Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, Adam Shatz’s The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon, and Elizabeth Gonzalez James’ The Bullet Swallower all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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Fiction

1. Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
(Knopf)

10 Rave • 1 Postive

“A deliberately provocative title that suits its protagonist, an Iranian-American poet who is painfully conflicted, heartbreakingly vulnerable, and frequently impossible … Stuffed with ideas, gorgeous images, and a surprising amount of humor … The serious fiction lover’s favorite kind of book, offering plenty to think about and discuss, all of it couched in brilliantly rendered prose that’s a pleasure to read. Let’s hope that Kaveh Akbar’s impressive debut is the first of many novels to come.”

–Wendy Smith (The Boston Globe)

2. The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
(Simon & Schuster)

4 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
Elizabeth Gonzalez James on the “weird, wild literature” of her home state, here

“Mixes elements of western novels and magical realism to deliver a wildly entertaining story that spans generations and crosses borders in a riveting family saga … While great characterization and superb storytelling make this an enjoyable read, Gonzalez’s use of magical realism elements is what pushes this novel into must-read territory. The narrative reads like a western, but the magical elements enrich the story in unexpected ways.”

–Gabino Iglesias (The Boston Globe)

3. Dead in Long Beach, California by Venita Blackburn
(MCD)

3 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Dead in Long Beach, California here

“Through the chorus, Blackburn brings us back to something inherently true about anyone experiencing this kind of loss: Our grief may seem singular, it may seem like it belongs solely to us, but that’s not exactly true. Grief is part of a larger system that connects us all to one another, and what we do with it, how we handle it, and what becomes of us after is not always fully in our control … It’s a masterful feat of storytelling for Blackburn to constantly make the reader feel as if Coral is coming full circle, only to remind us she can’t …

We’re left with a profound and surprising demonstration of how there’s no way to fully outrun or outmaneuver or out-strategize the pain of loss. Even when we truly believe we can, the despair and disrepair of the loss will bring us to our knees and turn us in on ourselves. And although the idea that we don’t move beyond grief, we only learn to live with it is common, Blackburn’s debut novel provides a new vision of just how true this is, making that truth feel brand new again.”

–Stef Rubino (Autostraddle)

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Nonfiction 

1. The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon by Adam Shatz
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

7 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an excerpt from The Rebel’s Clinic here

“A biography of Fanon is also of necessity a biography of his legend, which sometimes deviates considerably from his person. His support for the Algerian struggle was unwavering, and he is often remembered as a militant who once lauded anti-colonial violence as ‘cleansing force.’ But as the critic and essayist Adam Shatz demonstrates in his nimble and engrossing new book, The Rebel’s Clinic, Fanon was never as one-dimensionally bellicose as he is often taken to be, not only by his enemies but by his allies and hagiographers … As Shatz shows in this exemplary work of public intellectualism, in which he does not sugarcoat or simplify, the ingenious doctor and impassioned activist was every bit as much a victim of empire as the patients he worked to heal.”

–Becca Rothfeld (The Washington Post)

2. The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky by Simon Shuster
(William Morrow & Company)

6 Rave • 1 Positive

“Shuster paints with great sympathy a complex picture of Mr. Zelensky and his transformation … Like many writers on a tight deadline, Mr. Shuster crafted a longer book than he otherwise might have. But The Showmansurpasses all similar efforts to date and is set to be the standard by which all other works on Mr. Zelensky and Ukraine’s wartime politics will be judged.”

–Bojan Pancevski (The Wall Street Journal)

3. Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America’s Suburbs by Benjamin Herold
(Penguin Press)

3 Rave • 3 Positive
Read an excerpt from Disillusioned here

“…presents a blistering indictment of how American suburbs were built on racism and unsustainable development ‘that functioned like a Ponzi scheme’ … Disillusioned excels in documenting the effects racial exclusion and intimidation had on suburban growth, and Herold offers eye-opening details like the fact that Compton, Calif., was once home to George Herbert Walker Bush and his young children. For readers like me, who previously only thought of Compton as a burning epicenter of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, Herold reminds us that places don’t start out in disrepair. They’re shaped by forces that cause decay … As Herold jumps between cities and decades, it can be hard to keep track of the exact rulings in different cases regarding desegregation. But the patterns are clear and continuing, cementing the idea that equal rights and opportunity exist only in theory in this country, not in practice.”

