It is the rare novel that can strike a delicate balance between satire and violence, a feat achieved by the celebrated writer Percival Everrett in his most recent book, The Trees. Perhaps Everrett is one of the only writers working today who could manage to make a book reckoning with the history of lynching in… Continue reading The Trees by Percival Everrett
Tag: bookblog
Chouette by Claire Oshetsky
Claire Oshetsky’s Chouette, a fabulist tale of a mother who becomes pregnant with an unusual child, is a fascinating debut that breaks genre conventions of all sorts. The novel begins with the narrator, Tiny, a professional cellist, disclosing that she has had an affair with her owl-lover, a companion from her youth, and she now… Continue reading Chouette by Claire Oshetsky
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
The Idiot, Elif Batuman’s 2018 debut, is a coming of age story set against the onset of the digital age, in other words the novel’s protagonist is coming of age with our modern world. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, has arrived at Harvard for her freshmen year in the 1990s, armed with a love… Continue reading The Idiot by Elif Batuman
Matrix by Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff brings readers back to the Middle Ages in her new novel, Matrix, a fiction loosely created around the life of the twelfth century nun and poet, Marie de France. In Groff’s novel, Marie is an 17 year old orphan, deemed unfit for marriage because she is a “great clumsy lunk” with a “giant… Continue reading Matrix by Lauren Groff
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Reading Sally Rooney’s third novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You, felt like the culmination of the many years of hype and interest surrounding her work, it’s the rare novel that builds upon the themes of the writer’s previous work in all of the best ways. The novel centers on Alice Kelleher, a successful Irish novelist… Continue reading Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Maggie Shipstead’s Booker Prize long-listed novel, Great Circle, is an impossibly wide-reaching piece of historical fiction that totally defies any effort to summarize briefly. The novel’s twin threads focus on two women living totally different lives: first, there’s Marian Graves, an orphan who survived a great tragedy in her infancy and grew up to become… Continue reading Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Virtue by Hermione Hoby
Humans have been attempting to answer the question of what a good and virtuous life looks like since the beginning of time. In her sophomore novel, Virtue, Hermione Hoby takes on this very same concern, contextualized within the Trump era. The novel centers on Luca, a young man trying to distance himself from his middle… Continue reading Virtue by Hermione Hoby
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Marketed as “The Devil Wears Prada meets Get Out,” Zakiya Dalila Harris’ new thriller novel, The Other Black Girl, has been one of the publishing industry’s most talked-about and buzziest releases of 2021. Harris, who quit her job as an editorial assistant at the revered PRH imprint Knopf to write this book, has endeavored to… Continue reading The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
Dantiel W. Moniz’s debut story collection Milk Blood Heat is the rare debut the strikes a perfect note with every story, all of which coalesce to an elemental and stunning symphony. The stories mostly center around black women and girls living in the Jacksonville area, and many stories integrate the three title images of milk,… Continue reading Milk Blood Heat by Dantiel W. Moniz
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
Transcendent Kingdom is the second novel by Yaa Gyasi, who burst onto the scene a couple of years ago with her brilliant and celebrated historical fiction novel, Homegoing, which followed several generations of a Ghanian family experiencing slavery in Europe and America. Gyaasi’s sophomore novel has a narrower focus than Homegoing, which spanned decades and… Continue reading Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi