Lady Daniels is supposed to be writing a memoir about raising her now-18-year-old mute son Seth, who communicates just fine using American Sign Language (ASL) and rapid typing on various screens. Lady’s toddler needs child care, however – Lady has recently pushed hubby out –...
*STARRED REVIEW Narrator Xe Sands delivers this Book with control, even detachment: the almost languid tone chillingly amplifies the hideous near-future Yuknavitch exposes in her highly anticipated follow-up to The Small Backs of Children. At 49, Christine is in her “last year until ascension,” an anachronistic term that...
'Refuge' is the story of an Iranian family in search of home Here’s the seemingly simple narrative frame: A father and daughter are separated and spend the next two decades both avoiding and yearning for reconnection. But Dina Nayeri’s sophomore novel, Refuge, is anything but straightforward,...
Debut novelist Hannah Lillith Assadi's protagonist, like the author herself, is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee father and Israeli Jewish mother. Ahlam comes of age in the Arizona desert, physically safe from war but damaged by the bitter fighting between her parents that too...
*STARRED REVIEW Zinzi Clemmons’ spectacular debut is written in bursts, from single-sentence pages to sparse paragraphs, and combines photographs, diagrams, charts, articles, and blog posts to amplify an intimate story of personal loss into a larger narrative of identity, family, race, and socioeconomic access. Thandi is the...
Sheila Kohler’s crisp, clipped voice is ideal for her memoir, which begins with references to Nelson Mandela, Afrikaners, and various family members that all announce her South African heritage. Although she left her birth country at 17, Kohler (Cracks; Crossways) has retained her clear, concise...
At 15 hours to find out whodunit (you'll probably guess early), howdunit (you'll need to wait for it), whydunit (well…? no spoilers!), we're talking commitment. A full cast (why don't producers reveal who's who?), including veterans Ari Fliakos and Edoardo Ballerini, with Scott Aiello, Michael...
In the West, K-pop, K-drama, and “Gangnam Style” are synonymous with contemporary South Korea. Less well known is an underbelly class of street youth, battling abandonment, brutality, and worse. Kim (Black Flower, 2012), one of Korea’s most lauded writers, takes readers into Seoul’s grittiest corners, beginning...
When Oghi wakes in a hospital room, his world doesn’t align with his last memories. He’s been in a coma after surviving a car accident, but his wife is dead, and he’s completely paralyzed. At 47, Oghi is parentless and childless, with few friends and colleagues...
“Nope! I’ve never had any aspirations to be a musician”: Don Lee talks LONESOME LIES BEFORE US When Don Lee’s first book came out 16 years ago, he probably didn’t know then that more than half his writing career would be spent in Rosarita Bay, a fictional...
*STARRED REVIEW The morning after Mia and daughter Pearl return the rental key in the Richardsons' mailbox, the youngest Richardson, Izzy, sets "little fires everywhere," destroying the family home. Following her magnificent debut, Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng’s spectacular sophomore work again manipulates time...
'Men Without Women' is Murakami at his whimsical best For Haruki Murakami aficionados, reading Men Without Women, Murakami's 20th book to be translated into English, is a whimsical delight. The seven stories in his fourth story collection present another captivating treasure hunt of familiar Murakami motifs...
'The Golden Legend' tells a magnificent story of terror and dignity I must confess: I missed my deadline. I simply didn’t want to finish this book. Letting go of Nargis, Lily, Helen, and Imran felt like a visceral cleaving. While Nadeem Aslam’s previous novels, including Maps...
*STARRED REVIEW Filmmaker/playwright/writer/activist Kathleen Collins was a multi-faceted, multi-talented pioneer who died at just 46. In 2014, indie distributor Milestone Films reintroduced her groundbreaking 1982 film, Losing Ground, one of the first movies directed by an African American woman. Beyond the celluloid, this posthumously published 16-story...
In this debut novel (following Quarantine), western New York in 1985 and western India in 1998 are introduced as prologue, with both time and place connected by the 12-going-on-13-year-old and 26-year-old versions of Kiran Shah, whose coming-of-age as a bicultural gay Indian American is...
On History, Survival & Intimacy Becoming a bestselling author took Min Jin Lee 11 years – and so much more of her life. She quit lawyering, but without that income, tuition for an MFA proved impossible. So she found every bargain opportunity in New York City to...
*STARRED REVIEW As both the introductory note and epithet doubly insist, August Town, divided into two words, is a real town in Jamaica, made (in)famous for being the founding home of Bedwardism, a short-lived, early twentieth-century religion. Fast-forward to 1982 when teary Kaia comes home to his...
'Temporary People' depicts the lives of guest workers in the UAE The sense of displacement, of disconnect begins on the cover: The words “A Novel” written sideways, unobtrusively stamped along the left side under the title Temporary People, might be considered misleading. Made up of three...
Once upon a time, Fern and Edgar were impoverished young rebels in love, proving their independence from the vast wealth of their respective families. Eventually, as their own children arrived, they settled into their roles as a "son and daughter of ease and plenty" in...
Two young white men from disparate, dysfunctional family backgrounds meet in college, bond over an obsessive devotion to black music, and create an in-demand production studio in Brooklyn. Their pièce de résistance is a clever hoax: an outdoor recording of a singer that’s remixed to...
