BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Corruption of Hollis Brown by K. Ancrum
(5/21/2025)
The Corruption of Hollis Brown is not so much a genuinely scary story as one that uses elements of horror and the supernatural to paint an enhanced portrait of life for young rural people abandoned by the contemporary world. The harshness of the setting easily blends with adolescent angst. Despite its relative lack of description, the book leaves the reader with the impression of a delicate series of images. It is romantic in nearly every sense of the word, and buzzes with understated dra
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Stag Dance: A Novel & Stories
by Torrey Peters
(4/23/2025)
The book as a whole consists of this central story, referred to as a novel, and three shorter stories. All introduce aspects of fluidity to gender, exposing the constructions beneath it. The strange, antiquated vocabulary of the novel and the use of first-person voices (and resultant lack of gendered pronouns) throughout the book merge to create a landscape in which gender is doubted more than established. Summing up the stories in simple terms feels imperfect and impossible — Who are thes
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Theory & Practice: A Novel
by Michelle de Kretser
(3/12/2025)
The narrator, a critic herself, is writing her thesis on the construction of gender in Virginia Woolf's work, a concentration she struggles with after discovering a racist description of E. W. Perera, a Ceylonese barrister active in the Sri Lankan independence movement, in the author's diary. A Sri Lankan immigrant to Australia familiar with Perera's legacy, the narrator sets about reconciling her admiration for Woolf with the writer's racism through her own interpretation of the novel The Ye
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
(1/29/2025)
Giovanni's Room is the only book Baldwin ever wrote featuring all white characters, and he did so for a reason — not feeling he could address issues relating to Blackness and queerness in the same book (though he did this later). But this work as much as the rest of his work affords importance to the body and to communal existence. Sexuality, social identity, and physical intimacy are treated as crucial parts of the human condition, not just vital to parsing societal values and sign
BookBrowse Editorial Review
My Friends: A Novel
by Hisham Matar
(12/4/2024)
Khaled begins to tell his life story, irrevocably marked by his presence at the 1984 shooting of anti-Qaddafi protesters from the Libyan embassy in London, where as a young man studying literature abroad he was wounded and possibly put on the regime's radar, making it unsafe for him to return to his homeland for the foreseeable future. The trauma he has experienced seems to separate him from conventional life, leaving him to lose himself in books and to foster meaningful but flexible connections
BookBrowse Editorial Review
But the Girl by Jessica Zhan Mei Yu
(11/20/2024)
If Girl's identity struggles and family backstory provide the substance of the book, Sylvia Plath's work offers the structure that hosts the main character's preoccupations. But rather than simply considering how institutional racism can hamper this process for marginalized people, or the usual coming-of-age challenges on the path to self-actualization, she questions the path itself. But the Girl is a sad story in the end, in a way that hits with an unexpected jolt, shaking all its puzzle
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Model Home: A Novel
by Rivers Solomon
(10/2/2024)
Model Home is openly a horror story built on social and political realities, in which the lurking evil is understood to be racism and the horrors it enables. It is a book generously and unapologetically for the victims, without interest in laboring over the complexity of racists and abusers, but rather in tending the nuanced perspectives of those forced to deal with the blunt damage done to them, those already keenly aware of the layers of humanity employed by others as a device to gain a
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Colored Television: A Novel
by Danzy Senna
(9/4/2024)
Senna's novel plays beautifully with notions of cliché. In satirizing obvious tropes, she both uses them for their originally intended purpose and invites the reader to question their validity. Jane's character arc follows the curve of a classic mid-life crisis, but instead of having an affair or indulging in the past, as middle-aged men are clichédly wont to do, she sneaks out of the house day and night with the aim of building a secret future. Her biracial identity and the lack of be
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Coin: A Novel
by Yasmin Zaher
(7/17/2024)
Zaher's writing will garner comparisons to Ottessa Moshfegh and Miranda July for its exploration of bizarre interior worlds, but its explicit rendering of a diaspora experience of empire makes it, in the words of the main character, its own thing. The societal critique that washes through The Coin by default is itself a force of nature: unrelenting and free-flowing but also soft and beautiful. Even alongside the narrator's isolation and seeming psychological decline, the humor of her mono
BookBrowse Editorial Review
A Kind of Madness by Uche Okonkwo
(6/5/2024)
