Colson Whitehead’s Cool Machine, Sigrid Nunez’s It Will Come Back to You, and Valeria Luiselli’s Beginning Middle End all feature among the best reviewed fiction titles of the month.
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1. Cool Machine, a novel by Colson Whitehead
(Doubleday)
17 Rave • 4 Positive
“A dizzyingly brilliant measure of the versatility and depth of the acclaimed author’s literary talent … The intricacy with which Whitehead details the planning and execution of this caper marks him as a top-tier researcher—he’s drawn on many primary sources to ground this work of fiction in historical fact … A modern masterpiece and an ode to New York, no matter that rats skitter and cockroaches scamper underfoot.”
–Leigh Haber (The Los Angeles Times)
2. It Will Come Back to You: Collected Stories by Sigrid Nunez
(Riverhead)
10 Rave • 1 Positive
Read a profile of Sigrid Nunez here
“It Will Come Back to You should make you crave every sentence Nunez has produced. In a publishing ecosystem swept up by celebrity culture and algorithmic trivia, the fact that such a deep, idiosyncratic writer continues to receive ample praise and a substantial readership offers real cause for hope.”
–Hirsh Sawhney (Times Literary Supplement)
3. Country People by Daniel Mason
(Random House)
8 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Country People here
“Mason favors an elastic, gently ironic voice that slides between observation, anecdote, and reflection. The narrative form is playful, occasionally intrusive, and permissive; it roams, doubles back, and includes fragments that seem initially peripheral. The humor—dry, humane, and sometimes absurd—pervades the book … The Vermont setting, spare and bracing, acts as a quiet amplifier of these quirks, while Mason remains attuned to the natural world. Into this landscape he threads a strand of the uncanny, hovering between conspiracy theory and genuine mystery.”
–Bill Kelly (Booklist)
4. Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli
(Knopf)
7 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Delightful wit … I derive a fair amount of reassurance from the fact that an artist as thoughtful and perceptive as Luiselli remains among us, documenting whatever is coming—and especially whatever will end.”
–Cory Oldweiler (The Boston Globe)
5. Cloudthief by Nathaniel Rich
(MCD)
6 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
“A boisterous new novel that’s equal parts heist thriller and cry in the digital wilderness … Filled with sharp descriptions and terrific dialogue, Cloudthief stuck with me. I’ve read no other novel that captures so neatly what it means to be a data-center nation … Helps us see the actual, earthbound workings of the magical-sounding cloud, and he gets us thinking about the perils of our needing it so badly.”
–John Powers (NPR)
