Colum McCann’s Apeirogon, Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile, and Teddy Wayne’s Apartment all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.
1. Apeirogon by Colum McCann
11 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed • 2 Pan
“…[a] powerful and prismatic new novel…. This novel, divided into 1,001 fragmentary chapters…reflects the infinite complications that underlie the girls’ deaths, and the unending grief that follows … these fathers’ grief-stricken voices are already part of the public consciousness … They’re also the most intimate pages of the book, and the most difficult to read … McCann’s brilliant act of novel-making builds a wholly believable and infinitely faceted reality around Rami’s and Bassam’s first-person accounts, a rich and comprehensive context that allows us into the fathers’ experiences, their histories, their minds … the novel succeeds brilliantly at its larger project … Reading Apeirogon we move beyond an understanding of Rami and Bassam’s grief from the outside; we begin to share it … Apeirogon is an empathy engine, utterly collapsing the gulf between teller and listener … it allows us to inhabit the interiority of human beings who are not ourselves. It achieves its aim by merging acts of imagination and extrapolation with historical fact. But it’s indisputably a novel, and, to my mind, an exceedingly important one. It does far more than make an argument for peace; it is, itself, an agent of change.”
–Julie Orringer (The New York Times Book Review)
Read Colum McCann on Ulysses, Mary Lavin, and drinking with John Berger here
2. Apartment by Teddy Wayne
2 Rave • 7 Positive • 1 Mixed
“After a slow start, it builds to a carefully seeded climax that will leave readers—and especially writers—queasy … I would never choose to re-live—right up there with high school—is Columbia’s MFA program. So it’s a tribute to Wayne’s subtly layered prose that I kept reading long enough to understand the stilted, self-consciously writerly tone of the narrator’s tale about what turns out to be the crucial turning point in his life … While readers may be happy to move on from this sad story of a man who finds himself shut out from the life he envisioned, its sobering climax is bound to stay with you long after you close the door on Apartment.”
–Heller McAlpin (NPR)
Read Teddy Wayne on what he’s learnt interviewing almost 300 writers over seven years here
3. Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin
4 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“… a fetching, charismatic, somewhat volatile heroine. One who is pure enough that you feel the enormity of her loss, but slick enough to be interesting … All these sub-narratives dedicated to minor and major characters, chapters that do little to move the plot along, could easily have resulted in a novel that buckled under the weight of its structural ambitions, but Schaitkin pulls it off without a hitch … hypnotic, delivering acute social commentary on everything from class and race to familial bonds and community, and yet its weblike nature never confuses, or fails to captivate. Schaitkin’s characters have views you may not always agree with, but their voices are so intelligent and distinctive it feels not just easy, but necessary, to follow them. I devoured Saint X in a day … Perhaps intentionally, the narrative deflates a little at the end. But perhaps this was bound to happen; after spending over 300 pages trying to understand what happened on the island that night, could the reader be satisfied by any ending? Could the bereaved?”
–Oyinkan Braithwaite (The New York Times Book Review)
4. The Second Sister by Chan Ho-Kei
3 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
“…a very timely and propulsively plotted tale of cyberbullying and revenge … Second Sister touches on universal themes like punishment and forgiveness, and it explores the gap between offline and online behavior … Readers will savor every twist and turn of Chan Ho-Kei’s tour de force … Second Sister is a masterclass on the vagaries of our digital age.”
–Janet Webb (Criminal Element)
5. Greenwood by Michael Christie
1 Rave • 5 Positive
“…with the expert, deft hands of a seasoned carpenter, author Michael Christie carefully and methodically pieces together a story as intricate as the rings within a tree. The result is a deeply compelling novel of family and memory …Christie creates a sense of poetic, organic symmetry through rich characters and evocative, almost tactile descriptions. Even if readers are sad to leave Jake’s storyline in order to get to know her family, they may become just as captivated by her grandmother, Willow, and the ancestors that come before her … The structure provides a captivating spine for Greenwood, but what stands out most by the end is the way in which Christie has been able to evoke and give voice to the way the cumulative effect of time and memory weighs on us all in ways both uplifting and terrifying. Greenwood is a towering, profound novel about the things that endure even as the world seems to be moving on.”
