*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...
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...
*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 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...
*STARRED REVIEW The story begins and ends with Alisak, one of three inseparable Laotian orphans in 1969, who, in the final pages, will have become an almost-content Spanish shopowner on his way to a birthday celebration in 2018. Traversing countries and continents during a half-century, Paul...
“Elsa Weiss left no testimony behind” when she jumped to her death some 30 years ago. She remains a recorded name, one of the 1,684 Jews on the infamous Kastner train that left Budapest, Hungary, in June 1944; she was among the 1,670 passengers to...
*STARRED REVIEW Although the page facing the title of Azar’s first novel to be translated into English clearly states, “Translated from the Farsi,” the linguistic enabler remains anonymous; the publisher’s official line is, “the translator of this book has asked not to be named out of...
At 42, Andrew knows too much about death – personally and professionally. He’s lost his father, mother, sister; his bully brother-in-law is hardly family. He works in London’s Death Administration department, where he deals with what’s left of those who died alone, inspecting their homes,...
*STARRED REVIEW A half-dozen Latinx readers voice Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s superb 11-story debut collection, which features mostly Colorado-domiciled Latinx/Indigenous characters hoping, demanding to be seen and acknowledged by a society in which women are routinely dismissed, threatened, and destroyed. Aural aficionados will especially thrill at the “read...
L.A.-born, Madrid-raised Maite Jáuregui makes her audiobook debut with one of the year’s most anticipated/lauded/likely to be awarded titles. Jáuregui dominates a sizable cast (Joshua Kane, Robert Petkoff, Oliver Wyman, Richard Ferrone, Neil Hellegers, Liza Kaplan), while her co-stars take turns momentarily interrupting chapters with...
*STARRED REVIEW Although the cover claims Yu’s (Sorry Please Thank You, 2012) latest is “A Novel” – the description insistently written out in both Chinese and English lettering – his fiction, as always, defies easy labels. This hybrid conflates history, sociology, and ethnography with the timeless...
Enigma? Wormhole? Mere coincidence? Once upon a time, writer Christophe and actor Magdalena shared a life together. Their relationship falls prey to art – “I had believed I had to decide between her and my writing” – and then Christophe pens a successful novel inspired...
