Emily Nussbaum’s tales from the TV revolution, a true crime chronicle of massacre and revenge in India, and the return of Kate Atkinson’s Detective Jackson Brodie are among the most critically-lauded new releases of the past seven days.
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1. Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
8 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
“This book has a lot of drastic scene changes, is packed with minor characters and is in no hurry to get where it’s going. But somehow Atkinson never seems to be treading water … There is no stray anything in Big Sky. That’s one big reason Atkinson’s devotees love her. No detail is too small to come home to roost … it’s worth rereading the beginning once you’ve finished this novel just to see how well the author has manipulated you. Atkinson is also adept at weaving the mundane details of her characters’ lives (or perhaps her own) into the Brodie books as a way of humanizing them, despite the stark malevolence that lurks beneath this workaday surface … Atkinson opens Big Sky with one perfect page. It’s a bit of a red herring, but it couldn’t do a better job of throwing the reader off base and commanding instant interest … It’s a prime example of how Atkinson tells a great story, toys with expectations, deceives by omission, blows smoke and also writes like she’s your favorite friend. Thank goodness the long Jackson Brodie hiatus is over.”
-Janet Maslin (The New York Times)
2. The Gone Dead by Chanelle Benz
5 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
“…almost every chapter in The Gone Dead yields a surprise … The author excels at capturing authentic turns of phrase … Benz’s ability to assume a vast array of distinct, heartfelt voices, her knack for understanding and revealing complex human behavior … Benz’s Delta is portrayed with care and depth … She traces with nuance and subtlety the stagnant trail of race relations, linking mass incarceration, mandatory minimums, unemployment and crack to anti-miscegenation laws, Freedom Rides and even the South’s loss in the Civil War. Her attention to the recurring nature of racism in this country, and her gift for weaving these insights into a gripping narrative, establish Benz as an adept critic and storyteller.”
–Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (The New York Times Book Review)
3. The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
2 Rave • 7 Positive • 1 Mixed
“… a wonderfully immersive read that packs more heart and heft than most first novels … Lombardo’s sweeping family drama, fueled by power plays between spouses and between sisters, is operatic in both good ways and bad. It hits plenty of high notes, but like opera, it runs long and tends toward histrionics and repetition. A few themes are replayed so often…that the book would have benefited from judicious trims, particularly in the flashbacks … But let’s not lose sight of Lombardo’s considerable achievement. The Most Fun We Ever Had is a deliciously absorbing novel with—brace yourself—a tender and satisfyingly positive take on family.”
–Heller McAlpin (NPR)
4. Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
3 Rave • 5 Positive
“Holmes writes with an easy warmth about kind people who are trying their best but messing things up anyway. Characters speak to each other with natural but hilarious dialogue, making their conversations a joy to read. Refreshingly, Evvie and Dean’s relationship hurdles come about because they’re adults with complex lives and baggage, not because of easily fixed miscommunications. Although their romance is often front and center, there are many other emotionally affecting storylines, chief among them the changing friendship between Andy and Evvie and Evvie’s need to stand up to her family … A warm and lovely romance, perfect for readers of Rainbow Rowell and Louise Miller.”
5. Gone Too Long by Lori Roy
5 Rave • 1 Positive
“… electrifying … Roy has always been deft at creating suspense, but she hits a new level with this finely crafted thriller … Imogene and Beth are strong female characters, and they’re more effective because Roy doesn’t make them into superheroes. Plunged without warning into extreme situations, like Beth’s abduction and Imogene’s discovery of a terrible secret, they don’t behave like they’re in an action movie, they act the way most people do under great duress. They’re confused, they’re disoriented, they’re paralyzed with fear, and that makes their resourcefulness all the more admirable … Family relationships are key in Gone Too Long, and Roy develops them with believable complexity … Roy crafts the book’s triple plots with skillful misdirection and sure timing … a compelling thriller, and a story of how hatred and violence toward the other create a legacy that follows those who hate home.”