What all of the narratives have in common is that they vividly highlight the twisted machinations and mysteries of everyday lives. They uncover the bizarre notions that people and communities are compelled to accept as shared currency, the sinister controlling forces that exist beneath the surface of supposedly innocent and normal interactions. With its meticulously crafted language and storytelling, A Kind of Madness is quiet but bold, a striking and confident debut.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Fruit of the Dead: A Novel
by Rachel Lyon
(4/17/2024)
Considering how much time we spend with Emer, the combination of her self-effacement and sanctimonious attitude could become grating, but Lyon's exquisite, deft language, endlessly clever but never just for cleverness's sake, carries the character in her desperation. As Fruit of the Dead is a retelling of Greek mythology — the story of the harvest goddess Demeter, whose daughter Persephone is kidnapped by the god of the underworld, Hades — Emer's qualities serve a purpose. Rol
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft
(3/6/2024)
This story offers several points of metaphorical intersection on themes such as the destruction and creation of writing and translation, the toxic nature of celebrity, and the invisibility of the translator and artist. Croft's novel is genuinely clever in a way that is often delightful. It also, at times, creaks under the weight of its construction. Understanding that there are reasons behind certain strange tediums doesn't keep the prose from sometimes feeling as inscrutable and overwrought as
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Dazzling by Chikodili Emelumadu
(1/24/2024)
The two storylines vacillate not only between perspective but also time. This format is handled impressively, sustaining interest and suspense despite the reader's lack of knowledge about what exactly is going on. Emelumadu achieves this in part through the episodic nature of the chapters, which read as an end in themselves, a feature that compensates somewhat for the book's ending, which feels abrupt and out of step with the emotional and ethical nuances of what comes before. Despite this disap
BookBrowse Editorial Review
A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens: A Novel
by Raul Palma
(11/15/2023)
Hugo's individual story holds sufficient depth to feel complete unto itself. It would be easy for a reader to get lost in it alone, to forget that the setup of A Haunting in Hialeah Gardens practically promises a thrilling horror adventure. When it eventually delivers on this promise, it does so without seeming overstuffed or losing the thread of Hugo's character arc. His double-pronged problem of feeling both responsible and wronged is an issue inherent in a society where exploitation is
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel
by C Pam Zhang
(10/4/2023)
Land of Milk and Honey is direct in its social commentary, and despite a tragic storyline, it is fiercely optimistic in what it has to say about the nature and future of humanity. Its sharply-written, revelatory moments, appearing as they do between scenes of excess and waste, serve as a reminder that the treasures of the world are unquantifiable and unpredictable, that none of us really know what will bring us joy, what will save us — or humanity. And that, sometimes, what lies on
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Orphan Bachelors: A Memoir
by Fae Myenne Ng
(7/12/2023)
Ng perceives Chu's novel as a kind of taking back of power for Chinese America, and this book, at its best, does something similar for a new generation with its humor and vulgarity and heart. Orphan Bachelors reads like compensation for the still-prevalent sanitized, stereotypical depictions of Asian Americans eager to earn their place through hard work and dedication to "family," a word that is today often used as a euphemism for the absence of sex ("family-friendly") or the absence of r
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Dances: A Novel
by Nicole Cuffy
(6/7/2023)
A substantial debut, Dances reveals Cuffy as an author not just interested in characterization and circumstance, but the deeper implications of narrative. Cece's language — ballet terminology mixed with her sometimes matter-of-fact, sometimes wry descriptions — brings to the page a deft representation of the forces at war inside of her that still have the ability to resolve into something intentional and harmonious. She has created a life in a world not made for her, but who i
BookBrowse Editorial Review
A Country You Can Leave: A Novel
by Asale Angel-Ajani
(4/5/2023)
The novel's quirky mood suggests that it could be a fairly standard, humorous feel-good story that culminates in a reconciliation of differences between mother and daughter. But it's far sadder than that and better for it. A Country You Can Leave willingly adopts the structure of a coming-of-age story, full as it is of dramatic occurrences that serve as learning experiences, yet also skips lightly over this structure. It hits all of the expected beats with confidence, but with a muted qua
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Bad Cree: A Novel
by Jessica Johns
(2/1/2023)
In its structure, pacing and ideas, Bad Cree is a substantial and well-built story; in the specifics of its prose, it sometimes loses flow, such as in its overstuffing of adverbial phrases between lines of dialogue and its occasional plodding description of actions. But it thrives in playful and sharp turns of phrase. In resisting simplistic, popular ideas about dreams and symbolism, Johns also resists the horror trope in which objects or creatures of terror are presented as obvious metap
