Barbara Kingsolver’s Partita, Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man, T. Geronimo Johnson’s The Occidental Book of the Dead, and Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Rush all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
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Fiction
1. Partita by Barbara Kingsolver
(Harper)
12 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an interview with Barbara Kingsolver here
“A hallmark of the decorated novelist’s work is her flair for pithy sentences that illuminate the human experience, giving voice to our private longings and secret vulnerabilities … Kingsolver brings the full weight of her experience and her other work to the page in this entirely new story. It hits the same chords, but it is full of discovery and insight. She’s different, and we’re different too.”
–Heather Scott Partington (The Los Angeles Times)
2. The Occidental Book of the Dead by T. Geronimo Johnson
(William Morrow and Company)
7 Rave
“The book is doing a lot, but for good reason … A book for readers seeking wild, ambitious literature … Even with occasional misfires, The Occidental Book of the Dead just might be something the literary world needs to see more of: It’s ambitious, creative and, most important of all, unapologetic … It will not be a novel for everyone. It doesn’t want to be. And that’s a large part of why it succeeds.”
–Jason Mott (The New York Times Book Review)
3. Fair Ones by Lydia Millet
(W. W. Norton and Company)
3 Rave • 3 Positive
Read an interview with Lydia Millet here
“Her prose is sharp and quick, while her eccentric, deeply human characters balance grim humor with keen emotional insight. Themes of loneliness, survivors’ guilt, and chosen family run throughout, enriched by Millet’s understanding of the tiny loyalties, irritations, and intimacies that sustain long friendships. Particularly affecting is Millet’s portrayal of grief as an ongoing reshaping of identity rather than a single transformative event.”
–Erin Galloway (Library Journal)
4. Every Story Is A Love Story by Imbolo Mbue
(Random House)
3 Rave • 1 Positive
“Beginning slowly and building in intensity, Cameroon-born Mbue’s introspective novel examines a love that grows out of tragedy. Readers who enjoyed Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water will be drawn to this story.”
–Toni Cox (Library Journal)
5. The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford by Nafissa Thompson-Spires
(Scribner)
3 Rave
Read an essay by Nafissa Thompson-Spires here
“Thompson-Spires’s beguiling story, full of competing versions of the truth, is enriched by commentary on capitalistic excess and male chauvinism, and by its exploration of the limits of individualistic social theories put forth by such Black leaders as Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington. Readers will be floored.”
–Publishers Weekly
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Nonfiction
1. Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry
(Mariner)
7 Rave
“As Kafka once wrote, ‘a book should serve as an ax for the frozen sea within us.’ This book, and this author, are that ax … Much is laid before us, with great precision: finely tuned metaphors, graceful repetitions. Facts are faced, faults are noted, death and life are seen and held. That is all—and that is truly plenty, this valuable and beautiful account a gift to the reader, grieving or not.”
–Amy Bloom (The New York Times Book Review)
2. Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited by Tracy Daugherty
(St. Martin’s Press)
5 Rave • 1 Mixed
“Engrossing … Daugherty deftly separates the writer from the myth, tracing McCarthy’s path from Southern landmarks to the Western landscape with a biography that pulls you in like a novel. Yet he does not shy away from the troubling details.”
–Bill Heavy (The Wall Street Journal)
3. The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World by Nathaniel Philbrick
(Viking)
5 Rave
“Sumptuous … Beautifully portrayed … There’s an echo of Mark Twain in the book’s cadences … Conjures time and place in lush detail … Philbrick has written an engrossing account of tensions at the heart of our republic.”
–Hamilton Cain (The Boston Globe)
=4. Will and Attention: A Memoir by Meghan O’Gieblyn
(Doubleday)
4 Rave • 1 Positive
“A searching work … This mesmerizing volume, suffused with sorrow and joy, ambivalence and clarity, is itself an effort to locate a sense of wholeness—often not through sheer force of will but through moments of grace.”
–Jennifer Szalai (The New York Times)
=4. The Savage Mind: An American Legacy by David Treuer
(Little Brown and Company)
4 Rave • 1 Positive
“A magnificently candid and intensely intimate extended letter to his children … The narratives unfold non-linearly, moving from family scenes of violence, grief, and resolve to national moments of the same, forming a deeply moving reminiscence about what our country means at this 250th year—perhaps not something we want, but something we very much need.”
–Linford Fisher (The Boston Globe)