–Vikas Turakhia (The Star Tribune)

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland, Susan Muaddi Darraj’s Behind You Is the Sea, and Rebecca Boyle’s Our Moon all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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Fiction

1. Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

9 Rave

“…astonishing … Never mind the fault in our stars…this is a book that exults in them … An ineffable sadness and sense of resignation hang over Beautyland, which refuses to give in to sentimentality or serendipity or the idea of everything working out for a reason. It’s the second novel I’ve reviewed in six months that invokes Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the first being, more obsessively, Ann Patchett’s best-selling Tom Lake. Adina is cast not as Emily, like Patchett’s heroine, but as the narrator, which feels deeply significant. Being an alien here might just be a metaphor for the difficult blessing of feeling enough apart from the thrum of life on Earth to report on its goings-on: to tell a story.”

–Alexandra Jacobs (The New York Times)

2. Behind You Is the Sea by Susan Muaddi Darraj
(HarperVia)

5 Rave • 1 Positive
Read Susan Muaddi Darraj’s essay on finding inspiration in the lives of ordinary Palestinians here

“Susan Muaddi Darraj’s powerful debut novel-in-stories, Behind You Is the Sea, depicts multiple immigrant Palestinian families in Baltimore, whose lives intertwine in unexpected ways. Darraj uses a kaleidoscopic point of view, dropping the reader into a character’s life at a pivotal moment, then switching to another character later in time, providing a multifaceted look at their community … Other stories illuminate the difficulties of living in diaspora, from making a living, adjusting to a different culture, experiencing racism and classism and navigating generational conflicts over changing values … moments of insight and empathy limn Darraj’s novel, shining through the sadness and tension of her characters’ lives.”

–May-lee Chai (The Star Tribune)

3. Ilium by Lea Carpenter
(Knopf)

5 Rave • 1 Pan

“While Carpenter knows how to dish out the dread that a spy story needs, what makes Ilium intriguing are the characters … This is the sort of moral ambiguity that seems to fascinate Carpenter, the way living a double life and every day making your cover, that critical and deeply embedded lie, feels real to everyone around you. It’s also what makes Ilium such an unexpectedly moving novel.”

–Chris Bohjalian (The New York Times Book Review)

**

Nonfiction

1. The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History by Manjula Martin
(Pantheon)

4 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The Last Fire Season here

“Powerful … Grounded…surprising … She braids together strands of various histories—a personal one, along with the larger story of humans and fire—all set against the background of the summer and fall of 2020, when both the pandemic and wildfires were raging … The range of this book coaxes us to confront our own failures of imagination.”

–Jennifer Szalai (The New York Times)

2. Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle

3 Rave • 3 Positive
Read Rebecca Boyle’s essay, “Motherhood and the Moon,” here

“Boyle walks the reader through a history of both Earth and humanity, from the formation of our planet and the evolution of life to the development of civilization, religion, philosophy and, eventually, science … Boyle, whose graceful writing is as lulling as a bedtime story, paints the moon as more than just a driver of physical phenomena … Boyle finds the moon in places I would never think to look. And she has convinced me that though our connection to it is ever-changing, the moon perseveres as a source of knowledge, wonder and influence—and is anything but dull … Timely … Makes the moon feel closer than ever.”

–Katrina Miller (The New York Times Book Review)

3. Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science by Benjamin Breen
(Grand Central)

3 Rave

“Breen blends fleet-footed biography with an accessible analysis of mid-20th-century research into ‘psychedelic’ experiences … Breen artfully weaves Mead’s biography with fascinating details of the sprawling psychedelics scene (producers of the TV show Flipper took acid). The result is a riveting exploration of a shadowy episode in 20th-century history.”

–Publishers Weekly

Hisham Matar’s My Friends, Álvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires, and Rachel Slade’s Making it in America all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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Fiction

1. My Friends by Hisham Matar
(Random House)

10 Rave

“Amid this refined climate of melancholy acceptance arrives the unexpected revolutionary fervor of the Arab Spring of the early 2010s, whose tensions and excitements My Friends captures as well as any novel I have read … Matar weighs these complexities with tremendous sensitivity, and My Friends is not only indispensable for a full understanding of Libyan émigrés but is, more generally, a great novel of exile.”

–Sam Sacks (The Wall Street Journal)

2. You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, trans. by Natasha Wimmer
(Riverhead)

7 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an excerpt from You Dreamed of Empires here

“Enrigue presents us with two societies that feel far removed from our modern sensibilities, one of which—the Aztec empire—has often been shoddily reproduced, its complexity buffed away … The intricacy of this series of events might have daunted many writers; it’s difficult enough just to portray it accurately and make it comprehensible. Even when someone has done their research—and Enrigue has done it admirably well—the story could easily become ponderous and overblown, a mothballed costume drama. Enrigue’s genius lies in his ability to bring readers close to its tangled knot of priests, mercenaries, warriors and princesses while adding a pinch of biting humor.”

–Silvia Morena-Garcia (The Los Angeles Times)

3. The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell
(W. W. Norton & Company)

5 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an excerpt from The Waters here

“Sounds grim, but there’s an indomitable spirit pushing back against despair in Campbell’s work … A light touch of fantasy runs through this story … She immediately peoples her pages with a large cast of eccentric characters and a thick backstory so casually laced with shocking violence that it’s tempting to think you must have misheard. But don’t be quick to drive by Whiteheart. You must succumb to the pace of The Waters… It subtracts nothing from Campbell’s originality to suggest that she’s taken up the mantle of John Irving … Astonishing.”

–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)

**

Nonfiction

1. Twinkind: The Singular Significance of Twins by William Viney
(Princeton University Press)

3 Rave • 2 Positive

“Viney captures the full range of nontwin response, among much else … Viney acknowledges the dangers of reading too much into twinhood … Perhaps our fascination with twins is the result of that enduring, mysterious fact: As singletons, we can never really understand what it means to be multiple.”

–Christine Rosen (The Wall Street Journal)

2. Making It in America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the U.S.A. (and How It Got That Way) by Rachel Slade
(Pantheon)

1 Rave • 4 Positive

“Her book benefits from extraordinary access, providing an up-close look at the challenges of manufacturing … Slade’s key insight, and possibly the strongest argument for reviving domestic manufacturing, is that it is how we innovate.”

–Jenna Sauers (The New York Times Book Review)

3. Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence by Yaroslav Trofimov
(Penguin Press)

2 Rave • 2 Positive

“The author does an excellent job placing the unprovoked attack within the historical context of Ukrainian resistance to Russia and Russia’s equal insistence on dominating Ukraine. Trofimov also demonstrates the power of words in war as he examines the slogans, memes, and speeches that Ukrainians rally behind, contrasted with the empty and often ridiculous Russian propaganda used to justify and rationalize Putin’s invasion. This tour de force covers the first year of war in Ukraine and a solid second draft of history, as the author intended. We can hope for a second volume that will be the last, chronicling a truly independent Ukraine.”

–James Pekoll (Booklist)

Mike McCormack’s This Plague of Souls, Vanessa Chan’s The Storm We Made, and Erika Howsare’s The Age of Deer all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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Fiction

1. This Plague of Souls by Mike McCormack
(Soho Press)

5 Rave • 1 Positive

“Masterful narrative skill … What matters is the intensity of Nealon’s reflections as he gathers himself back into his life. McCormack’s language is evocative, perfectly suited to the noirish atmosphere he builds throughout the book … This is a strange novel, sinister yet hopeful, a descent into darkness that somehow manages to rise into a ringing light.”

–Erica Wagner (The Guardian)

2. The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan
(S&S/Mary Sue Rucci Books)

2 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an excerpt from The Storm We Made here

“World War II might be the most popular subject for historical fiction, but Vanessa Chan’s debut, The Storm We Made, defies the typical focus on the Western front and a clear-cut distinction between good and evil that characterizes many books … Chan’s chronicles of atrocities against Malayan children serve as a bracing reminder that despite the way World War II is often depicted in fiction, it was not romantic. The Storm We Made invites reflection about who should be considered the main characters of this war. It’s clear that people in every locale affected by its brutalities deserve to be protagonists, and Chan’s novel proves there are still fresh perspectives to reveal.”

–Jenny Shank (The Star Tribune)

3. Mercury by Amy Jo Burns
(Celadon Books)

1 Rave • 3 Positive

“Mercury is a character-driven novel; the point isn’t the plot, but what the people enacting it reveal about themselves. Though the book covers only nine years, there’s something epic about the love story at its heart … And so the most powerful tension in this novel doesn’t come from the dead body. It comes from the question of whether Marley will demand a place for herself—and for her voice to be heard.”

–Mary Beth Keane (The New York Times Book Review)

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Nonfiction

1. The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors by Erika Howsare
(Catapult)

5 Rave • 2 Positive

“Through carefully wrought prose and evocative imagery, Howsare depicts how deer and human populations have both relied on and butted up against one another for eons … A thorough, eye-opening invitation to ponder our own relationships with the natural world, practically and reverently.”

