“Sandwich generation” refers to adults responsible for both aging parents and growing children. Lauded Japanese poet and writer Hiromi Ito’s fictionalized alter-ego is stuck in a triple-decker. Above are her partially paralyzed mother in a geriatric clinic, her father struggling alone, and her third, 28-years-older...
Jihyun Park is a twice-escaped defector. Seh-lynn Chai is initially her hired English translator, then her friend, even sister. “Jihyun is from the North and I am from the South,” Chai writes, “but we share a single identity: we’re both Korean.” At their 2014 first...
*STARRED REVIEW In January 2015, 18-year-old Shelley (sporting the name bequeathed by a beloved English teacher) leaves home in “the most beautiful realm in all of China.” His father can no longer ignore the unprovoked abuse Shelley endures from their extended family and finally fulfills his...
David Mas Masumoto has built a remarkable career as a third-generation organic peach and grape farmer, which has inspired his award-winning books, including Epitaph for a Peach (1995). What began as "bad poetry" in college after a difficult breakup eventually led to writing a dozen books. Secret...
*STARRED REVIEW Each member of this fabulous cast is identified twice – with every story title and at audiobook’s end – in a rare (but super easy-to-do!) instance of responsible recognition. Literary darling Samanta Schweblin’s 2015 collection, fluidly translated by favored Megan McDowell, features seven unsettling stories about...
*STARRED REVIEW Tania Rodrigues and Kamila Shamsie prove themselves the best of audiobook companions with their fifth memorable pairing. Rodrigues, “with roots in India, Portugal and Britain,” according to her website bio, is an ideally cosmopolitan choice to follow two teens who come of age in...
Nine of the 10 stories in The Islands, the deeply satisfying first collection of short fiction from University of Notre Dame professor Dionne Irving (Quint), center women who share a Jamaican background. The plurality inherent in the title cleverly points to Jamaica but also England...
*STARRED REVIEW Sidik Fofana’s exquisite debut is further enhanced by eight pitch-perfect narrators (but where’s the cast list?!) who embody the collection’s eight interconnected stories. “Banneker Terrace on 129th and Fred Doug ain’t pretty,” but evictions are pending because the building has been sold to create “deluxe...
Denny died at the Lucky 8 restaurant after his high school formal, his “Most Likely to Succeed”-sash still tucked into his borrowed suit. In 1996 small-town Cabramatta, populated by children of Southeast Asian refugees coming of age amidst drug-related violence, Denny was that perfect kid:...
*STARRED REVIEW In 1983, two years before Hayao Miyazaki cofounded the acclaimed Studio Ghibli, he published Shuna's Journey, a spectacularly illustrated graphic novel in watercolors about a young prince who undertakes an epic quest to save his citizens from looming starvation. Nearly 40 years after its...
*STARRED REVIEW Debut author Kimberly Garza skillfully links brilliantly crafted episodes to create an unforgettable community in Galveston, TX. The novel’s core belongs to Carly Castillo, abandoned by her father and Filipina immigrant mother and raised by grandmother Magdalena, who claims Texas’ vanished indigenous Karankawas as...
Just as he was in Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Arthur Less is apparently still a “bad gay.” But that doesn’t mean he’s not delightfully lost in this highly anticipated second volume of Greer’s “Less” series. This time, Arthur is haphazardly traveling across the...
"I knew there was something I needed to understand, and perhaps share, about my brief, intense, joyful, devastating parenting experience," writes Rick Louis in the author's note to Ronan and the Endless Sea of Stars. Louis's heartbreaking experience of crushing loss is poignantly, lovingly illustrated by...
In 1947, as Britain withdrew from India, it left in its wake a trail of vicious slaughter. British Iranian debut novelist Melody Razak introduces the (mostly) Brahmin residents of Delhi’s Pushp Vihar – “the House of Flowers” – whose lives become the tragic microcosm of...
Egyptian American actor Amin El Gamal and Palestinian American actor/writer/director Lameece Issaq reunite here as hopeful lovers: 15-year-old Subhi, a prodigious mechanic, and 13-year-old village girl Shams. Palestinian writer/architect Suad Amiry, acclaimed for her memoirs and other nonfiction, debuts her first novel, inspired by the...
*STARRED REVIEW After voicing Velvet Was the Night (2021), Gisela Chípe returns to read Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “loosely inspired” adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau. In Yaxaktun, a remote late-19th-century ranch in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, French expat Dr. Moreau lives with his 14-year-old daughter,...
Indian-born, English-raised Homer Todiwala undoubtedly improves British Pakistani Taymour Soomro’s evocative debut, in which father and son take turns navigating a relationship conflicted by power and clashing identities. At 16, Fahad is expected to learn to “take responsibility” for the family estate in rural Pakistan....
*STARRED REVIEW Twice Booker-shortlisted author Mohsin Hamid’s opening sentence immediately recalls one of western literature’s most notable first lines: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” Hamid’s transformer here is Anders, “a white...
Culled from the 200-plus titles with November 2021 to October 2022 publication dates I’ve reviewed or judged, this is SLJ’s list of top 10 audiobooks. Two picture books, a family history in verse, remade fairy tales, an intertwined podcast, and a haven’t-ever-heard-that-before double recording are...
*STARRED REVIEW Fredrik Backman writes with a signature rhythm: a little here, a bit more there, something of this person then that person, a tease about what will happen, warnings about what can’t. The result is a resonant symphony enhanced by the stupendous Marin Ireland, who...
