Archives of "The BookBrowse Review": Reviews, previews, back-stories, news

Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we bring you the latest from Booker finalist Elif Shafak. There Are Rivers in the Sky is an ambitious novel of three linked timelines that ranges from the Tigris to the Thames. We also feature an impressive debut story collection with a strikingly similar title — Ruben Reyes Jr.'s There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, which puts a supernatural spin on the experiences of Latinx immigrants — along with a connected reading list of more speculative fiction dealing with themes of displacement and migration.

Another book with celestial associations is Ruby Todd's Bright Objects, about a grieving widow in Australia caught up in the strange and powerful events surrounding a newly discovered comet. In an accompanying article, we cover real-life inspirations for Todd's novel: Comet Hale-Bopp and the Heaven's Gate cult.

Garth Greenwell's Small Rain is a quiet, thoughtful story about a poet in Iowa City who reflects on the general and specific during a period of hospitalization. In a more electric exploration of the writing life, Danzy Senna's Colored Television zooms in on a novelist trying to switch to a TV career in sunny Los Angeles.

Readers everywhere will enjoy The Bookshop by Evan Friss, a loving tribute to the bookstores and booksellers that have engaged with the social landscape throughout American history.

Along with many other reviews and articles, you can check out our selection of upcoming September releases, an overview of BookBrowse's Young Adult Award Winners from recent years, our giveaway of Afabwaje Kurian's debut novel of 1970s Nigeria Before the Mango Ripens, and much more.

As always, thank you for supporting BookBrowse as a subscriber!

Davina & Nick
Founder & Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review Liars, the fascinating new novel from literary innovator Sarah Manguso, which explores a woman's struggles with her sense of self in a doomed marriage through an intense but often warm and funny narrative. Our accompanying Beyond the Book article looks at Manguso's previous work and the evolution of her unique approach to form over time.

We also feature the latest from recent Hugo Award winner T. Kingfisher: A Sorceress Comes to Call renovates the Grimm fairy tale "The Goose Girl," telling of an evil enchantress and her imprisoned daughter. More domestic drama follows with Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías, awarded the National Uruguayan Literature Prize, a dystopian story unfolding in an unnamed coastal city that despite its apocalyptic setting focuses primarily on one woman, her relationships, and her everyday problems. In Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a family is haunted by the kidnapping of their patriarch years later despite their financial comfort. Mina's Matchbox by Yoko Ogawa is an evocative coming-of-age novel in which a young girl stays with wealthy relatives for a year and is absorbed into their world. Jessica Anthony's The Most, about a couple in mid-century America having marital difficulties, reads like a more woman-centric season of the show Mad Men.

This e-zine contains a hefty helping of nonfiction, too. A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit is Noliwe Rooks' affecting account of the life of civil rights activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune. In Becoming Earth, Ferris Jabr introduces the biological interconnections that sustain our planet. Theodore H. Schwartz provides an insightful walkthrough of brain surgery with Gray Matters. Carol Mithers investigates how poverty affects pets and their people in Rethinking Rescue.

Enjoy these reviews and articles along with many others, our list of 6 Inspiring Books About the Olympics and Its Athletes to follow the Paris Summer Games, a giveaway of Diane C. McPhail's historical novel Follow the Stars Home, and much more.

Thank you for subscribing to BookBrowse!

Davina & Nick
Founder & Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review Dinaw Mengestu's latest novel Someone Like Us, the dark but lyrical story of an unconventional immigrant family living in Chicago and the DC suburbs, and the vast, unspoken isolation borne by a father and son.

