1. We That Are Young by Preti Taneja
6 Rave • 3 Positive • 2 Mixed
“British academic and human rights activist Preti Taneja has packed her debut novel with so much insight and feeling for contemporary India that her sentences seem to spill out as if from an overstuffed bag. It’s a marvel that she was able to pack in so much (plot, atmosphere, social observation, you name it) while sustaining such propulsive energy over the course of nearly 500 pages, and yet she manages to the last. The overall effect is dizzying, dazzling, and ultimately convincing and immersive … Taneja captures her sprawling subject in language befitting such epic sweep. She stuffs her prose with metaphor and simile, which can be a bit much at times, but more often than not serves to ground this novel of big ideas in the physical world … Taneja proves that nothing more than feelings—particularly when wielded by demented oligarchs and their misguided children—have the power to bring the world crashing down.”
–Eugenia Williamson (The Boston Globe)
Read an essay by Preti Taneja here
*
2. French Exit by Patrick DeWitt
3 Rave • 7 Positive
“The opening scene of Patrick deWitt’s French Exit is so perfectly staged that a curtain seems to rise on his elegant creation … The reader too may be a little confused. This certainly does not seem like a Patrick deWitt novel … What’s more, these characters belong in a Noel Coward play … Within a few sentences, the comic brilliance that sparked deWitt’s earlier adventures ignites this ‘tragedy of manners’ … Wisecracks detonate throughout French Exit warding off sentimentality. Indeed, the novel is so mannered, so arch, that even intimate moments are barbed with slyly traded quips.”
–Anna Mundow (The Washington Post)
Read Patrick DeWitt on 5 Mid-Century Commonwealth Writers You Should Read
*
3. How Are You Going to Save Yourself by JM Holmes
5 Rave • 3 Positive
“The raucous, heartbreaking, bawdy tales in JM Holmes’s debut collection possess an assured lyricism, uncompromising in its interrogation of race, class, drugs and family … In the explosive opener … the story culminates in a moment so brutally honest, so quietly ferocious, it left me dazed … As with any collection, some stories are stronger than others. Holmes renders male characters with microscopic precision; the same level of nuance afforded to his female characters would have added even more depth … he is a distinctive writer … Spare in style, strikingly urgent, his is a voice to get excited about.”
–Irenosen Okojie (The Guardian)
*
4. Ohio by Stephen Markley
3 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Markley’s debut is a sprawling, beautiful novel that explores the aftermath of the Great Recession … Markley intersperses the stories of the four Ohioans with flashbacks to high school, and his portrayals are horrifyingly accurate. He does a perfect job examining the casual cruelties teenagers inflict on one another … There’s a lot going on in Ohio—a sprawling cast of main and supporting characters, and a series of interconnected events that doesn’t come together until the book’s shocking conclusion. But Markley handles it beautifully; the novel is intricately constructed, with gorgeous, fiery writing that pulls the reader in and never lets go … Written with a real love for its characters, Ohio isn’t just a remarkable debut novel, it’s a wild, angry and devastating masterpiece of a book.”
–Michael Schaub (NPR)
*
5. Praise Song for the Butterflies by Bernice L. McFadden
3 Rave • 1 Positive
“Beautifully written and expertly structured, Praise Song for the Butterflies includes plenty of twists, such as surprises about Abeo’s lineage, as well as delicate explorations of the gray areas that surface for Abeo—and her family—when she returns to her former life. Abeo’s time in New York is particularly well-drawn, as McFadden doesn’t oversimplify the difficulties of recovery and demonstrates (particularly through Femi) the importance of patience, understanding and unconditional love. Perhaps one of the best books of the year, Praise Song for the Butterflies is a stunning, brief portrait that humanizes the plight of those in ritual servitude. It’s a fantastic work from a gifted author.”
–Laura Farmer (The Gazette)
**
1. Lands of Lost Borders by Kate Harris
5 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Kate Harris’ Lands of Lost Borders: A Journey on the Silk Road is a compelling, suspenseful, insightful and elegant travel memoir … The book moves seamlessly between the Silk Road adventure and backstory that led up to it … The book also moves easily between narrative and philosophy … There are certainly adventures. Dangerous roads around the Black Sea, mistaken imprisonment in a tea house, visa problems, bad weather, bad roads, hunger, illness, lost bicycles, and the seemingly ever-present kindness of strangers keep the book moving along. And there are certainly digressions into discussions of Darwin, Sagan, Polo, ecology and regional history. Every one of them is a thread you can’t undo … This is one that will have you dreaming.”
–W. Scott Olsen (The Minneapolis Star Tribune)
*
2. The Impostor by Javier Cercas, Trans. by Frank Wynne
4 Rave • 4 Positive
“Mr. Cercas’s book is several books at once, but, above all, it is a rigorous and obsessive quest to untangle what is true and what is false in the private and public life of Enric Marco … As well as an incisive piece of journalistic investigation, Mr. Cercas’s book is a subtle essay on the nature of fiction and the ways in which it can invade our lives and transform them … Mr. Cercas does not want to find this supreme impostor likeable and, so that no one can have any doubts on the matter, he heaps condemnatory epithets upon him at every turn … What is most striking is that the person who wins the game played out in this luminous book is not the straightforward Mr. Cercas but the devious Mr. Marco … Excellent novelist though he is, Javier Cercas was so fascinated by the theme and subject matter of his book that he forgot that good novels always turn the bad characters into good because they always end up exerting over readers … The book that he has written, even though he might not have wished it to turn out that way, is a (magnificent) novel about an uncommon character.”
–Mario Vargas Llosa (The Wall Street Journal)
Read an excerpt from The Imposter here
*
3. The Only Girl by Robin Green
2 Rave • 7 Positive
“The staccato sentences strung together cut into our emotions and deepen the stark, claustrophobic feeling of aloneness and disappointment and momentary hopelessness … The Only Girl is brimming over with stories of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and there are clear-eyed but sympathetic descriptions of some of the more famous denizens of the magazine … Yet, the power of The Only Girl lies in Green’s willingness to acknowledge the vulnerability she feels early in her career, her willingness to share her struggles and triumphs of making her way, finding her voice … an electrifying read.”
–Henry Carrigan (No Depression)
*
4. Arthur Ashe: A Life by Raymond Arsenault
1 Rave • 8 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Raymond Arsenault has created a posthumous paean to Arthur Ashe … Arsenault has worked through interviews with those who knew Ashe, and also with Ashe’s own extensive personal writings, so that the man’s voice is heard again. This thorough account naturally will be of particular interest to sports fans … Arsenault’s book has the power to invade the hearts of those who did not experience the American Civil Rights movement directly.”
–Barbara Bamberger Scott (BookReporter)
*
5. Boom Town by Sam Anderson
3 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Anderson is a great basketball writer…and his material on Harden, Durant, and particularly Westbrook in Boom Town will surely enthrall hoops fans. But Boom Town will also thrill anyone who couldn’t care less about the NBA; at its core, it’s a curious reporter’s portrait of the cultural and civic life of a strange and great city. If you’re a non-Oklahoman, you’ll experience frequent shocks of recognition at the foibles of the modern urban experience; Anderson’s explorations, though, will have you opening your preferred travel app, idly pricing tickets to the Sooner State … The cast of characters that Anderson has assembled in his book offers an embarrassment of riches, a testament to Anderson’s skills as both a reporter and a historical researcher … The imaginations of sports and cities reinforce each other rather perfectly, a connection that Boom Town mines for all its possibilities.”
–Jack Hamilton (Slate)
Read an excerpt from Boom Town here