–Becky Libourel Diamond (BookPage)

2. How to Be a Renaissance Woman: The Untold History of Beauty & Female Creativity by Jill Burke
(Pegasus Books)

4 Rave • 2 Positive

“A sprightly cultural history … She introduces us to women who, through luck and force of will were able to parlay their talents, skills and, inevitably, beauty into successes as painters, writers, performers and courtesans. And it says something about what rare birds these were that Burke is able to identify virtually all of them in one brief book.”

–Ellen Akins (The Star Tribune)

3. Pure Wit: The Revolutionary Life of Margaret Cavendish by Francesca Peacock
(Pegasus Books)

3 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an essay by Francesca Peacock here

“Pure Wit thoroughly acquaints you with Cavendish’s background and milieu, but her writing can be harder to cathect to, in part because her poor penmanship and spelling muddied publication, with editions revised repeatedly over the years. Peacock argues her work deserves the same scrutiny and careful attention as that of her male contemporaries … Peacock works hard to situate her subject alongside other iconoclasts. This is probably the first time Cavendish has been likened to David Bowie and bell hooks, and it would no doubt delight her, even if the academy harrumphs.”

–Alexandra Jacobs (The New York Times)

James McBrude’s The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, Sin Blaché & Helen Macdonald’s Prophet, and John Glatt’s Tangled Vines all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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Fiction

1. Day by Michael Cunningham
(Random House)

4 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Pan

“The only problem with Michael Cunningham’s prose is that it ruins you for mere mortals’ work. He is the most elegant writer in America. Admittedly, elegance doesn’t carry much cachet these days when Important Novels are supposed to make strident social arguments that we already agree with. But in the presence of truly beautiful writing, a kind of magic vibrates off the page. That’s the aura of Cunningham’s pensive new novel, Day. He has developed a style calibrated to capture moments of ineffable longing … In a novel as thinly plotted as Day, everything depends upon the exquisite flow of Cunningham’s language, but quotations don’t do his work justice. You have to read these sentences yourself in context … Aging, along with its attendant separations and swelling sense of irrelevance, is the novel’s abiding preoccupation. I would accuse Cunningham of projecting his 71-year-old anxieties, but these characters, barely middle-aged, are wholly convincing exemplars of America’s new lost generation. At their backs they always hear time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”

–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)

2. So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
(Grove Press)

5 Rave

“Keegan offers a master class in precisely crafted short fiction in this collection of three tales … Keegan’s trenchant observations explode like bombshells, bringing menace and retribution to tales of romance delayed, denied, and even deadly.”

–Carol Haggas (Booklist)

3. The New Naturals by Gabriel Bump
(Algonquin Books)

2 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Given the size of the thing it indicts—not only America, but the entirety of modern society—it’s a somewhat spectacular achievement that Gabriel Bump’s second novel, The New Naturals, feels as fun as it does … sharp, witty even in some of its darkest moments … This sort of thing could get real dour real quick. Fortunately, Bump has a sense of humor, and makes good use of it. There are slivers of Denis Johnson here, especially in the dialogue, which often recalls the hospital scene from Jesus’ Son: people speaking through and around one another, the result uproarious, addictive and just removed from how most human beings actually talk. It’s delightful”

–Omar El Akkad (The New York Times Book Review)

**

Nonfiction

1. Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather by Benjamin Taylor
(Viking)

5 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an excerpt from Chasing Bright Madness here

“Should appeal to anyone—novice or expert—ready to explore Cather’s life and work in the company of a critic so alert to the shimmering subtlety of her style and the hard years of effort that went into crystallizing it … With great feeling and deeply informed perception, Taylor helps us readers realize anew the sustained effort it took for Cather to meet ‘the rest of herself,’ in her novels and her life.”

–Maureen Corrigan (The Washington Post)

2. Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art by Lauren Elkin
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

6 Rave • 1 Positive • 2 Mixed • 1 Pan

“Lively and vibrant … What this book does brilliantly: engage with the physicality of art, the sensory, texture, lumps and all. It juxtaposes artists and writers who insist on both beauty and excess … Packed with theory, but is jargon-free. As well as critical, Elkin’s prose is chatty and at times enjoyably blunt … Complex. Changeable. Out of bounds. Ambiguous, like the stroke. Monstrous art, Elkin writes, is weird and bold. ‘What makes it good—what sets it apart—is its commitment to a sometimes scathing honesty.’ You could say the same for this superb book.”

–Chloë Ashby (The Spectator)

3. Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades by Rebecca Renner
(Flatiron Books)

5 Rave • 1 Positive
Read an excerpt from Gator Country here

“Every species, and every person who fights for its continued existence, deserves a book like this—a book that explores the complexity of the nexus between humans and animals and the exploitation of the wild, and considers the ambiguities of our fractured relationship to nature, morality and history.”

–Lydia Millet (The New York Times Book Review)

Sigrid Nunez’s The Vulnerables, Barbra Streisand’s My Name is Barbra, and Ed Park’s Same Bed, Different Dreams all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s “Rotten Tomatoes for books.”

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Fiction

1. The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez
(Riverhead)

6 Rave • 4 Positive
Read an interview with Sigrid Nunez here

“Animals and uncomfortable topics: Count on these in a Sigrid Nunez novel. Her slim, discursive, minor yet charming new one, The Vulnerables, is no exception … This one comes across as a Covid diary, with a light scaffolding of incident to hold its meditations up. The narrator’s interactions with the parrot are funny and moving … I can do without animals, most of the time, in novels. But Nunez is a closer observer than most, and she is wittier … Like certain storms, this novel churns intensely in one place. There is a bit more plot … I am committed, until one of us dies, to Nunez’s novels. I find them ideal. They are short, wise, provocative, funny—good and strong company … You don’t have to follow her all the way, and start digging the novel’s grave, to sense that she is onto something. It has always been true: Being told about life, by a perceptive writer, can be as good as, if not better than, being told a story.”

–Dwight Garner (The New York Times)

2. How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney
(Biblioasis)

3 Rave • 6 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an excerpt from How to Build a Boat here

“Feeney effortlessly combines the overwhelming ebb and flow of life with her boat-building plot … Feeney’s prose is both careful and relaxed—detailed in its description of place and character and of the effortful human urge to find order in the natural world; casual in its approach to storytelling, the point of view shifting throughout scenes … the difficult winter carries the reader into a hopeful spring. Life is random; our connections are as essential and uncontrollable as the tides, the book seems to say. All we can do is learn how to float.”

–Sophie Ward (The New York Times Book Review)

3. Same Bed, Different Dreams by Ed Park
(Random House)

6 Rave • 1 Positive

“Park’s follow-up, Same Bed Different Dreams, arrives a full decade and a half later [after Personal Days], with all the heft, complexity and ambition such a lengthy interim suggests. The author has greatly expanded his literary scope and complicated his narrative technique, though certain fundamentals remain … Braids three plots together in a bewilderingly layered structure … Absurdly complex … Although Same Bed Different Dreams is one of the most circuitously structured novels in recent memory, the reader is never confused about what’s happening in the practical sense. The path is always clear. It’s the connections between the disparate parts that make Same Bed Different Dreams succeed so powerfully yet enigmatically.”

–Jonathan Russell Clark (The Los Angeles Review of Books)

**

Nonfiction

1. A Death in Malta: An Assassination and a Family’s Quest for Justice by Paul Caruana Galizia
(Riverhead)

7 Rave • 2 Positive

“Paul Caruana Galizia is a superb storyteller. His book reads at times like a thriller, at times like a detective story, and at times like the work of an investigative journalist uncovering webs of corruption, with levels of detail that will be most interesting to those who understand Malta, its systems and flaws. His mother emerges as no saint either. She was clearly not the easiest of women to live with. Highly determined people rarely are … This is Daphne Caruana Galizia’s legacy. Her son’s book is a moving testament to the life and work of an extraordinary woman and the country-changing power of journalism.”

–Christina Patterson (The Sunday Times)

2. Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food by Fuchsia Dunlop
(W. W. Norton & Company)

6 Rave • 1 Positive

“Another food writer might be suspected of trying too hard, but such is the range and depth of Dunlop’s erudition, and so infectious is her enthusiasm, that she is above suspicion on that score … Dunlop has developed a vocabulary equal to the daunting challenge of conveying the huge range of values, ambitions and experiences embedded in Chinese gastronom.”

–Isabel Hamilton (The Financial Times)

3. My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand
(Viking)

3 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed

“A 970-page victory lap … Details may be familiar to fans, but for the most part they ring out more resoundingly in Streisand’s chatty, ellipses-strewn telling. She may possess megawatt fame …but between these covers she’s just Bubbe Barbra at a kitchen table … Future editions, then, might excise some of the long block quotes of praise from her peers … There’s something exuberant and glorious, though, about Streisand’s photo dump of self-portraits and party pics. Indeed about this whole dragged-out banquet of a book. You might not have the appetite to linger for the whole thing, but you’ll find something worth a nosh.”

