The Best Reviewed Books of the Week
1. White Houses by Amy Bloom
(9 Rave, 3 Positive)
“If you like to make a meal out of ungarnished facts, stick to the history books. But White Houses serves up a plate piled with delectable trimmings … with its adoring portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt, White Houses reminds us what true greatness looks like. It also demonstrates that the god of love has yet again found a welcoming hangout in Bloom’s bighearted fiction.”
–Heller McAlpin (The San Francisco Chronicle)
*
2. Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
(8 Rave, 1 Positive)
“The journey undertaken in the novel is swirling and vivid, vicious and painful, and rendered by Emezi in shards as sharp and glittering as those with which Ada cuts her forearms and thighs, in blood offering to Asughara … Emezi’s lyrical writing, her alliterative and symmetrical prose, explores the deep questions of otherness, of a single heart and soul hovering between, the gates open, fighting for peace.”
–Susan Straight (The Los Angeles Times)
Read an excerpt from Freshwater here
*
3. Peach by Emma Glass
(7 Rave, 1 Mixed)
“Glass’ cunning use of language, reminiscent of the great 20th-century modernists like Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, and her employment of alliteration and repetition, evoke vague feelings of madness while you’re reading… But whereas many accounts of sexual assault—fictional and non—are related in a realistic way, Glass’ formal experimentation serves the purpose of bringing the reader even closer to the trauma.”
–Kristin Iverson (Nylon)
Read an essay by Emma Glass here
*
4. This is What Happened by Mick Herron
(6 Rave, 1 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“…the sharpest spy fiction since John Le Carré … Herron’s new novel stands apart from that series, but like all his work, it sucks you in from the opening page … Now, not all of these twists are, strictly speaking, realistic. But who cares? To crib a line from Hitchcock, This Is What Happened is less a slice of life than a slice of cake.”
–John Powers (NPR)
*
5. Winter Kept Us Warm by Anne Raeff
(3 Rave, 1 Positive, 2 Mixed)
“This kind of drama is quiet and subtle, but Raeff knows how to wield her words in this space, and makes small pronouncements devastating … Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about the novel is how quiet it is, and how much respectful space Raeff allows her characters.”
–Ilana Masad (The Los Angeles Times)
Read an excerpt from Winter Kept Us Warm here
**
1. A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America by T. Christian Miller & Ken Armstrong
(5 Rave, 1 Positive)
“…a captivating page-turner … The book’s narrative is grounded in Marie, but brilliantly cuts back and forth between her story and subsequent sexual assaults in Denver suburbs. There’s a gripping ‘you are there’ immediacy as crackerjack officers and criminalists pore over scant evidence before finally homing in on their man … Rich in forensic detail, deftly written and paced, A False Report is an instant true-crime classic, taking its rightful place beside Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter and Dave Cullen’s Columbine.”
–Hamilton Cain (The Minneapolis Star Tribune)
*
2. Hippie Food by Jonathan Kauffman
(5 Rave, 3 Positive)
“Alongside playful prose, the great joy of Hippie Food is its rich cast of characters. Some, like the madcap Boots, ‘half cheer-squad leader, half generalissimo,’ who stirred up the crowd at the restaurant’s weekly Back to Nature Luau night, might encourage readers to reconsider carob. Others, like Jim Baker, the whole-foods community’s answer to Charles Manson, will likely make many never look at a superfood the same way.”
–Rien Fertel (The Wall Street Journal)
*
3. A Kind of Miraculous Paradise by Sandra Allen
(4 Rave, 3 Positive)
“…it’s significant that Allen’s subtle portrayal of paranoia in a book about schizophrenia does the disorder justice by not naming it. Tinfoil hats and webs of thread removed, A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise asks you to consider the disease by demonstrating it in the way I live it: always on the periphery, impossible to disentangle, necessary to navigate as best as one can.”
–B. David Zarley (Paste)
*
4. Farewell to the Horse by Ulrich Raulff, Trans. by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
(4 Rave, 2 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“…strange and fascinating … What the horse requires, Raulff suggests, is an ‘histoire totale.’ What he offers instead is a sweeping cultural history, more kaleidoscopic than totale, as bibliographical as it is historical … Farewell to the Horse is a whirlwind that seems capable of drawing into its vortex almost anyone who ever thought of a horse.”
–Verlyn Klinkenborg (The New York Review of Books)
Read an excerpt from Farewell to the Horse here
*
5. Jefferson’s Daughters by Catherine Kerrison
(1 Rave, 7 Positive, 1 Mixed)
“A highlight of Kerrison’s work is that while noting the gender constraints that hemmed in white women, she does not sugarcoat their privileged status, nor deny their racism … Jefferson’s Daughters offers a fascinating glimpse of where we have been as a nation.”
–Charisse Jones (USA Today)
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