An amazing amount of the passion and folly of the human comedy is woven into his modest life, all of it beautifully observed and memorably articulated. It makes for a looser, freer book than the cunning puzzle of a novel one was led to expect, and almost certainly a better one, too.
Fairly conventional, certainly as compared to what other philosophically inclined writers—Bruce Duffy, say, or Julia Kristeva—might have done with the same material.
Going in I had no real idea where the story was going to take me. I was surprised at what it ended up being about – that is not a complaint. There is still a greater threat to the pack and a reckoning is no doubt coming but this book tells a particular subset of the overall tale...
By this point the book’s greatest tension comes from wondering whether either Joona or Saga is any match for this near-supernatural monster, who can implant thoughts in his victims’ heads or turn up as an apparition just staring into their windows. Scared yet? You will be.
Children of Blood and Bone is Nigerian American author Tomi Adeyemi’s YA debut...The novel’s strongest undercurrent is its deft portrayal of racial tensions and persecution.
...all that vulnerability, combined with humor and celebration and Urrea's vivid prose, will crack you open. At least while you're reading, this book will make you vulnerable, too.
"Girls Burn Brighter" contains many scenes that will make readers seethe at the injustice against women in this world, but what they may remember long after reading is the book's sustained and elegant prose.
These emphatic compositions couldn't be more different from the comics that make up most of the book. And yet taken together, the two styles stand in a funny kind of balance.
“Census,” Ball’s new work, his most personal and best to date, was inspired by his brother, Abram, who had Down syndrome and endured dozens of surgeries.
Spoiler-averse readers will want to avoid learning of Harris’s own afterword, which explains the actual outcome of the expedition. The story has all the excitement of Robert Louis Stevenson, but with an immersive focus on the black experience.
The setup is arresting, but the structure is awkward, with one large subplot awkwardly integrated and the final solution at once unlikely, obvious, and slow to arrive.
There are several snort-through-your-nose moments, including Ray’s encounter with a policewoman, when his every word exacerbates his predicament. But throughout, the novel’s comedy is always balanced by insight and poignancy.
["Bring Out the Dog"] is a brilliant debut, a work unafraid to use brute force to evoke an uncommon grace. Mackin’s vision consummately captures the lives of soldiers dealing with the physical and psychological stresses of a seemingly unending war.
A welcome refurbishing of a masterpiece of literary modernism, one of the most significant German novels of the 20th century.
There are signs Iweala knew his long-gestating novel had problems. In the acknowledgments he thanks his editor for her “tolerance of tabletops full of index cards instead of pages of text.”
What could have been a strident, speechifying polemic is instead a subtle, considered yet deeply resonant tale, one which sensitively and intelligently highlights connection over division and kindness over cruelty.
"Cloudbursts," the author's wonderful, essential new collection, largely showcases his later, recondite style, which he has perfected in his short stories, producing some three dozen since 2003.
They will remember their losses but they will end up not allowing that to destroy the future. The ending isn’t all sugar-coated as there is a villain to be taken down and dealt with but this is a satisfying end to a generally strong series.
Huber (This Side of Murder, 2017, etc.) draws on the beauties and dangers of the mysterious moorlands to provide a fitting setting for a knotty mystery filled with envy, greed, and thwarted love.
In typical Fatal fashion, the book is full of sexy times between Sam and Nick but equally packed with the suspense I’ve come to love with this series.