Lidia Yuknavitch’s Verge, Emily Nemens’ The Cactus League, Jenn Shapland’s My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, and Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.
1. Verge by Lidia Yuknavitch
7 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Yuknavitch leans heavily on her strengths. Once again, the prose and situations are provocative, transgressive and breathtakingly grotesque … remains diverse and impactful, unlike some collections, where only a few stories shine … Yuknavitch’s writing is most effective when fueled by lust, power and rage—or, rather, when she’s trying to drive a point home … Most of these stories are not for the faint of heart. The sex scenes are raw, intense and often viscerally brutal. Though there are some hopeful endings, many of the characters are staring down a barrel of despair. If safe words and cookie-cutter fiction are more your speed, look elsewhere … For the rest of you, Verge boldly asks some pressing yet unspoken questions … It also forces us to acknowledge—and even embrace—the unsettling answers.”
–Alexis Burling (The San Francisco Chronicle)
Read an interview with Lidia Yuknavitch here
2. The Lost Book of Adana Moreau by Michael Zapata
6 Rave • 4 Positive
“Smart and heart-piercing, Lost Book is a story of displacement, erasure, identity, mythology, and the ability of literature to simultaneously express and transcend our lives—not to mention reality … Zapata tackles huge feelings and ideas in Lost Book, but he makes it look effortless … There’s an entire library’s worth of imaginary books lurking within Lost Book, a ghostly bibliography that would have made Jose Luis Borges proud … Lost City is wonderfully clever and erudite, but it all serves a deeper purpose. Zapata’s multilayered concepts—most prominently, the theory of multiple worlds expounded by Maxwell—underscore his more immediate themes of family, diaspora, and the sway that patterns hold over our lives … Zapata illuminates the reality-inventing power of storytelling itself.”
–Jason Heller (NPR)
Read an excerpt from The Lost Book of Adana Moreau here
3. The Cactus League by Emily Nemens
4 Rave • 5 Positive
“Nemens, editor of the Paris Review, demonstrates deep knowledge not only of baseball but also of American desperation … Nemens has a keen eye for detail, from the semi-feral unfinished tract homes in a suburban subdivision to the glittering routine of the players’ wives … She’s brilliant with lists and with compression. Whole worlds are sketched in miniature … With her sharp eye for the details of unremarkable lives, Nemens at times reminds one of Joan Didion … For a book about the notoriously languorous sport of baseball, this is a quick and often thrilling read. For a debut novel, it’s remarkably self-assured.”
–Kate Tuttle (The Los Angeles Times)
Read an interview with Emily Nemens here
4. The Freedom Artist by Ben Okri
4 Rave • 4 Positive • 3 Mixed
“… a multilayered allegorical narrative that cuts to the heart of our current political and cultural malaise, while maintaining a mythical, mesmeric flavour that makes the reader feel these are stories they have always known … The pared-back style often feels closest in tone to the Fictions of Borges. Character takes second place to symbolism; few of them are named, and those who are embody representative qualities, like figures from myth. It is often repetitive, in a way that reflects the historic cycle of hope and disillusion, as the people flock to rumours of warrior heroes and Messiah figures who might save them … It is possible to read particular instances of current affairs or recent history into The Freedom Artist, but this is not a book that is so easily pinned down. It’s savagely political, disturbing and fiercely optimistic, the deeply felt work of a writer who refuses to stop asking the hardest questions.”
–Stephanie Merritt (The Guardian)
5. Things in Jars by Jess Kidd
5 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
“Kidd trades modern times for Victorian England, a setting well suited to her charming, chilling blend of fiction and fantasy. There’s a whiff of Dickens and Sherlock Holmes, with a dash of The Night Circus for seasoning. And, true to form, she unleashes a cast of outlandish characters, such as a boxer’s ghost with a mermaid tattoo that swims around his arm … Victorian London comes to life in Kidd’s writing. You can feel the fog rising from the first page, and later, the formaldehyde … Kidd has fashioned enjoyable, indelible characters and a plot that keeps readers guessing, smiling and maybe even flinching.”
–Maureen McCarthy (Minneapolis Star Tribune)
**
1. My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
5 Rave • 2 Positive
“… a hard-won inquiry into how we seek out the truth of ourselves and others in ways that often, by necessity, aren’t straightforward, that arrive in our lives in glimmering bits and shards … The difficulty in overcoming this instinct to code and conceal is what gives Shapland’s book its considerable stakes … Shapland’s book is the kind of state-of-the-form reckoning that makes one wish there were more like it. The truth is, doing the work of retrospective, corrective rearranging (pretty much the job description of any critic or academic working today) is never without risk. Surely, the more transparently we acknowledge the stakes, the more likely we are to arrive at a payoff. After all, it’s often by looking back that we move the conversation forward, and by inhabiting the lives of others that we might glimpse pieces of our own.”
–Megan O’Grady (The New York Times Book Review)
2. The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson
5 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
“Social historian Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood, beautifully and smoothly evokes the era…while carefully weaving in the stories of the Chinatown creators: writer Robert Towne, director Roman Polanski, stars Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston, and legendary producer Robert Evans … What’s amazing about the story Wasson weaves are the details about the time, energy, and heart each character invested in the production of Chinatown … The end of The Big Goodbye is a beautiful evocation of desire never fulfilled, thirst never quenched, and curiosity never satiated … a graceful and worthwhile elegy to a time dear to those who are lucky enough to remember it. It also serves as seriously engaging text for younger generations ready and willing to expand their minds and explore the past to better understand the present. It will be hard to find a better film book published this year.”
–Christopher John Stephens (Popmatters)
Read an excerpt from The Big Goodbye here
3. Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era by Jerry Mitchell
4 Rave • 2 Positive
“His journalistic coups revealed an uncanny ability to wheedle incriminating remarks from defensive suspects and damning observations from unfriendly witnesses … A vivid, quick-paced, accessible account of horrific crimes … Mitchell portrays these killers’ racism unflinchingly … At the same time, Mitchell illuminates the racism in the broader culture that made egregious acts of Negrophobic violence imaginable and, in the minds of many onlookers, tolerable if not defensible … Brave, bracing and instructive, Race Against Time is, on occasion, insufficiently probing … An excellent work … No single book about such an expansive topic could possibly serve as a comprehensive account, and Race Against Time admirably assumes the heavy burden that Jerry Mitchell takes on; it warrants praise, gratitude and a wide audience.”
–Randall Kennedy (The New York Times Book Review)
4. Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader by Vivian Gornick
2 Rave • 5 Positive
“Gornick’s ferocious but principled intelligence emanates from each of the essays in this distinctive collection … The author reads more deeply and keenly than most, with perceptions amplified by the perspective of her 84 years … As always, Gornick reveals as much about herself as about the writers whose works she explores; particularly arresting are her essays on Lawrence and on Natalia Ginzburg. Some may feel she has a tendency to overdramatize, but none will question her intellectual honesty … Literature knows few champions as ardent and insightful—or as uncompromising—as Gornick, which is to readers’ good fortune.”
5. Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond by Lydia Denworth
1 Rave • 5 Positive
“This critical and convincing scientific investigation into friendship from Denworth urges readers to understand quality friendship as a biological necessity, not a luxury. Denworth’s research demonstrates that prioritizing friendship through effort and attention protects our health and longevity … Denworth’s work achieves the best of science writing by making complicated concepts clear. She uses intelligent observation, empathy, and curiosity to offer a friendship manifesto that will absolutely affect readers’ own personal approaches to friendship.”
–Emily Dziuban (Booklist)
Read an excerpt from Friendship here
