Anne Tyler’s Redhead by the Side of the Road, Julia Alvarez’s Afterlife, Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road, and Eric Eyers’ Death in Mud Lick all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.
1. Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
11 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
“…heartwarming balm for jangled nerves. Once again, she burrows so convincingly into the quotidian details of her main character’s life, home, and head that you have to wonder if she’s some sort of Alexa-gone-rogue … has a lot going for it, beginning with its alluring title. But I’m not going to give away anything about that roadside presence except to say that the redhead is a lovely metaphor for the protagonist’s inability to see clearly, which causes him to misread the relationships in his life … The narrative’s tone is warm and wry … The wry touches are plentiful and funny … Anne Tyler’s novels are always worth scooping up—but especially this gently amusing soother, right now, when all of our cherished routines have been disrupted.”
–Heller McAlpin (NPR)
2. How Much of These Hills is Gold by C Pam Zhang
8 Rave • 4 Positive
“Sure to be the boldest debut of the year … C Pam Zhang grapples with the legend of the wild west and mines brilliant new gems from a well-worn setting … The story is heavy with layers of trauma … On the one hand, the novel is in close touch with the entire tradition of wild west mythology and film and many of its surface details and set dressing are highly familiar … At the same time, the story feels completely original, flushed through with new and unexpected perspectives. Through Zhang’s deep attention, the classic western is given a rich new shading as race, gender, sexual identity, poverty and pubescence come into play. The novel is thick with detail, metaphor and oblique allusion … at its core is a chilling sense of the utter loneliness and isolation felt by Lucy and Sam.”
–Bidisha (The Guardian)
3. Afterlife by Julia Alvarez
4 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Like so much of Alvarez’s work, Afterlife is anchored not just in easy humor and sharp observation, but in her fine-tuned sense for the intimacies of immigrant sisterhood. Unlike her previous novels, however, this one ably tackles the subject of privilege as well … Alvarez never goes so far as to suggest how exactly one might correct this social imbalance, or how to reconcile a simultaneous attentiveness to oneself and to others. The world—like Alvarez’s aging characters—is too set in its ways for such swift enlightenment, or change. But Afterlife does contain some hope for human empathy.”
–Francisco Cantú (The New York Times)
Read an excerpt from Afterlife here
4. Godshot by Chelsea Bieker
2 Rave • 7 Positive
“Godshot features one of the most authentic and tenderly written portrayals of the bond between a mother and daughter … Bieker has a knack for coruscatingly describing humans at their most vulnerable. The passages that linger the most in memory are the ones in which readers’ can feel Lacey’s ambivalent feeling towards her perpetually inebriated mother … This multilayered debut is filled with moments that are starkly grim and intensely moving. Bieker proves her mettle as a writer in how she expresses, through her characters, the whole gamut of emotions from selfless love to bottomless grief. Ultimately, this story illustrates the resilience and strength required to be a woman in an unforgiving man’s world.”
–Rabeea Saleem (The Chicago Review of Books)
Read Chelsea Bieker’s essay “Motherloss, That Thing You Cannot Escape,” here
5. Broken by Don Winslow
4 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Don Winslow, whose work includes a dozen of the finest crime novels written in the last 20 years, displays all of his strengths, including propulsive narration, compelling characters and a tight, staccato writing style, in Broken, a collection of six remarkable novellas … The tales, three of them appropriately dedicated to Elmore Leonard, Steve McQueen, and Raymond Chandler, all unfold at a torrid pace that will leave readers both satisfied and wishing for more.”
–Bruce DeSilva (Associated Press)
Read an interview with Don Winslow here
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1. Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
9 Rave
“Mr. Kolker’s riveting, compassionate Hidden Valley Road tells the story of a family besieged by devastating mental illness … With the skill of a great novelist, Mr. Kolker brings every member of the family to life … Mr. Kolker describes all this science well, without getting lost in technical details. His chief achievement, however, is an absorbing narrative of persistence, adjustment and exhilaration—followed by repeated disappointment when discoveries fail to replicate or yield effective treatments … Hidden Valley Road vividly conveys not only the inner experience of schizophrenia but its effects on the families whose members are afflicted.”
–Richard J. McNally (The Wall Street Journal)
2. Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies That Delivered the Opioid Epidemic by Eric Eyer
3 Rave • 2 Positive
“Eyre eloquently interweaves the story of Debbie’s pursuit of justice on behalf of her brother with his own battles against West Virginia attorney general Patrick Morrisey, whose ties to the pharmaceutical industry called into question his commitment to pursuing the state’s lawsuit … Packed with colorful details and startling statistics, this page-turning journalistic thriller shines a brilliant spotlight on a national tragedy.”
3. Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug by Augustine Sedgewick
1 Rave • 4 Positive • 4 Mixed
“The intricate synergies of coffee and capitalism form the subtext of the historian Augustine Sedgewick’s thoroughly engrossing first book …’What does it mean to be connected to faraway people and places through everyday things?’ Sedgewick asks in his early pages. Coffeeland offers a fascinating meditation on that question, by rendering once-obscure lines of connection starkly visible … Though his analysis of coffee’s political economy does owe a debt to Marx, his literary gifts and prodigious research make for a deeply satisfying reading experience studded with narrative surprise. Sedgewick has a knack for the sparkling digression and arresting jump cut, hopping back and forth between El Salvador and the wider world, where coffee was being consumed in ever-increasing quantities. He is especially good on the marketing of coffee to Americans … He shows how coffee has long been promoted in America less as a tasty beverage or pleasurable experience than as a means to an end: ‘a form of instant energy—a work drug.'”
–Michael Pollan (The Atlantic)
4. I Don’t Want to Die Poor by Michael Arceneaux
2 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Making Michael Arceneaux’s I Don’t Want to Die Poor required reading in high schools across the country would help a lot of young people think twice about the promise that going to college at any cost is the only path to upward social mobility … Throughout all of it, [Arceneaux] retains a dark sense of humor and the idea that there is something better out there, something he will achieve through hard work … The thing that makes I Don’t Want to Die Pooran outstanding read is Arceneaux’s voice. He writes like he’s telling you, his friend, a story … For Arceneaux, life hasn’t been easy, and his writing shows that. Luckily for readers, every painful detail he shares is balanced out by a superb critique, a masterful turn of phrase, a funny use of popular culture or a couple of sentences that cut to the bone of a social issue and expose the core of it with unbending honesty … Heartbreaking, hilarious, unapologetic and smart, this collection of essays shows a talented young voice that can attack racist nonsense while discussing The Real Housewives of Atlanta. It’s also a warning to future generations and a literary hug to those who have fallen into the unforgiving claws of student loan debt.”
–Gabino Iglesias (NPR)
5. American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland by Marie Mutsuki Mockett
1 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“American Harvest, in which Mockett has intelligent things to say about race, faith and food, is a nimble blend of personal reflection and incisive social history. Consistently thought-provoking, it also features lots of keen-eyed nature writing … If a less-talented writer tackled such a project, the results might be condescending. But Mockett’s sincerity and curiosity—and her long-standing connection to the region—make for an insightful book … Mockett is deeply attuned to the land. Her description…is vivid. She asks smart questions about genetically modified foods and organic farming. And when she looks to the horizon, her prose dazzles.”
–Kevin Canfield (The San Francisco Chronicle)
Read Marie Mutsuki Mockett on the chaos of feline energy here
