Regardless of how many more books I might read this year, Bich Minh Nguyen's second novel (and third title) will undoubtedly remain one of my top three for 2014. So engrossing is this Girl, that even Bernadette Dunne's occasionally faltering narration (oh, those fake Asian accents!) couldn't put me...
*STARRED REVIEW Celeste Ng’s debut is one of those aching stories about which the reader knows so much more than any of the characters, even as each yearns for the unknowable truth. “Lydia is dead,” the novel opens – blunt, unnerving, devastating. She’s only 16, the middle of three...
The timing is horrifyingly surreal: capital punishment emerged as a major topic this week, from the tragically innocent, to the mistreated guilty – and somehow, unrelatedly, I managed to choose this title. Once begun, I couldn't stop until the final page. "In this world, you are either good...
The title here is your first warning: Oxford Dictionaries describes 'double bind' as "[a] situation in which a person is confronted with two irreconcilable demands or a choice between two undesirable courses of action." Think on that, then brace yourself as you open the cover...
The layers here are astonishing, revealed through the filtered lens of an unnamed narrator who gathers the shared experiences, memories, and words about an enigmatic, brilliant man who has lost his sanity by the time the narrator’s research begins. The subject is Rong Jinzhen – orphan, mathematical genius, unparalleled...
Salem Brownstone, once the proprietor of the Sit & Spin Laundromat, gets an ominous telegram (on Halloween, naturally) calling him to New Mecco City, Azania to "take immediate possession of his [late father's] house and the contents therein." His mourning – "[a]fter all these years of...
First, a few details to address before we get to award-winning Lauren Groff's down-the-rabbit-hole, delightfully convoluted debut novel ...
The day after Alice Hayward is baptized, she's found strangled in her own home; her husband George is on the couch with a bullet through his head. The apparent murder/suicide understandably has the couple's tight-knit small Vermont town in shock, especially causing a crisis of...
"I am Fagin the Jew of Oliver Twist," begins the 'father of the graphic novel'-Will Eisner's 21st-century literary reclamation of the 19th-century classic. "This is my story, one that has remained untold and overlooked in the book by Charles Dickens," a tattered old man insists....
Just as her latest book was hitting shelves, the near-deified Isabel Allende opened mouth, inserted foot during an interview on NPR and set off a firestorm of negative reaction. On mysteries, she intoned, "I will take the genre, write a mystery that is faithful to...
While watching evening TV that's been interrupted by a special bulletin about the unending "wave of child abductions in Lisbon," Eurico nods off, only to be jarred awake by the ringing telephone. He's late again to his pizza delivery job, where his boss thinks he's...
Whenever I hear that a book is about to be transformed into celluloid, I get into a little panic to read the original, oftentimes titles I ironically wouldn't have opened otherwise. Occasionally, I'm pleasantly rewarded, Miss Peregrine among those few that fill me with literary gratitude....
Hauntings, posthumous marriage proposals, addictions, not-quite-human heroes, in-between spirits growing old, burnt offerings that are actually real in another world. Interest piqued? Get ready for this absolutely ingenious debut novel! And (there's more!), as an exponentially satisfying bonus, the crisply-voiced author herself – Yangsze Choo, a fourth-generation Malaysian...
If Gillian Flynn isn't already a household name, she will be sure enough. The film version of her mega-bestselling 2012 novel Gone Girl is due to hit screens in October with Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike starring as the troubled couple. Since Flynn herself wrote the...
Long before the latest translated-into-English title from award-winning transgender manga creator Inio Asano is due to hit shelves (fabulous Seattle-based publisher Fantagraphics lists an unspecified February pub date; Amazon lists March 19, 2014 and B&N March 5 for available shipping), the internet has been abuzz...
*STARRED REVIEW In her first title since she received a 2010 MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, Yiyun Li again explores the far-reaching repercussions of a single person's death. While her mesmerizing The Vagrants (2009) revolved around the execution of a young political victim, here, three childhood friends take...
Well, I seem to be totally out of order here: so I read The City of Death (Book 2) first because I had a judging deadline, then backpedaled to catch up by sticking this Fortress (Book 1) in the ears (Bruce Mann narrates well enough, although I...
Okay, so we're skipping ahead here, because I had to read this for a book judging requirement – and, in reading out of order, also confirm that it can narratively stand alone even without its prequel. I can't reveal any trade secrets, but I can...
Even though the Yoko Ono comment made by an angry daughter about her hapless father's extramaritally knocked-up girlfriend gets apologized for some 40 pages later – "'I called her Yoko Ono that night because she was the one who broke up the Beatles. Not because she's...
Well, crud. In spite of making a list and checking it twice, thrice, and more, I read these in about as 'wrong' order as I possibly could. But before I offer two preventative options, some quick background: the full Cemetery of Forgotten Books by internationally bestselling...
