Beneath the Lion’s Gaze – Maaza Mengiste
In a time when revolutions rattle and reinvigorate much of our world, Mengiste’s novel makes a frighteningly real case of the risk inherent in ditching one idol for another.
Bloom County: The Complete Library
The amount of space allotted for Sunday strips has been slowly shrinking for decades. Thank goodness there was still enough space in 1983 for Berkley Breathed to spend seven Sunday strips commemorating a cat’s death by acne.
You Think That’s Bad- Jim Shepard
The stories collected within You Think That’s Bad connect the distant past to the yet-experienced future in globetrotting style.
“Mat Johnson reinterprets Poe’s questionably constructed work in Pym, a novel that manages to be all at once a slapstick adventure, a literary mystery and a satirical approach to race, racism and academia.”
The Illumination – Kevin Brockmeier
In the end, a world where pain is made of light is one in which pain transcends the bodies that bear it – the light becomes its own phenomenon, it transforms pain into a separate thing of beauty, a glow which commands others’ attention, but not necessarily their sympathy.
The Empty Family – Colm Tóibín
“The Empty Family may be the mature work of a master, but I didn’t believe a single word of it.”
All Things Shining – Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly
“Taylor, Dreyfus and Kelly lament a pervasive malaise and lack of purpose in the lives of contemporary Westerners. A ‘nihilism of the secular age leaves us with the awful sense that nothing matters in the world at all.’ This, they claim, is a particular American mood, and it is characterized by addiction, depression, consumerism, terrorism, and tennis academies.”
The Metropolis Case – Matthew Gallaway
“The novel’s ‘melody’ develops in recurring and layering coincidences and connections, while its ‘dissonances’ appear in sudden and unpredictable deaths which jar characters and reader alike. And, more obviously, ‘melody and dissonance’ describe Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde, which binds Gallaway’s story and four main characters together across pages and centuries.”
Portraits of a Marriage – Sándor Márai
“Spanning late fin de siècle Budapest to the conclusion of World War II, Sándor Márai’s Portraits of a Marriage focuses on the insurmountable effect of class on relationships and the tension rippling across Europe during this period.”
Tonight No Poetry Will Serve – Adrienne Rich
“Adrienne Rich’s new collection is a slender volume of lyric notes, a vivid outline of the contemporary world. Her pieces are elliptical, often free-form, short. She is, of course, a master of the craft.”