This e-zine also features several works of vivid historical fiction that don't just recreate a period but reimagine it. Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi conjures a vision of 15th-century West Africa that draws from Yorùbá mythology, following a young blacksmith as she negotiates a new life of power and intrigue among royals. Nicked by M.T. Anderson is a sweet, humorous story about an 11th-century Italian monk caught up in a heist plot that sprinkles in supernatural elements from medieval texts. In Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter, a pair of lovers flee an Old West mining town in a universe beset with strong premonitions and a hovering sense of fate. And Lev Grossman's The Bright Sword adds to the long tradition of tales of King Arthur, beginning at a time of chaos and turmoil after the famed ruler's death. Related Beyond the Book articles supplement our reviews of these inspired novels with background knowledge, covering the Yorùbá deity Ṣàngó, the Catholic church's history of stolen holy relics, personal ads in the Old West, and the contemporary world of Arthuriana.

Looking for a top-notch summer mystery? With an intricate structure stretched between 1950 and 1975, Liz Moore's The God of the Woods traces a compelling story of missing children in the Adirondacks.

We also bring you a couple of gorgeous new young adult graphic novels: Ondjaki's Our Beautiful Darkness, focusing on two teenagers forming a quiet connection amid civil war in 1990s Angola, and Rosena Fung's Age 16, which follows three generations of family members during their respective adolescences.

You can enjoy these along with many other reviews and articles, a look at how our coverage compares to the recent New York Times Best 100 Books of the 21st Century list, author interviews, news, and more.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse subscriber!

Davina & Nick
Founder & Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, Kate Quinn's The Briar Club, a mystery centered on a murder at a boardinghouse in 1950s Washington, D.C., brings the McCarthy era to life through a striking cast of complex women. Our accompanying Beyond the Book article covers the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which inspired the film A League of Their Own.

A different major American city features in Yasmin Zaher's The Coin, the bizarre story of a Palestinian woman pursuing glamour, control, and cleanliness in contemporary New York. Michael Deagler's Early Sobrieties gives readers a vivid summer tour of Philadelphia through the eyes of Dennis Monk, a young man from suburban Bucks County who has finally gotten sober. In Akira Otani's The Night of Baba Yaga, two women with starkly different pasts team up to go on the run from the yakuza in 1970s Tokyo. Hari Kunzru's Blue Ruin alternates between upstate New York during pandemic lockdown and London of the late 20th century while following the life trajectories of a group of artists. The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas is set in an unnamed city that forms a backdrop for the quiet reflections of narrator and documentary filmmaker Asya. Henry Wise's Holy City refers with its title to Richmond, Virginia, where deputy sheriff Will Seems spent the last ten years, but takes place in the rural Southside region where he is faced with solving a crime intertwined with his own past. Chuck Tingle's Bury Your Gays satirizes modern Hollywood and skewers the use of AI in the entertainment industry.

Another novel commenting on the dangers of AI is Toward Eternity, the debut of Korean-to-English translator Anton Hur, which considers the ties between language and humanity through artificial beings. And for those who long to escape the constraints of the city and technological strife, Olivia Laing's The Garden Against Time is a lush, wild adventure of a book exploring how private and public interests have been bound up in the creation and maintenance of gardens.

Besides these, we bring you many other reviews and articles, a piece on how authors have responded to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the latest book news, a fresh Wordplay, and much more.

Thank you for subscribing to BookBrowse!

Davina & Nick
Founder & Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we celebrate Juneteenth with several Beyond the Book articles highlighting aspects of Black American history. Our review of Nicola Yoon's One of Our Kind, a social horror story set in a Black utopian suburb, is accompanied by a piece about plans for real-world Black utopian societies. With We Refuse, Kellie Carter Jackson's account of the use of force in Black resistance to white supremacy, we focus on desegregation activist Daisy Bates. In addition to these books by Black authors, Stephen Puleo's The Great Abolitionist, about anti-slavery advocate Charles Sumner, examines the Sarah Roberts case, in which Boston school segregation was challenged by one of the country's first Black attorneys a century before Brown v. Board of Education.

We also include an exclusive interview with Carvell Wallace, who writes about Blackness, queerness, faith, beauty, Mister Rogers, and much more in his memoir-in-essays Another Word for Love.

