For readers in search of a tautly streamlined, deeply resonating, contemporary family story, Big Familia by Tomas Moniz (Bellies and Buffalos) won't disappoint. In this short novel, Juan Gutiérrez is a longtime Berkeley resident, the amicably divorced father to high school senior Stella and a self-described Chicano...
*STARRED REVIEW Being born on the wrong side of the wall means Dani’s parents took impossible risks to give her every opportunity for a better life. Despite her indigent origins, well-forged documents granted Dani access to the elite Medio School for Girls; as top graduate, Dani’s...
After making her author and narrator debut with The Ghost Bride (2014), Yangsze Choo reprises her double-duty with this equally intriguing sophomore title. With her crisp, British colonial inflections, Choo is her own ideal reader, knowing exactly how her characters should sound. Set in 1930s British...
*STARRED REVIEW Sure, the book is great. But the audio? It’s some sort of spectacular. In October 2018, bestselling Jarrett J. Krosoczka debuted his graphic memoir – about being raised by his grandparents when his single mother’s heroin addiction made her an unreliable parent; it was...
*STARRED REVIEW The story starts at the end – “Today Su Lan begins to die” – and finishes at the beginning – “her new American life.” In between, multiple fragments pieced together from various points of view present an immigrant teenager’s quest to understand who she...
*STARRED REVIEW Although set in a coastal suburb outside Seoul, the cycle of neglect by stressed or careless adults can and does happen anywhere. In such an all-too-familiarly indifferent environment, lauded Korean writer Kim Sagwa (Mina, 2018) introduces three misfits: two teen girls and a socially-outcast,...
“They were best friends at Dartmouth who had decided to take the summer and fall quarters off.” Jack and Wynn are like brothers, “but better, because [they] didn’t have to grow up fighting.” After working as wilderness instructors in the Adirondacks, they embark on a...
*STARRED REVIEW Kimberly Farr returns for a fourth propitious audiobook pairing with Elizabeth Strout, her second as the title character in this conclusion-of-sorts to the 2008 Pulitzer Prized novel Olive Kitteridge. Both books follow a similar format – both are comprised of 13 interlinked stories mostly...
*STARRED REVIEW Ta-Nehisi Coates (Between the World and Me) is one of – potentially the – most sought-after contemporary voice on the politics of race, and his debut fiction could not have been more laudably anticipated. Now sporting Oprah’s seal of approval as her latest Book...
*STARRED REVIEW National Book Award-winner Jacqueline Woodson (Another Brooklyn) exquisitely examines the (dis)connections of three generations of a Brooklyn family that is tenuously held together by Melody, whose coming-of-age ceremony is just beginning in her grandparents’ brownstone. Through 21 spare, dazzling chapters, Woodson reveals the past...
Kacen Callender, who identifies as queer, trans POC, wrote the Stonewall and Lambda winner Hurricane Child as Kheryn Callender; they debuted their name change in May 2019 with the announcement of the sale of their upcoming transgender YA novel Felix Ever After. Callender's second middle-grade title, King and the...
Since comparisons to Kevin Kwan's Crazy Rich Asians seem unavoidable, here's what might be familiar: yes, crazy, rich, Asian characters populate Tiffany Tsao’s The Majesties. Differences, however, immediately overshadow superficial similarities, most obviously from the very first sentence: "When your sister murders three hundred people,...
Yeah, sure: Proust and his madeleine-dipped-in-tea set the barometer for toothsome leitmotifs. I admit to the possibility that my academic indoctrination in his long, long musings made me quite the hungry reader. Or maybe I’m just always greedy for nourishment, with preferences in the belly...
Growing up in the Philippines, Candy Gourlay (Tall Story) "wondered why all the books she'd ever loved didn't resemble her steamy, tropical home in Manila." As she explains in her author bio, it took years as a journalist and author for Gourlay, who now lives...
*STARRED REVIEW “The End of the World as I Know It” – Robin Ha’s first chapter heading – happened when she was 14. As a student in 1995 in Seoul, Korea, Ha was mostly a typical teenager, enjoying close friendships, studying hard, and obsessed with reading...
In the "track changes" function of a word processing program, the "all markup" option preserves all deletions, additions, rewrites for the life of the document – although the last editor ultimately chooses what to accept and reject in the final version. Palestinian Israeli Sayed Kashua,...
In his latest novel, following Selection Day (2017), Booker Prize-winner Aravind Adiga confronts a universal conundrum: at what price are we willing to do the right thing? Over not quite 11 working hours, Dhananjaya Rajaratnam – who’s been living in Sydney for the past four years...
*STARRED REVIEW Singaporean born, Oxford-educated, Amsterdam-domiciled Jing-Jing Lee opens her expansive, extraordinary debut novel with a reclamatory dedication: “For all the grandmas (halmonies, lolas and amas) who told their stories, so that I could tell this one.” Lee’s rescue of stories belonging to older women is...
*STARRED REVIEW No doubt that Sylvain Neuvel’s (Themis Files series) standalone novella is a thought-provoking, heartbeat-raising experience. As convincing as the narrative is on the page, Neil Shah alchemizes Neuvel’s words into a revelatory performance, infusing contagious energy and creating impressive resonance. Sometime in the not-so-distant future,...
*STARRED REVIEW Busan-based wife-and-husband team Hyun Sook Kim and Ryan Estrada mine Kim’s young adult experiences to expose a chilling period of recent Korean history so antithetical to the globally addictive entertainment of K-dramas and K-pop currently synonymous with South Korea. In 1983, Hyun Sook is a...
