Patrick DeWitt’s The Libraianist, Charlotte Mendelson’s The Exhibitionist, and Beth Nguyen’s Owner of a Lonely Heart all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.
1. The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson
(St. Martin’s)
6 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Both a roiling family drama and a chilling portrait of enmeshment, coercive control and enabled addiction. Mendelson’s heady present-tense narration mingles eroticism, absurdity and pathos, capturing the intensity of illicit love, the corrosiveness of bullying, the bottomlessness of narcissism. Her similes a volley of bullseyes, her tonal chiaroscuro sharp, she darts rapidly between perspectives, ratcheting up the tension as we hurtle to the finale.”
–Madeleine Feeney (The Telegraph)
2. The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt
(Ecco)
3 Rave • 5 Positive • 2 Mixed
“I think each Patrick deWitt novel is going to be the one that helps everyone fall in love with his writing, but The Librarianist could finally do it … DeWitt’s dialogue moves with the speed and precision of great conversation and its jokes sneak up on you, more like a wisp of wind on your cheek than someone tapping you on the shoulder to tell you something funny … Bright and entertaining from beginning to end.”
–Chris Hewitt (The Star Tribune)
3. Pete and Alice in Maine by Caitlin Shetterly
(Harper)
2 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an essay by Caitlin Shetterly here
“Tender … Shetterly is attuned to quicksilver changes in the family dynamic … Shetterly is particularly good at showing how caring for children can test a relationship … Shetterly does not allow Pete the airtime she grants Alice. We get three third-person chapters from Pete’s point of view and nine first-person chapters narrated by his wife … In certain moments, Shetterly’s debut achieves a subtle grace, a quality of light and shadow worthy of a Bergman film.”
–Allegra Goodman (The New York Times Book Review)
**
1. Owner of a Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen
(Scribner)
3 Rave • 4 Positive
“Nguyen is a confident and reliable protagonist even when running up against painful memories, providing readers with enough distance as to almost be objective … Nguyen has made a journey of facing her origins and contending with the limitations of American narratives, and we are lucky to be invited along the way.”
–Mai Tran (The Brooklyn Rain)
2. The Light Room by Kate Zambreno
(Riverhead)
1 Rave • 6 Postive
Read an interview with Kate Zambreno here
“Zambreno’s writing is sharpest, most emotionally alive, when it drills into that interior landscape … Woven into these moments are ruminations on natural history, education and the work of other writers and artists … Readers looking for sturdier insights into what the virus has meant for human history are unlikely to discover them here. But there is comfort and intimacy to be found in the nest Zambreno builds, with lint and marbles and straw, the objects that matter in her tiny universe. Its achievement is as a sustained narrative of noticing.”
–Eleanor Henderson (The New York Times Book Review)
3. The Red Hotel: Moscow 1941, the Metropol Hotel, and the Untold Story of Stalin’s Propaganda War by Alan Philps
(Pegasus Books)
3 Rave • 2 Positive
“A sizzling read full of bitchiness and high jinks. But it is also a deeply moral book, outlining a simple truth: that the press pack abroad often operates in a bubble and is deeply dependent on local translators and fixers. Philps… has an eye for detail … There are obvious parallels to Vladimir Putin’s arbitrary arrests, his use of visa restraints against journalists, Russian state media’s fake news, and the depiction of critics as enemies of the state. Philps doesn’t labour the comparisons, but any reporter who has had to operate in a pack while covering a dictatorship will feel a twinge of recognition, and perhaps of guilt.”
–Roger Boyles (The Times)
