with a wry, deft touch, his book stays true to its title and demonstrates his estimable talents as a prose stylist as well as poet.”
–Ho Lin (Foreword Reviews)
Read an excerpt from The Book of Delights here
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5. The Wild Bunch by W. K. Stratton
1 Rave • 5 Positive
“Much has been written about the revolutionary filmmaking of the late 1960s…but Stratton…has added a crucial piece of the puzzle with this 50th-anniversary history … Stratton paints a wonderfully full portrait of director Sam Peckinpah and his quest for a more realistic depiction of violence at a time when the brutality of the Vietnam War was increasingly penetrating American living rooms … This engaging, well-researched book belongs in every library and in the hands of every student of cinema.”
–Peter Thornell (Library Journal)
