The Best Reviewed Books of the Week

Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine, Michael Cuningham’s Unsayable, and Claire Vaye Watkins’ Yellow Pine all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.

*

Fiction

1. Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead
(Doubleday)

14 Rave • 3 Positive

“A dizzyingly brilliant measure of the versatility and depth of the acclaimed author’s literary talent … The intricacy with which Whitehead details the planning and execution of this caper marks him as a top-tier researcher—he’s drawn on many primary sources to ground this work of fiction in historical fact … A modern masterpiece and an ode to New York, no matter that rats skitter and cockroaches scamper underfoot.”

–Leigh Haber (The Los Angeles Times)

2. Dooneen by Keith Ridgway
(New Directions)

4 Rave • 2 Positive • 3 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Dooneen here

“Reproducing ambivalence on the page in this way might be a risky and potentially alienating strategy for the reader. But it’s thrilling to watch Ridgway play with clarity and certainty; the linguistic energy and variety of the prose gives us plenty of sustenance to keep going as we clamber through the shadows. And there are laughs too … Lucid and affecting.”

–Michael Donkor (The Guardian)

3. The New People by Andrea Uptmor
(Little Brown and Company)

3 Rave • 2 Positive

“[A] bold and twisting plot … As impressive as Uptmor’s authorial daring with plot and characters is her rich setting, deploying all the details of life as we knew it in the year 2008 … Uptmor has pulled off quite a coup in a debut novel. In a word: sold.”

–Marion Winik (The Boston Globe)

4. Yellow Pine by Claire Vaye Watkins
(Riverhead)

2 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Pan
Read an interview with Claire Vaye Watkins here

“Yellow Pine’s a contested space: the phrase describes both a poorly-conceived green energy project and the protest camp that pops up to counter its existence. The conflict between the two looms over a couple gripped in midlife crisis in this smart, spiky novel … Watkins deploys incredible grace and rich humor as she populates this stark landscape with eccentric characters struggling with recovery, a society out of step with humanity, environmental doom, and the boom and bust of tourism ventures … You may not want to join their daily struggle, but you appreciate it—and deeply enjoy their company … Watkins skillfully chronicles a world of chosen families and iconoclast women who can’t deny their sentimental hearts.”

–Lauren LeBlance (The Boston Globe)

5. The Mortons by Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld
(Pamela Dorman Books)

1 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

“The book thrums with creative verve, mordant humor and amusing detours into subjects like art, avant-garde fashion and mixology … Sometimes the book feels like it’s toppling under the weight of its details. Its rules aren’t always coherent … Whether The Mortons is for you might depend, at least in part, on your tolerance for violence … Still, the authors have kindly given Jessica at least a fighting chance of redemption (and maybe a hint of a sequel) at the end. I’d like to see what she makes of it.”

–Sarah Lyall (The New York Times Book Review)

**

Nonfiction

=1. The Frenchmen: Or, My Life in Theory by Emily Eakin
(Penguin)

3 Rave • 1 Positive

“…an exquisite blend of gossip, memoir, and philosophy, of recondite ideas explained with admirable lucidity, as well as a chronicle of human folly. And, despite her eventual disillusionment with theory, Eakin persuasively argues that what once seemed to be the most esoteric of intellectual pursuits has in fact had a profound effect on American culture.”

–Laura Miller (Slate)

=1. Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America by Kim Phillips-Fein
(W. W. Norton and Company)

3 Rave • 1 Positive

“Impeccably crafted … She keeps Country of Lords lean and supple, allowing her characters and anecdotes to shine … Phillips-Fein is a graceful writer and balletic thinker; her opening paragraph tucked me into its palm and held me rapt, right through to its conclusion. Her book is slender, only 200 pages, but her argument has vast implications for the future of the nation-state.”

–Hamilton Cain (On the Seawall)

3. Unsayable: A Life in Writing by Michael Cunningham
(Random House)

2 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

“Beautiful … An essential resource for those who write, and an evocative experience for all who love to read.”

–Peter Thornell (Library Journal)

4. Dad, Love, Me by Matthew Quick
(Avid Reader Press)

1 Rave • 3 Positive

“What begins as an excavation of childhood trauma gradually becomes something rarer and more enlightening: an account of what happens when forgiveness arrives only after the parent who most needs it begins losing the ability to understand it … The epistolary form is an inherently precarious one, especially when addressed to a parent. It can easily veer into sentimentality, a pitfall Quick mostly avoids, even if a few passages edge in that direction.”

–Tas Tobey (The New York Times Book Review)

5. Carousel: An Essay on Seeing by Sarah Minor
(Yale University Press)

2 Rave • 1 Positive

“Sarah Minor is a master weaver … Minor excels at using form to create meaning, and vice versa; in her work, the medium is the message so completely that the literal shape of the work is its subject.”

–Melissa Holbrook Pierson (The Brooklyn Rail)