–Alexandra Jacobs (The New York Times)

Carlo Rovelli’s White Holes, Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory, Alice McDermott’s Absolution, and Caster Semenya’s The Race to Be Myself all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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Fiction

1. The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
(Gallery/Saga Press)

10 Rave

“Emotive and eschews realism for the supernatural. It combines current concerns about race and justice for young Black men with an intensely readable, immersive story with decisive paranormal features. In fact, the novel’s extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work. I couldn’t stop reading. I needed to find out what was going to happen next, and next, and next … A supernatural historical novel and a straight-up page-turner. This is a difficult combination to sustain for nearly 600 pages, but Due accomplishes it, and in so doing invites us to consider what it means to be enthralled, even entertained, by a young man’s ethical dilemmas, and to find ourselves unexpectedly rooting for revenge, for the living and the dead.”

–Randy Boyaga (The New York Times Book Review)

2. The Glutton by A. K. Blakemore
(Scribner)

6 Rave • 3 Positive

“The author brings her powers of language and research to bear on a historical novel that announces from the start that it plans to break the rules. She opens with a description that seems to gestate and eat itself, like an ouroboros … Visceral … This is a sensory feast that asks us what brutality we are prepared to witness, taste, hear, smell and touch. While some may find the prose overstuffed, others will relish a compelling, urgent, empathic, beautifully revolting novel that wants to kick the stuffing out of our complacency.”

–Kim Sherwood (Times Literary Supplement)

3. Absolution by Alice McDermott
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

5 Rave • 1 Positive

“It’s futile to predict where a great writer’s boundless imagination will take us and, as Absolution affirms, McDermott is a great writer … What draws out McDermott’s most incisive, compassionate writing is the expat world of ‘the wives’ … McDermott possesses the rare ability to evoke and enter bygone worlds…without condescending to them.”

–Maureen Corrigan (NPR)

**

Nonfiction

1. White Holes by Carlo Rovelli
(Riverhead)

3 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Going beyond that horizon towards a new understanding of space, time and black holes is the principal goal of physicist Carlo Rovelli’s wonderful new book … White Holes, like Rovelli’s other works, is remarkably short—less than 200 pages. But the clarity of his explanations is unparalleled. As a scientist who is also a popularizer, I often find myself marveling at the acuity of his passages. More than just an ability to explain cutting edge ideas in physics, Rovelli’s erudition and sensitivity lets him make contact with the broadest human yearnings for making sense of the world … taking the journey with Rovelli is more than worth the price of the book. Dante gave us his tour of the underworld. We could not do better than having Rovelli as a guide into the dark world of black holes.”

–Adam Frank (NPR)

2. The Race to Be Myself by Caster Semenya
(W. W. Norton & Company)

4 Rave • 2 Positive

“Here, for the first time, Semenya shares her perspective on the trauma and horrific treatment she endured to fulfill her dreams of reaching her potential as a female athlete and providing her family with financial support. Told with candor, Semenya’s story reminds readers to treat all humans with dignity and that being different does not mean being wrong.”

–Brenda Barrera (Booklist)

3. Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman
(Simon & Schuster)

2 Rave • 3 Positive

“A beautifully composed and unique look at how Chaplin was characterized as an immoral sexual deviant and Soviet-sympathizing subversive. The author vividly documents the federal government’s relentless pursuit of Chaplin … A brilliant must-read about the epic and turbulent life and times of a cinematic titan.”

–Kirkus

Teju Cole’s Tremor, Sly Stone’s Thank You, and Marie NDiaye’s Vengeance is Mine all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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Fiction

1. Tremor by Teju Cole
(Random House)

11 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Pan

“As a form for capturing the meaning and matter of our lives, novels still feel wholly up to the task. And anyone who doubts how effectively this elderly literary genre might survive and evolve to reflect an impossibly complicated world would do well to read Teju Cole’s involute new book, Tremor … t does not disappoint. Cole continues to demonstrate just how elastic a novel can be and how trenchant he is. His book crosses national boundaries just as confidently as it crosses literary ones. The eclectic structure may be challenging, but, given the continuity of Cole’s vision, it’s never baffling … Has little traditional plot but never lacks for interest or incident … To read some of these chapters is to see the essay form in its most elegiac, elastic and epiphanic mode.”

–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)

2. The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
(Bloomsbury)

6 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The House of Doors here

“Outstanding … Eng ingeniously inserts a further shocking twist. But what most gives his novel its grip is his masterly conjuring up of Maugham’s imaginative world and the steamy tropic latitudes in which it burgeoned … Occasionally the prose becomes overclamorous … Beautifully detailed and encompassing the vagaries of Maugham’s life, the contours of his creativity and the personal and political tensions covertly quivering through the sultry colony around him, The House of Doors is a finely accomplished piece of work.”