Like Wallace's book, Sarah Perry's novel Enlightenment explores sexuality and spirituality, in this case through two friends belonging to the same church who both experience feelings that conflict with their religion. Another character-based work of fiction, Mood Swings by Frankie Barnet, envisions an apocalyptic society where animals have turned on humans. Ananda Lima's Craft delivers on a different intense premise with a short story collection revolving around a narrator who has been inspired to write for the devil. And Briony Cameron's bracing The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye fictionalizes the adventures of a Haitian woman pirate who may have lived in the 17th century.

We invite you to check out these reviews and articles along with many others, 4 Banned LGBTQ+ Books to Read During Pride Month, a new Wordplay, a giveaway of Joanna Pearson's debut thriller Bright and Tender Dark, and much more.

Thank you for being a BookBrowse member!

Davina & Nick
Founder & Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review Long After We Are Gone by Terah Shelton Harris, a powerful tale of siblings reuniting to save their family home from developers after their father's death. The novel is the subject of an ongoing book club discussion, and our accompanying Beyond the Book article looks at discriminatory land policies faced by generations of Black farmers in America.

R.O. Kwon's exhilarating Exhibit follows Jin, a photographer undergoing a crisis as she begins an extramarital affair with a ballerina and struggles with her art. In Allen Bratton's Henry Henry, another story involving the weight of social expectations (and a modern-day queer retelling of Shakespeare's Henriad), Hal is set to inherit his father's title of Duke of Lancaster but is not at all prepared. Alina Grabowski's Women and Children First ponders the why of a teenage girl's death in a coastal Massachusetts town through multiple perspectives, while Stuart Turton's The Last Murder at the End of the World brings the mystery genre to a post-apocalyptic society.

For those craving reading lighter in heft and price but not substance, we bring you some exciting paperback originals: Uche Okonkwo's story collection A Kind of Madness, where characters in contemporary Nigeria navigate absurd interpersonal situations; Samantha Mills' The Wings Upon Her Back, a fantasy novel about a dedicated warrior's reexamination of her beliefs; and K-Ming Chang's Cecilia, a provocative novella detailing a young woman's erotic obsession with her childhood friend.

Meanwhile, in a reassuring take on faith and love, seasoned novelist Anne Lamott brings wisdom to the page in her essay collection Somehow.

Explore additional articles and reviews, book club recommendations, our list of 19th Century Historical Fiction, and more.

Thank you for being a BookBrowse subscriber!

Davina & Nick
Founder & Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review Colm Tóibín's Long Island, the long-awaited sequel to Brooklyn that catches up with Eilis Lacey two decades later, following her on a trip from New York back to Enniscorthy, Ireland. The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes also features a return to an Irish locale, telling the story of three sisters reuniting to find the fourth, a Galway geologist who has gone missing in the countryside.

Real Americans by Rachel Khong is a layered multigenerational story about a Chinese scientist escaping the Cultural Revolution to do research in America, as well as the lives of her daughter and grandson. Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung delves further back in Chinese history with its tale of a mother and three daughters who flee to Taiwan due to the Communist victory of the late 1940s.

While some voyages are made for specific purposes, others can be meandering and ongoing. In Douglas Westerbeke's A Short Walk Through a Wide World, a young girl must stay on the move to keep a magical illness at bay. Miranda July's All Fours focuses on a middle-aged woman who attempts to brave a cross-country road trip solo, only to be derailed by an affair that changes her forever. Nell Irvin Painter's essay collection I Just Keep Talking reflects a historian and artist's lifelong journey of scholarship and thought about Black American experience, travel abroad and many other subjects.

Accompanying these reviews are several Beyond the Book articles that expand on the people and motivations behind the work, addressing Chung's inspirations for her novel, librarians who have turned to writing, like Westerbeke, July's previous books and films, and the strange fictions surrounding Sojourner Truth, a figure of interest for Painter.

We also bring you coverage of other recently released books, along with a brief history of the Pulitzer Prize, a Wordplay, a giveaway of Danielle Steel's latest historical novel Only the Brave and much more.

Thank you for subscribing to BookBrowse!

Davina & Nick
Founder & Publisher

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