J. M. Coetzee’s The Death of Jesus, Michael Connelly’s Fair Warning, Meredith Talusan’s Fairest, and Elliot Ackerman’s Red Dress in Black and White all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.
1. The Death of Jesus by J. M. Coetzee
6 Rave • 6 Positive • 5 Mixed • 2 Pan
“This is a ridiculous book. I don’t mean it deserves mockery, but that this…is the final book in a trilogy characterised by absurdity … It’s in the second half of the book, approaching David’s death and afterwards, that The Death of Jesus achieves its purpose: to conclude the trilogy with force and heart. Through all three books Simón and David look for answers, but Coetzee is asking us to read the trilogy—to read all books—to seek meaning, rather than find it; to understand, paraphrasing TS Eliot, that art communicates before it is understood … So this is a ridiculous book, full of unexplained developments, unrealistic dialogue and overcooked analogies. Like Don Quixote, it is a fiction about fiction. But many great books are ridiculous, and if The Death of Jesus strikes you in the right place, then you will read its cool, dry final sentences—as I did—with tears in your eyes.”
–John Self (The Times)
Read an excerpt from The Death of Jesus here
2. All My Mother’s Lovers by Ilana Masad
1 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed
“…it’s a testament to Masad’s writing that I wanted more from the world she created: more depth to Iris’s letters, which read more like camp-pen-pal correspondence than confessions from the grave; and more dimension to Maggie’s dad, Peter, who spends most of the novel out of sorts, only to drop a bombshell at the end that feels pat and underexplored … Yet Masad is deft and incisive about the sometimes-fraught nature of mother-daughter relationships, around which loaded subtext can seem to twist and twine like Christmas lights. And she affectingly plumbs the mind-bending hugeness that is losing a parent.”
–Rachel Rosenblit (The Washington Post)
Read an excerpt from All My Mother’s Lovers here
3. Vagablonde by Anna Dorn
1 Rave • 6 Positive
“…[a] pulse quickening debut … A tumultuous ride of emotional highs and lows (do yourself a favor and don’t read this in one sitting), Dorn’s narrative is intoxicating, particularly in its depiction of the existential ennui that’s stemmed from our insatiable consumer culture … Dorn may have written the horror novel we deserve”
Read an excerpt from Vagablonde here
4. Red Dress in Black and White by Elliot Ackerman
1 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“… a territory of intrigue and tricks, entirely absorbing … Ackerman’s rich knowledge of Turkey, where he was based as a journalist for a number of years, is evident on every page. The book’s stunning scenes of the protests in Gezi Park, where the police used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets on demonstrators, are superbly written and give the book its title … What lasts is the book’s emphasis on hidden machinations of power … This reminder of unseen forces feels like the book’s underlying ambition and provides the resonance, the heightening of thought, that ends the book—a musing on America’s overseas intrusions, on the trove of details deemed essential to keeping things in line, and on how such powers might seep into even the most intimate of relations.
–Joan Silber (The New York Times Book Review)
5. Fair Warning by Michael Connelly
1 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“The briskly paced Fair Warning spins on its realistic look at journalism as Connelly, who worked as a reporter at the South Florida Sun Sentinel and the Los Angeles Times, makes the minutia of reporting exciting. Connelly is careful not to glamorize reporting—as if anyone believes it is a glamorous profession—but shows that good journalism is based on getting details right and ethics. Connelly also illustrates the energizing ‘addictive momentum’ that a journalist often feels when a story that can right a wrong comes together … should please fans as it fits well in Connelly’s oeuvre.”
–Oline H. Cogdill (The South Florida Sun Sentinel)
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1. Fairest by Meredith Talusan
6 Rave • 2 Positive
“In Fairest‘s carefully nuanced and detailed analysis, Talusan articulates the ways in which people of color create solidarity when there are only one or two non-white individuals in these elite, predominantly white spaces of privilege … This nuance, this careful attention to looking and attempting to understand this journey not just from her own perspective, but also from those affected by it, gives a welcome maturity, depth and resonance to Talusan’s memoir … While an argument can be made that the vehicle of a mirror as a tool for self-reflection is a bit on-point, a bit overused, it does hold a productive presence both narratively and structurally in this gorgeous and lyrical debut … The language we have now, the spaces and community support to exist firmly within a gender fluid and/or nonbinary gender identity are developments made mostly within the last 50 years. They have been made, in large part, because of the work of inspiring trans activists like Talusan. Because of them, people are no longer faced with erasure or binary opposition as the only realities.”