–Peter Kemp (The Sunday Times)

3. Vengeance is Mine by Marie NDiaye
(Knopf)

3 Rave • 3 Positive
Read an essay by Jordan Stump on translating Marie NDiaye here

“The characters in Marie NDiaye’s novels are an unsettling brood … A master at agitating, probing and upending expectations … She presents a new litter of misfits and constructs one of her most beguiling and visceral tales … NDiaye deals in impressions and captures a particular kind of emotional delirium in Vengeance. She leans into jaggedness, twisting her narrative to mimic Maître Susane’s fraying psychological state as she searches for a kind of truth.”

–Lovia Gyarkye (The New York Times Book Review)

**

Nonfiction

1. The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie
(Knopf)

7 Rave • 1 Positive

“Ogilvie has provided a sprightly, elegant tribute to the ordinary readers…who made up the bulk of the O.E.D.’s work force, largely unpaid and unsung, filling in millions of slips in their spare time … An engrossing survey … The real joy of The Dictionary People is to be reminded that any group of people pinned at its intersection will still burst forth every which way, a tapestry of contradictions, noble and ignoble, wild and banal.”

–Dennis Duncan (The New York Times Book Review)

2. Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin): A Memoir by Sly Stone
(Auwa)

 3 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Sly Stone has been MIA for so long, many people will probably be surprised to learn that he is still alive. Actually, at age 80, the incredible and unpredictable funk music pioneer has, once again, surprised us all by producing a frisky, remarkably vivid and cogent account of his life and career.”

–Joel Selvin (The San Francisco Chronicle)

3. The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination by Stuart A. Reid
(Knopf)

4 Rave • 1 Positive
Read an excerpt from The Lumumba Plot here

“Reid…has arrived with a carefully researched book that warns us about what is lost when tensions between great powers play out in the developing world … Reid develops his main characters beautifully, especially Lumumba, who passes ‘like a meteor’—to borrow the lovely phrase of his daughter Juliana—through its pages … Lumumba is re-elevated by the end of Reid’s book, mainly through the sea of indignities he suffered as a captive … argues convincingly that by ordering the assassination of Lumumba, the Eisenhower administration crossed a moral line that set a new low in the Cold War.”

–Nicolas Niarchos (The New York Times Book Review)

Bryan Washington’s Family Meal, Mary Gabriel’s Madonna: A Rebel Life, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories, andWerner Herzog’s Every Man for Himself and God Against All all feature among the Best Reviewed Books of the Week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s book review aggregator.

*

Fiction

1. Family Meal by Bryan Washington
(Riverhead)

7 Rave • 4 Positive

“Masterful … What makes Washington’s writing about family so refreshing and complex is how he shows the ways people attempt to demonstrate the emotions they otherwise have trouble expressing to the ones they hold dear … Family Meal juggles a lot…but Washington lays it all out with the control and artistry of a ballet choreographer. Each story line gives the other strength.”

–Ernesto Mestre-Reed (The New York Times Book Review)

2. Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
(Knopf)

8 Rave • 1 Positive
Read Todd Portnowitz on translating Jhumpa Lahiri here

“Melancholy yet electric … The fluid transitions between Lahiri’s and Portnowitz’s translations elevate Roman Storiesfrom a grouping of individual tales to a deeply moving whole. By putting many kinds of foreignness together, Lahiri shows that they all belong.”

–Lily Meyer (The New York Times Book Review)

3. Blackouts by Justin Torres
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

7 Rave • 1 Positive

“A transfixing collage of gorgeous prose and manipulated illustrations, with themes of cultural erasure and the effervescence of lust and love … Easily 2023’s sexiest novel … Astonishing … It steers clear of contrivance, thanks to edgy illustrations, an origami structure, and the author’s exquisite eye and ear. This is a novel of ideas, too, brimming with queer history, racial defiance and the injustices of the Freudian era … Run, don’t walk, to buy it.”

–Hamilton Cain (The Star Tribune)

**

Nonfiction

1. Madonna: A Rebel Life by Mary Gabriel
(Little Brown and Company)

4 Rave • 2 Positive • 5 Mixed

“Gabriel’s writing is unfussy and direct … It’s a mark of Gabriel’s skill that she has managed to wrestle this complex, sprawling, eventful life into a book that rarely flags and conveys its subject’s wider significance without tipping into hagiography. We come to understand Madonna the person as well as Madonna the concept.