BookBrowse Editorial Review
A Dangerous Business: A Novel
by Jane Smiley
(1/4/2023)
While Eliza's relative naivete allows the book to take on an educational tone concerning social and political issues, much of the ensuing commentary doesn't quite land. Discussions of slavery appear with an air of importance but remain surface-level. A Dangerous Business succeeds best in its quiet focus on the nuances of Eliza's psyche and her growth as a person, which include natural revelations about how the concepts of guilt and innocence are not so clear-cut within an unequal society.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Consequences: Stories
by Manuel Muñoz
(10/19/2022)
Some stories and individual features of stories are more engaging than others. Characters can be so stripped down as to seem formless, which can have a dulling effect. However, the spareness feels stylistically deliberate, as it appears to represent how a character's circumstances have rendered him a husk of himself. Race, culture, class, sexuality and citizenship are organically coded into the stories' atmospheres in a way that lets the reader feel the significance of these factors in how chara
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Book of Goose: A Novel
by Yiyun Li
(9/21/2022)
The Book of Goose draws on conventional elements, but its brilliance lies in the small ways in which these elements go awry. Fabienne and Agnès themselves seek to disrupt the dull narratives their lives are pitched towards — marriage, children, death — although the grim truth that fame and adventures come with their own dull narratives soon sets in. Still, they try their best to live by their own rules. Li's novel has a lot going for it thematically, raising questions abo
BookBrowse Editorial Review
How to Read Now: Essays
by Elaine Castillo
(8/3/2022)
Castillo's lively and expressive writing underscores the idea that reading through the default white supremacist mindset that reaches us invisibly and blandly via American media and the publishing industry is not just lazy, reductive and violent, it's also boring. She plunges into How to Read Now with a sense of excitement, buoyant stylistic flourishes — including one-of-a-kind, unforgettable phrases like "gooey heart-porn of the ethnographic" — and a seemingly irrepressible f
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo
(6/22/2022)
The dramatic style and fantastical details sometimes crowd out emotional substance, not giving the reader a sufficient entry point into the zigzagging motion of the plot, which covers Luli's formative experiences in Hollywood and her developing understanding of herself and her desires. This is almost inevitable, as the style is so specific as to get stretched at the edges when applied to each and every situation. But when it works in tandem with the character's moments of vulnerability and disco
BookBrowse Editorial Review
We Do What We Do in the Dark: A Novel
by Michelle Hart
(5/18/2022)
The story is somewhat heavy-handed with its persistent symbolism surrounding the concepts of light and dark as representations of openness and secrecy, but fascinating in its dissection of isolation. Mallory's attraction to women isolates her because she doesn't know how to name it. The sense of aimlessness she feels as a first-year college student isolates her because, while no doubt a common phenomenon, it is still not an easily decipherable experience. She goes to the woman looking for answer
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk
by Sasha LaPointe
(4/6/2022)
Through a nomadic and place-sensitive gaze on the Pacific Northwest, LaPointe presents a separation between land and state that throws into sharp relief the strangeness of settler-colonial fictions and values. The subjects she combines do not fit together simply because she blends them well (although she does) but rather because, as she shows us, trauma does not exist in a vacuum — or in any one place. Neither, necessarily, does the concept of home. Through the fluidity of her writing, LaP
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Thank You, Mr. Nixon: Stories
by Gish Jen
(3/2/2022)
There is a subtle and warm but deceptively powerful humor that blooms throughout Jen's book, a gathering of often-linked stories exploring China's relationship with the rest of the world and the consequences of this relationship to individual people. Her characters are not quite the logical outcome of their sociopolitical circumstances, but rather people who have fallen into particular, sometimes peculiar, crevices of existence, and they are exquisitely written.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Call Me Cassandra: A Novel
by Marcial Gala
(2/16/2022)
Despite the well-wrought writing that surrounds the execution of the themes, the execution itself remains fairly simple, and the story loses momentum at times. Still, Call Me Cassandra is awash in an understated, evocative aesthetic that is wholly intriguing. Gala flits between national, global, existential and personal concerns with ease. Despite its wide scope and link to epic poetry, the novel feels intimate rather than grand, always returning to the close quarters of human interaction
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Win Me Something by Kyle Lucia Wu
(11/17/2021)