–Hope Wabuke (NPR)
Read an excerpt from Fairest here
2. Love in the Blitz: The Long-Lost Letters of a Brilliant Young Woman to Her Beloved on the Front by Eileen Alexander
5 Rave • 3 Positive
“The letters are, as one of their editors notes, close to ‘an uninhibited and unstoppable stream of consciousness . . . written from air-raid shelters, and office desks, on buses and station platforms, in hotel foyers and under hair-dryers’. The 1,400 letters were uncovered by chance in an eBay auction by their future editor and transcriber, David McGowan … Eileen is an ambitious, kind and achingly funny observer … It is touching to read the happiness she felt one evening in treating herself to an egg rather than a powdered proxy, and also her euphoria at Allied victories in the Mediterranean … Eileen was a sharp but fair observer … It is easy to see Love in the Blitz being adapted for the screen; Eileen will be a gift to the actress cast in the role. She emerges from these letters as a force of nature, and her voice is one of the real joys in these remarkable letters. She was clever and caustic, without being cruel; intellectually brilliant and revelling in that fact, she laces her letters with references to Rossetti, Shakespeare, Donne and the Book of Job … It’s a memoir of hope and resilience, as much as of love.”
–Gareth Russell (The Times)
Read an excerpt from Love in the Blitz here
3. The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World by Patrik Svensson
2 Rave • 3 Positve
“…[a] captivating debut, congenially translated by Agnes Broomé … Tinged with melancholy … The Book of Eelsis, in the end, not really about eels but about life itself, and that makes it different from other recent books on the subject. Mr. Svensson mixes chapters about the eel’s natural history—or, rather, the history of clumsy human attempts to understand it—with finely observed autobiographical vignettes devoted to his own childhood memories of eel-fishing with his father. From these memories, saturated with intense, sensory detail, Mr. Svensson’s father emerges as a creature as magical and determined as any eel from the Sargasso Sea …In a way, Mr. Svensson’s book is another version of his father’s cabin, full of stories and of a size just right, the size only memory and love can make: a place where secrets will always remain secrets and grief dissolves into the shimmering waters of the lake outside, the author’s own Sargasso Sea, forever stocked with shiny eels, all within easy reach—yet not.”
–Christoph Irmscher (The Wall Street Journal)
Read an excerpt from The Book of Eels here
4. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor
1 Rave • 4 Positive
“James Nestor’s new book about how breathing properly can transform your physical and mental health, feels eerily well-timed … These lessons might ease internal tensions in these stressful times but they’re really aimed at changing our daily lives when those resume in some way we’d recognize … Breath is not a self-help book, though it will appeal to readers looking to improve themselves … Nestor’s first-person experiences provide an intimate story, while his emphasis on hard scientific data backs up his feelings … Nestor does an excellent job of explaining both the basics—don’t breathe through your mouth, which feels pandemic-relevant—and the more complicated aspects of breathing properly. The book is brisk and detailed, a well-written read that is always entertaining, as he melds the personal, the historical, and the scientific.”
–Stuart Miller (The Boston Globe)
5. Revolver: Sam Colt and the Six-Shooter That Changed America by Jim Rasenberger
4 Positive
“Cleareyed and honest, Rasenberger portrays a complicated figure who combined real mechanical insight with a talent for hucksterism. His book has flaws, of course: overlong passages, too much speculation, an absence of endnotes in the print edition. (Rasenberger is posting them online.) A familiarity with recent scholarship might have produced a more sophisticated depiction of Native Americans’ shrewd responses to repeating firearms. But Revolver is rewarding biography, highlighting Colt’s place in the history of industrialization.”
–T. J. Stiles (The New York Times Book Review)
