Transit Books Review by Gabriel Tanguay Ortega I don’t like the amount of time I spend on social media, though it does turn me on to books I might never…
Category: Fiction
Mendell Station: A Novel by J. B. Hwang
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Among the many things I liked about Mendell Station by J.B. Hwang is its realistic portrayal of working-class life. Delivering mail is a working-class occupation;…
A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay In A Case of Mice and Murder, Sally Smith introduces Sir Gabriel Ward KC, a King’s Counsel who lives and works in the Temple, fifteen…
Our Beautiful Boys by Sameer Pandya
Ballantine Review by George Yatchisin It’s no coincidence that the two main subjects of Sameer Pandya’s second novel Our Beautiful Boys are family and violence. Set in a vaguely Santa…
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Knopf Review by Walter Cummins Three of the four women who figure in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi’s Dream Count are attractive, affluent, successful Nigerians—the wealthy travel-writer and hopeful novelist, Chiamaka, her…
Held by Anne Michaels
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…
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),…