Knopf Review by David Starkey California Review of Books is a bit late to the party in reviewing Anne Michaels’ Booker-nominated third novel, Held, although perhaps we may be excused…
Category: Fiction
Nobody’s Empire by Stuart Murdoch
Harper Via Review by George Yatchisin It would be easy to spend a ton of time teasing out where writer/musician Stuart Murdoch ends from where the main character of his…
Gliff by Ali Smith
Pantheon Review by Walter Cummins Words create multiple possibilities throughout the world two adolescent siblings inhabit in Ali Smith’s latest novel, Gliff–title’s sound what the younger one, Rose, chooses to…
There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay Elif Shafak writes with her heart as much as her imagination. Her eye and ear seem to gravitate toward characters whose stories are rarely told:…
Mojave Ghost by Forrest Gander
New Directions Review by Laura Mullen If “The personal is the political” was a truism and rallying cry of second wave feminism (invoked also by student and civil rights activists),…
Lesser Ruins by Mark Haber
Coffee House Review by Walter Cummins Just opening a copy of Lesser Ruins at any point and encountering a two-page spread of a single block of type signals a challenge…
Private Rites by Julia Armfield
Flatiron Review by Walter Cummins The world of this novel is ominously dystopian—constant rain pounding a city of unmoored, vulnerable buildings, displaced people fearful of being flooded out of threatened…
A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet
Biblioasis Review by Walter Cummins I must admit that throughout my initial reading of this novel I fell for Burnet’s ruse, believing I was really engaging with his translation of…
Rental House by Weike Wang
Riverhead Review by George Yatchisin You’re a mere five pages into Weike Wang’s masterful novel Rental House when she does this to you, as her married couple main characters, one…