Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds, Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, and James Ellroy’s The Enchanters all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.
1. The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
(Riverhead)
8 Rave • 3 Positive • 2 Mixed • 2 Pan
Read an excerpt from The Vaster Wilds here
“Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds is a radical disruption to the male-dominated cliche. In her wilderness tale, survival involves learning to become part of the vast networks of community that nurture entire ecosystems … A fully-realized historical milieu … Groff acknowledges her character’s troubled past without turning pain into spectacle … Her surroundings come alive in prose that lives and breathes upon the page … A terrific addition to a developing canon of our continued existence.”
–Lorraine Berry (The Boston Globe)
2. A House For Alice by Diana Evans
(Pantheon)
6 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“This is a realist novel and a novel about ghosts; an immigrant novel about what it means to return home; a novel of women that may actually be a novel about men … Each character here is richly and deeply drawn, with histories and personalities so fully realized that it’s a pleasure to get to know them … Evans’s writing stuns, showcasing a flair that turns even dying into poetry … The most brilliant element of the novel comes at the close of the book, where the story ends, and then ends again. I won’t spoil it by revealing more.”
–Tiphanie Yanique (The New York Times Book Review)
3. The Enchanters by James Ellroy
(Knopf)
4 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an essay by James Ellroy here
“Ellroy is a modern master of making his characters interesting instead of nice … [The] distinct Ellroy style—staccato, slangy—can make even a slow plod through exposition seem like a harried sprint … Where some writers might light a match to illuminate their way through a chapter, Ellroy takes a flamethrower. Full on, all the time—a style that is intensely, unequivocally, unapologetically his. The commitment to it never wavers, so you either enjoy the ride or get the hell out. No allowances will be made.”
–Malcolm Mackay (AirMail)
**
1. Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
4 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
Listen to an interview with Naomi Klein here
“This story of mistaken identity would on its own be gripping and revealing enough, both as a psychological study and for its explorations of the double in art and history, the disorienting effects of social media, and the queasy feeling of looking into a distorted mirror. But the larger subject of Doppelganger turns out to be a far more complex and consequential confusion: Its guiding question is how so many people have in recent years broken with conventional left-right political affiliations and a shared understanding of reality.”
–Laura Marsh (The New Republic)
2. Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb
(W. W. Norton & Company)
5 Rave • 1 Positive
“Fascinating and compassionate … He also does an admirable job of detailing the ways that highways and freeways divide our cities along racial lines … It’s rare for a work so focused on wildlife conservation to also treat race.”
–Emily Raboteau (The New York Times Book Review)
3. The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts by Loren Grush
(Scribner)
4 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an excerpt from The Six here
“These switchbacks of breakthrough and frustration wind through reporter Loren Grush’s vivid account of women’s battle for spaceflight equality … Grush paints a compelling picture of the rigours faced by these driven and accomplished women … An important record of their achievements so far.”
–Rachel Aspden (The Guardian)