Win Me Something isn't about Willa's suffering or lack of power. It isn't about her taking back power, either. It's a subtly rendered and satisfying story of someone on the verge of beginning to know herself — gentle and confident in its shifts of direction, blossoming in complexity like a fine wine as it opens into the reader's mind. Rife with social and internal tensions as well as the fraught mentality of late adolescence, it is a quiet, reflective read with a long, delicate fini
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
(11/3/2021)
It is Tookie's too-muchness — her omnivorous appetites, her talent for storytelling and selling and embellishing — that makes her vulnerable and also ultimately saves her. Similarly, this brilliant novel thrives as a mish-mash of ghost story, mystery, comedy, picaresque, social commentary and book-lover's book, all of which is exactly enough. Through plumbing all these elements, Erdrich steers her complicated character towards a fitting conclusion, one that gives her a place in the v
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Wrong End of the Telescope by Rabih Alameddine
(10/6/2021)
Concerned — as its title implies — with perspective, The Wrong End of the Telescope suggests that the grace and kindness people can show themselves and each other is not necessarily facilitated by understanding, and that it may even sometimes be best to resist the impulse to possess knowledge of the other, or of the mystery of life. With this book, Alameddine gives us a funny and sad tale that caters to no particular audience, that no one asked for, and that is all the more ge
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby
(9/8/2021)
Cosby leans away from a simple redemption arc, instead showing the emotional silence that follows Ike and Buddy Lee's chaotic behavior. In this space, the reader can feel their grief as well as the stark consequences of their choices. They thrive on conflict, and part of what makes losing their sons so hard is that they can no longer deal with their own uneasiness by antagonizing Isiah and Derek. They are left alone with their residual bigotry, which is no longer their sons' problem. Even as the
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Girl in His Shadow by Audrey Blake
(6/9/2021)
While the authors successfully mix different aspects of story and genre, the novel falls short in its feminist ambitions. Nora is an embodiment of the fairly simplistic modern fantasy of a "strong woman" type overcoming obstacles, and not particularly interesting. The Girl in His Shadow still has much to recommend it. The real star of the book is the burgeoning scientific knowledge of the day, which is woven seamlessly into the plot, such that the reader feels caught up in the excitement
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri
(6/9/2021)
Lahiri's protagonist is a moody storyteller, but it is the bitterness of her emotions that shocks her surroundings to life, and even her more anxious and disturbing thoughts contain a certain strange beauty. Buried in the novel's sparseness is a deceptively alive story that builds in momentum even as it offers little in the way of actual plot. Whereabouts reminds us that there is no escape from the confines and consequences of physical place and time, but its portrayal of these elements i
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Second Place by Rachel Cusk
(5/5/2021)
While the connection to the story of Lawrence and Luhan is one readers may find interesting, Cusk's unnecessary adherence to certain details of her characters' real-life counterparts accounts for the most questionable and incongruous parts of the novel. Regardless of how Second Place came to be, it's a taut and engaging novel full of personal and philosophical suspense that offers a complicated look at a woman struggling to understand herself and her place in the world. Like Cusk's previo
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Yolk by Mary H. K. Choi
(4/7/2021)
In dealing with issues specific to the transitory nature of late adolescence for a young adult audience, Choi also effectively addresses the combined pressure and hunger that comes with being a child of immigrants — the sense of being deprived of a standard-issue existence alongside the impulse to push aside this deprivation to make way for success. She shows how these feelings may result in a desperate need for love and acceptance that can, somewhat insultingly, only be found by embracing the u
BookBrowse Editorial Review
My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee
(2/3/2021)
Despite its impressively consistent word-gymnastics, Lee's style can become cloying at times, and it fails to effectively carry the story over its nearly 500 pages and two full timelines that somehow make the novel feel simultaneously like too much and not enough. The storyline with Val is more thoroughly wrapped up than the one with Pong, which isn't as satisfying. Still, the book's ambitious construction comes alive through Tiller's elaborate assessments of the world around him, the theatrics
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi
(1/6/2021)
Rather than telling the story in chronological order or splitting the novel into full separate accounts of each character's life, Ekwuyasi chooses to alternate between family members as if building an elaborate layer cake, revealing in measured portions how Kambirinachi, Taiye and Kehinde all come of age while balancing love interests and life callings. The novel seems to enter and leave each character's storyline at times when the reader's interest is at its peak, which causes the format to app
BookBrowse Editorial Review
