Two timely books titled Our Woman in Havana hit shelves this year: a memoir by U.S. diplomat Vicki Huddleston and this account by former BBC Cuba correspondent (2011-2014) Rainsford, who was “guided by the writing of another English visitor seduced by Havana,” novelist Graham Greene. A...
*STARRED REVIEW "Ours was a family with a habit for nicknames, which meant it was also a family of disguises," 14-year-old Nathaniel, aka Stitch, reveals early in Michael Ondaatje's newest fiction. Narrator Steve West – London-born like Ondaatje's protagonist – confidently takes Nathaniel from bewildered teenager...
*STARRED REVIEW Adjei-Brenyah’s dozen stories are disturbingly spectacular, made even more so for what he does with magnifying and exposing the truth. At first read, the collection might register as speculative fiction, but current headlines unmasking racism, injustice, consumerism, and senseless violence prove to be clear...
*STARRED REVIEW "[T]he school wanted to try something new: Could they put [six] kids together in a room with one teacher and make something amazing?" For Ms. Laverne's fifth/sixth grade Brooklyn, N.Y., class, the answer is a resounding yes. Deemed "special kids," Haley, Holly, Ashton, Amari,...
I got to get this started for The Booklist Reader ...
“Japan shaped me when the plaster was still wet,” writes New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma. In his mid-20s in 1975, the Dutch-born Buruma, who is half English and half German Jew, arrived in Tokyo to study film at Nihon University College of...
At 26, Mara is the titular caregiver for a lonely woman in her early 40s with stomach cancer, who insists she’ll bequeath Mara her exclusive Bel Air home upon her impending death. Mara is already too familiar with loss, having grown up in Rio de...
Within the first few minutes, the chameleonic Adjoa Andoh quickly grabs listeners' attention with the high-pitched ululating trilling that will repeat throughout the almost 10 hours of narration here. Ethiopian Canadian journalist Edemariam couldn't have found a better narrator to embody her late nonagenarian grandmother,...
Blurring the line between fiction and nonfiction, Vassar English professor/journalist Amitava Kumar’s (Husband of a Fanatic) second novel is a hybrid text that moves seamlessly between his partially autobiographically-inspired Indian immigrant graduate student Kailash and numerous real-life figures and events. Kailash arrived in New York as...
Nasty neighbors, otherworldly children, and malevolent monsters populate some of the 22 traditional Japanese folktales in Ozaki’s century-old collection, reissued with an introduction by Australian academic Lucy Fraser. In her 1903 preface, Ozaki – whose father was Japanese, mother, English – that her “stories are not...
One morning, Charlies pulls out the bright red purse from his grandmother and decides today is the day he's going to wear it out of his room and into the world. But before he's even down the stairs, his father has already warned Charlie that...
In 1959 Havana, as Fidel Castro claims absolute power, the sugar-rich Perez family's vast wealth marks them as targets, necessitating their escape to Miami, FL. With her three sisters and their parents, 19-year-old Elisa Perez leaves Cuba forever. Almost 60 years later, Marisol Ferrara arrives in...
Dion Graham has narrated 10 – which is almost all – of McSweeney's founding publisher and literary powerhouse Dave Eggers's books. Graham showcases his staggering genius for aural incarnations across gender, ethnicity, culture, age – whatever details Eggers writes, Graham inspiringly brings to listeners' ears. Their...
That Clara Shin's favorite place – a hilltop overlooking her native Los Angeles – was made famous by the classic movie Rebel Without a Cause is perfectly fitting. Since getting suspended freshman year for smoking, 16-year-old Clara's been all about causing mayhem – just because. Nominated for...
"Indian girls can be forgotten so well they can forget themselves." After reading Terese Marie Mailhot’s 160 pages or listening to not-quite-four hours narrated by Rainy Fields, forgetting is not an option. Presented as an essay collection, Mailhot's work lays bare her experiences as a...
*STARRED REVIEW In Canadian novelist Sharon Bala’s debut, a 60-meter freighter reaches British Columbia in 2009, carrying 500 survivors of Sri Lanka's brutal civil war. The arrivals are herded into detention centers by a government fearful of terrorists hidden among these "boat people." Mahindran and his six-year-old...
*STARRED REVIEW In nursery school, Keiko pragmatically suggested that the dead bird in the park could become a grilled treat for her father. In primary school, she ended a forbidden brawl by hitting a boy on the head with a spade. She stopped a teacher’s hysterics...
The first thing Walter Mosley (Charcoal Joe) devotees will want to know is whether Joe King Oliver is getting a series of his own. That future seems currently unclear, but should King proliferate on the page, then Dion Graham must be conscripted to continue his...
*STARRED REVIEW Yes, reading the inimitable Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2017 Nobel Lecture is easy, but the better option is listening to his crisp, gentle voice instead. Perhaps Sara Danius, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, missed the memo on properly pronouncing Ishiguro's first name, but her introduction...
Riding the subway after a visit to the pool with his grandmother, young Julián notices three glamorous fellow passengers he's convinced are mermaids. And, of course, "Julián LOVES mermaids." Inspired by the company, the rest of Julián's train ride morphs into a dazzling underwater daydream...
