Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar, Alexandra Fuller’s Fi, and Anne Lamott’s Somehow all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.
1. The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
(Flatiron)
8 Rave
“Bardugo brilliantly explores the wavy line between the supernatural and the divine … When Bardugo chooses to venture further into the darkness, it’s that much more devastating because of how much fun the reader has been having. In fact, she is a master of anticlimax: She builds apprehension for huge events that do not come to pass, then blindsides the reader with something totally unexpected instead … A thrilling addition to her canon about oppression and liberation, and anyone interested in this historical period and the themes she’s exploring will find it engrossing.”
–Charlie Jane Anders (The Washington Post)
2. The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas
(Simon & Schuster)
6 Rave • 1 Positive
“For Thomas, nothing seems to be off the table. She shifts between erotic thrills, gothic drama, postmodern deconstruction and kitchen-sink realism. Through her bold storytelling, The Sleepwalkers becomes a work of peculiar, gonzo genius … Thomas takes a glamorous late-capitalist setting, with rosé and catamarans, and shreds, twists and warps it into a story that is surprising, humane and political to its bones.”
–Flynn Berry (The New York Times Book Review)
3. The Limits by Nell Freudenberger
(Knopf)
2 Rave • 5 Positive
Read an excerpt from The Limits here
“Freudenberger is fluent in every realm, social conundrum, and crime against the earth she brings into focus, keenly attuned to science and emotion, tradition and high-tech, race and gender, greed and conscience, irony and tragedy. Each character’s challenges are significant on scales intimate and global and their wrestling with secrets, anger, and fear grows increasingly suspenseful in this lambent, deeply sympathetic, and thought-provoking novel.”
–Donna Seaman (Booklist)
**
1. Fi: A Memoir of My Son by Alexandra Fuller
(Grove Press)
5 Rave
“Fuller leaves nothing under the table, under the rug or under wraps … The last thing you expect to do when you read a book about a child dying is to laugh … The wit in this memoir is soul-piercing … Fuller is sagacious and perspicacious. She is a sublime writer. In the hands of another memoirist, the story of Fi might be unbearably sad, but this book is a mesmeric celebration of a boy who died too soon, a mother’s love and her resilience. It will help others surviving loss—surviving life.”
–David Sheff (The New York Times Book Review)
=2. The Wives: A Memoir by Simone Gorrindo
(Gallery/Scout Press)
3 Rave • 2 Positive
“Gorrindo’s memoir is a gorgeously rendered peek behind the curtain of military life, as she recounts reckoning with her husband’s participation in violence—and examining why his job exists at all.”
–Courtney Eathorne (Booklist)
=2. Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott
(Riverhead)
3 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an essay by Anne Lamott here
“In her trademark godly yet snarky way, she extracts every life lesson from her latest new experience with the deft zeal of a chef reducing flour and fat to roux … At times, Somehow made me huffy about—by which I mean envious of—Lamott’s gift for writing powerfully, deeply, often radically, while appealing to, well, everyone … No matter one’s external descriptors, Lamott speaks to the human in all of us, challenging us to bear her beam of love, and our own.”
–Meredith Maran (The Washington Post)