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
(11/4/2020)
The book's most touching and striking element is its depiction of the intensity produced in situations where time is precious. While there is nothing new in connecting love with death, Nunez's writing succeeds in capturing the strange, startling illumination both can bring. It also draws attention to how people sometimes diminish profound life experiences by corralling them into narrow ideas of beauty and romance. What Are You Going Through suggests that this diminishment may be overcome
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Shadow King: A Novel
by Maaza Mengiste
(10/21/2020)
While readers who approach it hoping for a straightforward work of inspiring historical fiction will be disappointed, those willing to let it take shape as what it is — a sprawling and poetic meditation on existence — will be richly rewarded. The Shadow King leverages its historical details to uncover new ways of thinking about how people arrange their inner worlds in order to preserve a sense of self. By exploring its characters' dreams, denials and constructed realities, it engages in c
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
(9/16/2020)
The expected route for the novel to take would be to reveal Gifty's work as a futile attempt to "fix" her world. But Gyasi lets her protagonist's science remain as multitudinous as her self, lets the reader experience the same quiet struggles and occasional sense of wonder that Gifty does. Similarly, her childhood belief in God does not exist for the sake of mere character definition; religion acts with agency upon her life, an entity in itself. This generous approach to concepts that are often
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Son of Good Fortune by Lysley Tenorio
(8/19/2020)
Excel's job and Maxima's online schemes are brimming with an absurdity that contradicts the romance of the American dream, showing a reality where the only viable options beyond superhuman achievement are illegal or questionable according to social mores. This reality has been acknowledged under a romantic spotlight in American crime dramas such as the TV series Breaking Bad. However, society's most marginalized, including undocumented immigrants more predisposed to desperate circumstance
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford
(7/15/2020)
Though Crooked Hallelujah opens with radiant confidence and pushes through to a generous and satisfying ending, it suffers in between from a common pitfall of the novel-in-stories format: It sometimes adheres to a strong narrative arc, but at other times wanders too far from its central concerns. Despite this, all the various parts of the novel are infused with a similar urgent mood that suggests the inner arrangement of a person's self has a crucial effect on the external world around th
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Sleepovers by Ashleigh Bryant Phillips
(6/24/2020)
While many of the characters in the collection are isolated, Phillips creates the impression that they are never truly alone, outlining the imperfect, delicate ties that exist between them and the universe around them—whether familial, romantic, neighborly or cosmic. She also draws individual experiences with such intense vulnerability that they give way to a sense of collective human consciousness, engaging the reader in a kind of communion with them. This sense is so powerful that even when th
BookBrowse Editorial Review
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
(6/24/2020)
Though Oluo makes a point of not sugar-coating justice issues or the amount of work they require, So You Want to Talk About Race is warm, personal and sometimes funny. The author introduces concepts through anecdotes from her own experiences, which range from infuriating to hilarious to sobering. She takes serious topics out of an academic context and places them in a conversational one. The book succeeds in being exactly what it intends to be: an insightful and honest guide for people st
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Starling Days by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
(5/6/2020)
As the characters explore new feelings and dip into uncomfortable emotional spaces, Buchanan questions conventional beliefs around issues of mental illness, sexuality and relationships, opting to portray their thoughts sensitively and without the weight of standard foregone conclusions. While Starling Days is filled with sad moments, it's far from a tragedy. It isn't a "feel-good" read either, but one that allows human emotions and wants, in all their disarray, to mingle coherently on the
BookBrowse Editorial Review
How Much of These Hills Is Gold: A Novel
by C Pam Zhang
(4/8/2020)
That the book is very much literary fiction for adults but features children makes it feel like a restorative gift, a youthful adventure story come years too late for my own youth but with provisions made for my age. How Much of These Hills Is Gold is raw, elemental and irreplaceable, something singular and essential. Zhang's novel is a landmark debut that doesn't just fill gaps in the historical fiction genre, but subverts it, calling attention to the very limitations of colonial recorde
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The Resisters by Gish Jen
(3/18/2020)
