Batuman makes her fiction debut already a literary darling: a New Yorker staff writer since 2010 and the author of a much-adored essay collection, The Possessed, about the pleasurable intricacies of reading Russian literature. The year is 1995, and Turkish American 18-year-old Selin enters Harvard. She...
*STARRED REVIEW "There was nothing Moose loved more than hello," especially greetings from her human, Zara. But dogs aren't allowed at Zara's school and "There was nothing Moose disliked more than goodbye." Smart pup that she is, for every "goodbye," Moose finds a way to say...
*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...
*STARRED REVIEW Experienced narrator Robin Miles is the ideal proxy for Gay's difficult women, many of whom are not so much difficult as living lives that have been made difficult, onerous, or tragic by others. Embodying various ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds, Miles refreshes and adapts her...
'Reading with Patrick' tells of a teacher's extraordinary journey Pontificating with superlatives only halfway through the calendar year might prove short-sighted, but risking humiliated inaccuracy seems to be a negligible consequence for claiming that Reading with Patrick could be the most affecting book you’ll read this...
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...
With the publication of Palestinian Walks (2008), Shehadeh recognized Henry Abramovitch as an important “walking companion” in his lyrical, bittersweet record of the encroaching Israeli occupation of his Palestinian homeland. That mention becomes the focus of Shehadeh’s newest title, in which he chronicles a half-century...
Despite Maureen Corrigan’s rather nasty NPR review of Korean author Kyung-sook Shin’s 2011 Stateside debut, Please Look After Mom – her phrase “cheap consolations of kimchee-scented Kleenex fiction” caused particular affront – Mom became a major bestseller. In a stroke of well-deserved vindication, Shin became the first woman...
"Oh, Lester, you're going to love it so much," Lucy Musselbaum promises her 10-year-old son about entering Quarry Elementary. Homeschooled until now, Lester is understandably wary – change is always tough for him – but Lucy gently explains she's "100 percent sure" she needs to...
*STARRED REVIEW At 27, Majime – whose very name means “serious, diligent” – is recruited from sales by the Dictionary Editorial Department of Gembu Books to help compile The Great Passage, an überdictionary destined to guide users across the vast sea of words. Socially awkward Majime embarks...
The back cover insists ME “centers on the ‘It’s me’ telephone scam” in which a caller often targets the elderly, seeking funds to cover a false emergency. The ploy is more a brief narrative catalyst here; McDonald’s, in comparison, gets enough pagetime to make the novel occasionally...
"For the last time, NO PET!" Colette is told. But for this creative new-kid-in-town, an empty moving box quickly becomes the perfect device for introducing her titular "lost pet" to the neighborhood gang. "It's...
The wait is over: Haruki Murakami's latest collection of short stories hit shelves last week and yes, indeed – Men Without Women is a definitive seven-part delight. But once you've finished, the waiting begins yet again, oh sigh, for Maestro Murakami's next book. In the meantime, we've prepared a...
In 2017, Cammie O'Reilly is an elderly grandmother visiting her childhood home with her 12-year-old granddaughter after half a century away. While the outside still looks like the same "fortress from the Middle Ages," the inside now houses birds, butterflies, and turtles rather than the...
*STARRED REVIEW Narrator Sartaj Garewal’s energy couldn’t be more rousingly infectious as he voices the unforgettable characters in Adiga’s (The White Tiger) latest. Raised in a Mumbai slum by a fiercely demanding father, the two Kumar brothers are destined to become cricket champions by the sheer...
*STARRED REVIEW Laurie Frankel’s third novel is her most personal: as the mother of a transgender daughter, she writes what she knows with clarity, truth, and heart. Rosie and Penn already have four sons when Claude arrives. A remarkable child by all accounts, by age 3,...
While Columbus is credited with discovering the Americas, notable scholars and historians have argued that Chinese explorers traveled around the world in the early 15th century and created a surviving map that shows America on its route. Imagine if those ancient explorers had stayed. The history of Asians...
“Throughout my life I’ve looked to books for all sorts of reasons,” Will Schwalbe reveals, “to comfort me, to amuse me, to distract me, and to educate me.” Reading, discussing, and exalting books eased him and his late mother through the final months of her...
'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...
In a small Michigan town, four eighth-grade boys make up their own "tribe": Frost (nicknamed for winning a poetry contest in fifth grade), Bench (because he's more bench-warmer than active player), Deedee (for his Dungeons & Dragons obsession), and Wolf (because he's a Wolfgang Amadeus...
