Everyone and every place remain assuredly familiar here: Nick, Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, Jordan, Myrtle and George drink, dance, manipulate and die throughout East Egg, West Egg, Nick's cottage, Gatsby's mansion, the Plaza suite, and the green-lit dock. But Nghi Vo's first novel (after novellas The...
*STARRED REVIEW Veteran narrator Mozhan Marnò has one of those gratifyingly recognizable, sigh-inducing audiobook voices that immediately immerses readers. Here, for 12 hours, she commands Afghan American pediatrician-turned-novelist Nadia Hashimi’s (A House without Windows, 2018) latest, ciphering the multi-pronged epic over decades and across continents, cultures, and...
*STARRED REVIEW “They wanted to start a family, and now they’ve destroyed one,” Gabriel laments. When that family – including his closest friends – all gathered for a surprise party for his 75th birthday, Gabriel was still a grandfather to beloved Qinaya, adopted by his son,...
Sherlock Holmes’ archnemesis, Professor James Moriarty, appeared in only six of Arthur Conan Doyle’s oeuvre, but popular manga-maker Ryosuke Takeuchi – with energetically animated art by Hikaru Miyoshi – continues to indulge his own empathy for villains in the second volume of many more to come. Here, the...
When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930, his Sherlock Holmes legacy comprised four novels and 56 stories. Sherlock has since become an unstoppable literary institution, proliferating across mediums; although his archnemesis, Professor James Moriarty, only appeared in six of Doyle’s original works, his own...
*STARRED REVIEW Edie is 23, has a bottom-tier publishing job, and inhabits a shabby sixth-floor Bushwick walk-up. Eric is 23 years older, a New Jersey archivist, and in an open marriage – with rules dictated by his wife. Their one-month online affair compels a first date...
*STARRED REVIEW Nearly seven long, long years have passed since the eminent Vish Puri, India’s most private investigator, has had a high-profile case. Utmost gratitude gushes, not only for his return, but for Sam Dastor’s in the fifth title in Tarquin Hall’s delectable Delhi-based mystery series. This time,...
*STARRED REVIEW To begin at the end seems most fitting: “If Jesus actually did have a wife ...
*STARRED REVIEW Despite her Asian features, her father really is Irish, her mother Norwegian. Her name is Siobhan O’Brien, never mind everyone’s surprise when trying to gauge the incongruity between her face and that moniker. Short answer: Siobhan is a Korean-born, upstate New York–raised transracial adoptee. At...
*STARRED REVIEW At the center of 2017 National Book Award finalist Elliot Ackerman’s formidable Red Dress in Black and White is William, "about seven years old," whose relationship to parents, place, and history is brilliantly revealed over a single day. William is the son of Catherine,...
Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah and translated by Geoffrey Strachan How can a story so harrowing, so wrenching be so gorgeous? In her third novel exquisitely translated by award-winning Geoffrey Strachan, Mauritius-born journalist and translator Appanah (Waiting for Tomorrow, 2018) presents the beginning and dissolution...
*STARRED REVIEW How can a story so harrowing, so wrenching be so gorgeous? In her third novel exquisitely translated by award-winning Geoffrey Strachan, Mauritius-born journalist and translator Nathacha Appanah (Waiting for Tomorrow, 2018) presents the beginning and dissolution of a boy, Moïse, and all the people...
Navigating ages, gender, backgrounds, and race, Imani Parks encompasses the peripatetic Kirkland family of four who relocate from Baltimore to Albuquerque. As bonded as the quartet – two musician parents, teen daughter Eve, and tween daughter Keda – might seem to the outside world, one...
Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom opens with definitions of two seemingly unrelated, yet brilliantly paired, words: palimpsest, “a very old text or document in which writing has been removed and covered or replaced by new writing,” and adoption, “the act of legally taking a child to be taken...
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste Maaza Mengiste’s indelible debut, Beneath the Lion’s Gate (2010), put Ethiopian historical fiction on countless best-of, must-read, and award lists. Her monumental new novel draws inspiration from her great-grandmother, who as the eldest – and in Mulan-style! – answered Emperor...
In April 1975, the U.S. implemented Operation Babylift, a mass evacuation of children from South Việt Nam. As the country imploded, 12-year-old Hằng – who looked 8 – and her 5-year-old brother, Linh – who passed for 3 – presented themselves at the airport as...
Soneela Nankani instills a just-under-the-surface rage in Kat, a biracial Oakland teen who barely escaped being raped by another student, and whose mother sends her to Boston to finish junior year home-schooled by a family friend’s great-aunt. For Robin Thornton, who’s struggling with his transracial...
Venus Black gets straight As, has never gotten drunk, smoked pot, or skipped a class. She’s also a 13-year-old murderer, sent to juvenile lock-up for shooting her stepfather. Within days, her younger half-brother Leo – “[he] has what [their mother] Inez calls ‘developmental issues’” –...
Famous Adopted People by Alice Stephens “Everyone, it seems, is telling our story but us,” observes Lisa Pearl, the Korean-born, Bethesda, Maryland-raised transracial adoptee protagonist in Alice Stephens’ recent October debut. The author, who describes herself as being “among the first generation of transnational, interracial adoptees,”...
'All You Can Ever Know' is a sensitive examination of transracial adoption Here’s a memoir by a transracial adoptee about being a transracial adoptee – and unless you're a transracial adoptee yourself, you're probably thinking, “eh, I'll pass.” And that would surely be a mistake. Because...