–Colette Bancroft (The Tampa Bay Times)
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1. The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India’s Quest for Independence by Anita Anand
2 Rave • 6 Positive • 2 Mixed
“Anand…provides a revealing look at the brutality and oppression of British rule, and how it seeded the desire for retribution in the hearts of so many Indians … Anand does a stellar job of sketching Singh’s trajectory from orphanage to hangman’s noose, and from obscurity into the pantheon of Indian heroes. But the lack of available details about his activities, including the precise nature of his relationship with the Ghadars, forces her to tell the story at a remove that at times feels unsatisfying. In contrast, the book offers a crisp portrait of O’Dwyer, providing a clear sense of the attitudes he shared with his fellow administrators in the Raj…Singh’s character and motivations, on the other hand, are rendered in such broad and sometimes speculative brush strokes that readers are likely to be left wondering what really drove him. Yet the book more than makes up for this shortcoming by reconstructing its key events in compelling, vivid prose.
–Yudhijit Bhattacharjee (The New York Times Book Review)
Read an interview with Anita Anand here
2. A Primer for Forgetting: Getting Past the Past by Lewis Hyde
4 Rave • 2 Positive
“Lewis Hyde’s new book is so counterintuitive, so bracingly clear and fresh, that reading it is like leaping into a cold lake on a hot hike. It shocks the mind. It flushes all kinds of monotony and mental fatigue right out of your system. I have filled a notebook with things from this book I am determined to remember, which is quite a paradox, given that it’s a book about forgetting … A Primer for Forgetting constantly weaves and unweaves its own realizations. It is less argument than art … Early in this wondrous book [Hyde] quotes a letter from the poet Elizabeth Bishop, who is writing partly in praise of the attentive oblivion necessary for any great creative accomplishment (she is reading Charles Darwin) and partly in praise of the Oblivion that the right attention enables: ‘What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration.’ That would be an apt description of this entire book. I can’t tell you how many times I put it down to stare out the window. I can think of no higher praise.”
–Christian Wiman (The Wall Street Journal)
Read an excerpt from A Primer for Forgetting here
3. I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum
3 Rave • 1 Positive
“…a collection of 32 brilliant, generous essay … It’s thrilling to watch Nussbaum stake the slick misogyny of True Detective, or the cloying phoniness of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, as she insists implicitly and explicitly that TV should be mind-expanding, complex, generous, and, above all, have things to say about who we are and what we want … But what about the people who make TV? Here, she is not so certain. The collection’s one new piece of writing…is a queasy, poignant 50-page consideration of the question: ‘What should we do with the art of terrible men?’ … Here, her ambivalence is more affecting than the gleaming certainty of prior chapters. The essay functions as a kind of eulogy: not for the men, but for the things we had the privilege of loving uncomplicatedly, before we were forced to know better.”
–Annalisa Quinn (NPR)
4. Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life by Darcey Steinke
1 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Simultaneously contemplative and messily visceral, this extraordinary fugue on menopause, a book ‘situated at the crossroads between the metaphysical and the biological,’ centers on the experience of the aging woman … She affirms menopause as part of what it means to be female and human, in contrast to the medical view of menopause as a pathology to be treated with hormone replacements and vaginal rejuvenation. Her ability to translate physical and emotional experiences into words will make menopausal readers feel profoundly seen and move others.”
5. A Death in the Rainforest: How a Language and a Way of Life Came to an End in Papua New Guinea by Don Kulick
1 Rave • 3 Positive
“In this captivating narrative, the author considers complex questions about race and power in anthropological research, the nature of relationships among very different people, and the challenges of living in such a demanding environment. Kulick’s engrossing, thought-provoking, and transporting chronicle will be enjoyed by National Geographic fans and all readers interested in cultural investigations.”
–Sam Kling (Booklist)
Read an excerpt from A Death in the Rainforest here