Jen effectively blends nostalgia for a mythical American past with the anxiety of a consumerist country forever reaching for the future, creating a society with new quirks that nevertheless doesn't feel that dissimilar from our own. At times, the book's world-building gets in the way of its plot development. Much more than a cautionary tale, The Resisters feels like a generous space to sit with the sadder truths of our consumption-driven society.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Black Cathedral by Marcial Gala
(2/19/2020)
Gala's novel isn't based around a single event, but rather the continual horror and occasional beauty of people reacting to one another and their own feelings, setting the courses of their lives according to rhythms that exist outside of them—those of money, of love, of power. The Black Cathedral is an effervescent read filled with energy, possibility and chaotic delights.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Truants by Kate Weinberg
(2/5/2020)
Weinberg paints a fascinating, uncynical picture of the kind of intense, self-destructive attractions that people may be especially prone to in late adolescence but that could crop up at any time. The Truants is a reminder that these feelings, while potentially dangerous, aren't necessarily false, and that they may be worth trying to make peace with in the end.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Girl, Woman, Other: A Novel
by Bernardine Evaristo
(1/8/2020)
It’s refreshing to read a book that encompasses such a variety of human perspectives and flaws but that still unequivocally centers blackness, non-male genders and queer sexualities, as well as non-traditional relationships and family arrangements. While Evaristo’s novel entertains many points of view, it doesn’t stumble into moral vagueness or the idea that all opinions and experiences are the same. Instead, it chooses motion over stagnation, self-awareness over denial. It insists on pushing th
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Spider Love Song and Other Stories by Nancy Au
(11/13/2019)
Au blends a lyrical style, like that above, with more matter-of-fact prose. Her stories have a purely aesthetic draw, but even those that are shorter and more poetic work to incorporate interesting plot arcs. Some stories evince a more natural momentum than others, but they all lead the reader to new territory, often stopping on unexpected notes.
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Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis
(10/16/2019)
Cantoras is a self-assured masterpiece that despite its anxious moments proceeds at the unworried pace of a leisurely seaside stroll. At times the complicated multi-character plot feels fragmented, like several broken pieces piled on top of one another, but this fragmentation eventually resolves into a whole, resulting in a sensation like waves moving over one another.
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The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek: A Novel
by Kim Michele Richardson
(10/2/2019)
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek puts its own offbeat spin not just on classic romance but also crime, action and adventure, suspense and, of course, historical fiction—all with a flawed but sympathetic lead at its center. In addition to spotlighting a fascinating phenomenon in book history, it is itself a book lover's book, a celebration of stories and genres, an exercise in reading nostalgia.
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Heaven, My Home: A Highway 59 Mystery
by Attica Locke
(9/18/2019)
The intricate, shifting plot elements in Heaven, My Home aren't just deftly handled, but deeply intertwined, making for profound world-building that echoes broader American social and cultural realities. At the same time, Locke's writing is approachable; it has literary value, but could appeal to some who aren't normally inclined towards more literary work.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
The Plateau by Maggie Paxson
(9/4/2019)
Paxson's personal reflections sometimes turn outward into sweeping and confusing assertions about humanity when it seems they might have more naturally continued inward into analysis of her own struggles. For example, she expresses concern about the "moral hazard" of identifying as a member of any group before identifying as human, stating that "the oneness of humanity is an absolute truth." It seems important to acknowledge, alongside this statement, that groups in power have often used people'
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Delayed Rays of a Star by Amanda Lee Koe
(7/10/2019)
Delayed Rays of a Star explores the facades people adopt for the survival of their private and public selves. It examines how surface impressions and imagery can be both dangerous and vital. The loose structure of the novel, which at times appears haphazard, may not be to some readers' tastes. But this wandering is part of its magic. Like the cinematic professionals she features, Koe seeks to create an immersive tone and style that speaks for itself, and she succeeds.
BookBrowse Editorial Review
Miracle Creek
(5/15/2019)
...Miracle Creek ultimately puts trust in readers to come to their own conclusions concerning hard questions—about racism, sexism, ableism, and justice. By showing us how little the truth may matter in a legal setting, Kim creates the eerie feeling that it's up to us to make our own decisions about the guilt or innocence of her characters, and that's no easy task. This is a book that demands an audience willing to approach it with care, and it deserves to find that audience.