–Matthew Jackson (BookPage)
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1. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson
7 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
“There are countless books about World War II, but there’s only one Erik Larson … Over his career, he has developed a reputation for being able to write about disparate subjects with intelligence, wit and beautiful prose … Fans of Larson will be happy to hear that his latest book, The Splendid and the Vile, is no exception. It’s a sprawling, gripping account of Winston Churchill’s first year as prime minister of the United Kingdom, and it’s nearly impossible to put down … There are many things to admire about The Splendid and the Vile, but chief among them is Larson’s electric writing. The book reads like a novel, and even though everyone (hopefully) knows how the war ultimately ended, he keeps the reader turning the pages with his gripping prose. It’s a more than worthy addition to the long list of books about World War II and a bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”
–Michael Schaub (NPR)
Read an interview with Erik Larson here
2. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong
3 Rave • 6 Positive
“Whereas many personal narratives present a singular perspective, Hong’s approach is more expansive … Hong’s work is an intellectual demonstration of how deeply rooted race relations in America are and how their manifestation differs across generations … at-times funny, often deeply thought-provoking … Some lines in Minor Feelings flow just as a lyric would while others rail against the English language and reject literary forms long cemented within canonical texts. As Hong writes, ‘illegibility is a political act’ … What Hong provides in Minor Feelings is a sort of groundwork for asking questions about projects that defy convention, form, and content and that look very different from canonized texts and lauded works found in museums … an urgent consideration of identity, social structures, and artistic practice. It’s a necessary intervention in a world burgeoning with creativity but stymied by a lack of language and ability to grapple with nuance. Hong takes a step in remedying that.”
–Grace Ebert (The Chicago Review of Books)
3. These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson by Martha Ackmann
5 Rave • 4 Positive
“… [a] fine new work which reminds us that what’s important about Emily Dickinson is that she wrote some of the greatest poetry in the English language … Ackmann makes good use of scholarship that has long recognized her as an unconventional, formally inventive artist. The subtitle’s Ten Pivotal Moments prove a useful organizing principle … provides with panache in a lucid narrative grounded in solid research colored by appreciative warmth … Ackmann’s insights are unfailingly fresh and vivid, evidence of a profound personal affinity for her subject … palpable, exciting, and accessible.”
–Wendy Smith (The Boston Globe)
Read an excerpt from These Fevered Days here
4. Lurking: How a Person Became a User by Joanne McNeil
2 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Lurking is far-reaching and ferociously smart, told from the hearts and minds of users rather than the profit and loss statements of tech conglomerates. In centering her research on the user experience of an ever-changing internet rather than the theatrics and myth-making of Big Tech, McNeil weaves a people’s history of the internet, making for a humane, big-hearted narrative of how the internet has changed—and how it changed us … As the internet evolved, so too did the ways in which it organizes our lives, our time, and our senses of self. McNeil excels at drawing these nebulous concepts into sharp relief … The success of Lurking isn’t just in its sharp insight into how the internet has changed us—it’s in McNeil’s evocative prose … McNeil’s vision inspires hope that it can become a place where the term ‘user-friendly’ isn’t just a platitude—it’s a reality.”
–Adrienne Westenfeld (Esquire)
5. Counterpoint: A Memory of Bach and Mourning by Philip Kennicott
5 Rave • 1 Positive
“… immensely moving … With gorgeous prose and granular inspection, Kennicott has created a subtle and profound portrait of love, loss and the human condition … Bach takes up much real estate in this memoir and Kennicott spares no detail, providing fascinating insight into Bach as boy, husband, father, master organist, teacher and, of course, composer … The beauty of this memoir is not only in the compassion Kennicott ultimately finds for his mother and himself. It’s also in his need to unearth the seed of his mother’s nature, and how he might then finally release her hold, even after death. And in the way the Goldbergs became his vehicle to explore such a difficult rite of passage. In the end, it is about his very process of inquiry … we are enriched by Kennicott’s ability to face, head-on, personal and creative hardship as he seeks what is important for us all. Through Bach, Kennicott discovers his own ability to love.”
–Marcia Butler (The Washington Post)
Read an excerpt from Counterpoint here