–Fiona Sturges (The Guardian)

2. Every Man for Himself and God Against All by Werner Herzog
(Penguin Press)

4 Rave • 2 Positive

“There is a great deal in this book about Mr. Herzog’s childhood and youth, a convention that can be dull, but not when the life is like this one … Herzog has never made strictly linear films, and this is not at all a linear book. Observations about his films are nonchalantly mixed with tangentially related memories … This year, Mr. Herzog turned 81. We can only hope that he continues the chase as long as possible.”

–Farran Smith Nehme (The Wall Street Journal)

3. Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction by Fergus M. Bordewich
(Knopf)

4 Rave • 1 Positive

“A vivid and sobering account of Grant’s efforts to crush the Klan in the South … For the most part, Bordewich’s narrative hews closely to the historical period, showing how federal power was the only way to stamp out local regimes that countenanced the suffering of Black people while allowing white perpetrators to go unpunished … Toward the end of the book, Bordewich gestures toward the fractured political landscape of the present day. Grant’s victory over the Klan is a story that many Americans would like to tell themselves, but the retrenchment that followed is a cautionary tale.”

–Jennifer Szalai (The New York Times)

Benjamín Labatut’s The MANIAC, Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon, Lydia Davis’ Our Strangers, and Melissa Broder’s Death Valley all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s book review aggregator.

*

Fiction

1. The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut
(Penguin Press)

5 Rave • 9 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Darkly fascinating … Riveting … Labatut handles all of this with impressive dexterity, unpicking complex ideas in long, elegant sentences that propel us forward at speed (this is his first book written in English). Even in the more feverish passages, when yet another great mind succumbs to madness, haunted by the specters they’ve helped unleash on the world, he feels in full control of his material.”

–Killian Fox (The Observer)

2. Our Strangers by Lydia Davis
(Bookshop Editions)

6 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an interview with Lydia Davis here

“Lydia Davis is a sly miniaturist whose distinct blend of personal reflection, flash fiction, and poetic concision serve up little epiphanies in shot glass-sized portions … Fortunately, Our Strangers, which is Bookshop.org’s first publication, is notable for more than its author’s stand against online behemoths … I’ve enjoyed Davis’s koan-like stories for years but never reviewed them, in part because I found them more appealing when ingested in micro-doses, like homeopathic remedies, rather than glugged down from start to finish on deadline. Although I still prefer to savor her work in dainty sips, I’m happy to report that, even read straight through, the more than 150 short-shorts in Our Strangers again feature her wry response to what she sees as life’s essential oddness. Her focus has shifted largely from issues of parenting and domestic relationships to aspects of aging, but the results are as penetrating as anything she’s written.”

–Heller McAlpin (NPR)

3. Death Valley by Melissa Broder
(Scribner)

6 Rave • 1 Positive

“Broder turns to a grimmer topic—grief. But her disarming and whimsical style remains intact … Broder’s own gift is for scenes and dialogue that are so natural—in that they reflect the ridiculousness and surrealism of real life—that they tip over into the uncanny. She is also very funny … Never, ever boring.”

–Jessica Ferri (The Los Angeles Times)

**

Nonfiction

1. How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
(37 Ink)

7 Rave

“Astounding … a personal story so fierce, honest and utterly absorbing that it’s impossible to put down. In How to Say Babylon, Sinclair uses that fire she found so long ago to pen a powerful portrait of a young woman cleaving her way out of hardship to wield a mighty voice all her own. … Boundless and beautiful and all the rest, How to Say Babylon is, in a word, a triumph.”

–Alexis Burling (The San Francisco Chronicle)

2. Lou Reed: The King of New York by Will Hermes
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

4 Rave • 2 Positive

“Hermes’ captivating new biography, fires on all cylinders: It’s exhaustively researched and opinionated, with a swagger that evokes its volatile subject. For most of the book there’s precious little of Reed’s later domesticity … Hermes writes with kinetic flair … A scrupulous chronicle of a rock outlaw who sought an authentic self on stage.”

–Hamilton Cain (The Star Tribune)

3. Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post by Martin Baron
(Flatiron Books)

4 Rave • 1 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Editing and writing are related but separate skills, like directing and acting. Baron turns out to be good at both … Offers something scarcer and far more interesting than most arguments over theory, which is a vivid and detailed chronology of how his part of the press actually did its job … The barbed portraits along the way keep the book lively. I’ll leave them for readers to discover, and I’m sure some of those criticized will respond … As the book ends, Joe Biden is being sworn in as president, and Marty Baron steps aside as an editor, presumably to his next role as a writer. This book is an excellent start.”

–James Fallows (The Boston Globe)