Nina Riggs died February 26, 2017. Cassandra Campbell gently narrates most of the work, until Kirby Heyborne takes over to read the afterword by Riggs’s husband, John, and shatters your heart. For a book about fatal diseases – Riggs was diagnosed at 37 with breast cancer;...
As Sarah Jessica Parker’s inaugural selection for the American Library Association’s Book Club Central, Stephanie Powell Watts’s (We Are Only Taking What We Need) first novel is getting well-earned attention. Initially inspired by The Great Gatsby, Watts wanted to give voice to the mostly silent...
*STARRED REVIEW Kimberly Farr, who gracefully, achingly gave voice to the eponymous protagonist in Elizabeth Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, returns here as Lucy but adds to her repertoire Lucy’s family, neighbors, and long-ago acquaintances who call Amgash, IL, home. When Lucy’s mother unexpectedly arrived...
*STARRED REVIEW For such a vulnerable, raw memoir, no one but the author could voice the breathtaking revelations, brutal truths, and profound knowledge contained here. “Every body has a story and a history,” Roxane Gay (Bad Feminist, Difficult Women) begins. Gay stands 6'3"; at her heaviest, she...
Certain authors are their own best narrators – even more true for memoirs (think Roxane Gay, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Luvvie Ajayi). Here, Scaachi Koul’s accomplished reading comes with the bonus of regular vocal interjections from her father. With this first book, a collection of smart, sassy, revealing...
Arundhati Roy’s 1997 Man Booker Prize-winning debut, The God of Small Things, made her an international superstar. Twenty years later, Delhi-based Roy is an activist power house – feted and feared – with an expansive list of nonfiction credits; her second novel should placate her...
*STARRED REVIEW With his uniquely sing-songy cadence, almost-chuckles, and uncontainable tears, Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) gives a raw, superb performance. No one else could have narrated the stories of his difficult youth, his lifesaving education, his struggles between familial obligations...
*STARRED REVIEW Kevin Kwan’s third volume continues to expose – albeit with plenty of schadenfreudian humor – the outrageous excesses and over-the-top machinations that began with his debut, Crazy Rich Asians (currently in highly anticipated celluloid production). Lydia Look, who voiced book two, China Rich Girlfriend,...
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 –...
One word describes Bae Suah's latest: enigmatic. The seven stories that comprise her first translated-into-English collection (and her third collaboration with prolifically adroit British translator of choice Smith) are more fragments than linear narratives. In the opening "First Snow, First Sight," unreliable memory between two...
*STARRED REVIEW Most of Anne Lamott’s nonfiction titles are generally variations on a theme: be kind – to yourself, to others – and you’ll make the world a better place. Somehow, though, each book arrives sounding fresh and new – and effective. That Lamott narrates almost all...
*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...
ABSTRACT These books feature diverse characters who – in a multiplicity of ways – suffer, learn, and generally triumph in their differences. Varying in genre from picture book to poetry, in setting from Kenya to California, and in ethnic focus from Muslim Bangladeshi to Ojibway/Anishinaaabe (Canadian...
Ten years ago, Lee was married to her college boyfriend, living in Berkeley, and working as the human resources director at a small company. On New Year’s Eve 2006, Lee suffered a stroke. She was 33. She would spend the better part of a decade...
*STARRED REVIEW Originally published in 1987, The Door is one of the few titles available in English by the late Magda Szabó (1917–2007), considered one of if not the most prominent Hungarian writer. The aural version makes its roundabout debut this year, after two Anglophone translations,...
"[D]ecidedly catholic" tastes aside, The Manga Critic is oh so right: I DOOOOOOOOOOOO "religiously" review every issue of this toothsome series! How could I ever ignore such delicious delights, I tell you! So what's the latest for our favorite Tokyo lovebirds? While Shiro takes his parents...
The arrival of an unexpected package inspires Bea to begin writing her story, "in the hope that [she] could do it justice, and clear [her] conscience." Years earlier, she traveled to an unnamed Middle Eastern country (certainly inspired by Syria, where debut author Emily Robbins...
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...
'Home Fire' is an exquisite modern tragedy about families caught between religion, politics That Home Fire is among the recently announced 2017 Man Booker Dozen means it arrives stateside with quite the notable stamp of approval. The novel is considerably more affecting than that other longlist...
'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,...
