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

Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we feature Karen Russell's The Antidote, a sprawling and fantastical Dust Bowl epic that explores cultural memory and forgetfulness.

Book clubs and readers may find Michelle de Kretser's Theory & Practice pairs fruitfully with Jessica Zhan Mei Yu's But the Girl, which we covered back in November. De Kretser's novel details a Sri Lankan-born Australian woman's struggles to resolve her feelings about Virginia Woolf's racism as she writes her graduate thesis …more on The Years (Yu's book builds a similar plotline around the work of Sylvia Plath).

More new writing communes with old in Ben Okri's Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted, which revives the clairvoyant of T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land as a character involved in the making of a French forest festival for those suffering from lost love.

A different backdrop of nature presides in Chloe Dalton's Raising Hare, a favorite of our First Impressions reviewers that portrays the author's encounter with a wild hare in the English countryside during the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe by Mahogany L. Browne focuses on the experiences of New York teenagers in lockdown through a series of linked YA stories. And Cynthia Weiner's A Gorgeous Excitement takes us back to 1980s Manhattan with a fictionalized view of the "Preppy Killer" that follows a young woman's coming of age in the city.

We also bring you additional articles and reviews, author interviews, previews of upcoming books, a new Wordplay, and much more.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse subscriber!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review two works of nonfiction written by novelists that address ongoing wars of occupation. Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This critiques the response of Western liberals, among others, to Israel's bombardment of Gaza, while Victoria Amelina's posthumous Looking at Women Looking at War is an on-the-ground account of life in Ukraine, with a focus on women resisting Russian invasion. Accompanying Beyond the Book articles …more cover the popular phenomenon of "In This House, We Believe" lawn signs and events preceding the Russia-Ukraine war.

Many of our First Impressions reviewers adored the new Anne Tyler novel Three Days in June, which follows a character plagued with frustrations on the day before her daughter's wedding. In William Boyle's somewhat more intense domestic drama Saint of the Narrows Street, a wife kills her abusive husband with a cast iron pan and the event haunts her and those around her in the ensuing years. Alligator Tears, a memoir-in-essays by Edgar Gomez about coming of age as a second-generation immigrant, celebrates non-traditional family in the forms of a loving single mother and queer community. Amira Ghenim's A Calamity of Noble Houses, now translated into English from Arabic, tells the story of two families with differing values, linked by marriage and brought into conflict by a shocking affair.

Other new translations in this issue are Robert Seethaler's The Café with No Name, a tale that captures the everyday lives of ordinary people in post-World War II Vienna, and Mayumi Inaba's Mornings Without Mii, a touching account of the life and death of the author's beloved cat companion (cat lovers should know that Three Days in June features its own feline friend).

We also bring you additional reviews and articles, previews of many upcoming releases, March Books We're Excited About, a new Wordplay, and more.

Thank you for subscribing to BookBrowse!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we cover Gliff, acclaimed author Ali Smith's latest. Set in an impressionistically drawn dystopia traversed by two children, it explores language, authoritarianism, and meaning. Tao Leigh Goffe's Dark Laboratory, another book about human resistance to harmful systems, counters common narratives by connecting the climate crisis to colonial pasts.

We also feature the most recent English translation of work by 2024 Nobel winner Han Kang. Through the vivid story …more of an isolated writer tasked with trekking to her friend's home in a blizzard to care for a pet bird, We Do Not Part probes the depths of the Jeju massacre, a long-repressed episode of Korean history.

Kang's is one of many titles in this e-zine that center women or girls on troubling, chaotic, or mysterious journeys. In Soft Core by Brittany Newell, a San Francisco stripper's life is upended when her best friend and housemate vanishes. Margie Sarsfield's Beta Vulgaris sees a Brooklyn hipster and her boyfriend travel to work a Minnesota sugar beet harvest, where people begin to go missing. A stage actress skips out on Thanksgiving plans to reckon with a former mentor's fall from grace in Mischa Berlinski's Mona Acts Out. Aria Aber's Good Girl follows a restless daughter of Afghan refugees through Berlin's club scene. Marie van Lieshout's YA graphic novel Song of a Blackbird focuses on a girl in Amsterdam who discovers her family history is a lie and seeks to uncover the truth in a tale sprawling back to World War II. And in Kate Fagan's The Three Lives of Cate Kay, a writer who's literally made a name for herself addresses her fraught histories with the women she's loved.

Plus, enjoy additional reviews and articles, a blog on the phenomenon known as LitRPG, the latest book news, a new Wordplay, and more.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse member!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we detour into the past. Instead of our usual new hardcovers, you'll find pre-2000 gems handpicked by our reviewers.

It's striking how relevant some of these books are to our current moment, and how applicable they could be to our future. Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac (1949) is a seminal work of environmental writing that foresaw climate disaster. The Breakthrough (1966), a science fiction story by Daphne du Maurier (of Rebecca fame), raises points …more about the devaluation of human lives pertinent to today's disability justice movement.

In James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room (1956), an early work of queer fiction, an overseas American's destructive resistance to love is arguably not so different from the oblivious and extractive culture that Leopold and du Maurier's works address. Patricia Highsmith's The Price of Salt, or Carol (1952), by contrast, is known as one of the first lesbian love stories with a "happy" ending.

Toni Morrison's debut The Bluest Eye (1970) examines racialized beauty standards through Pecola Breedlove, a Black girl who desperately wants blue eyes. It remains one of the most banned books at a time when titles about Black experiences continue to be disproportionately challenged. As we approach Black History Month, this serves as a reminder of the importance of preserving the past to inform the present.

We also review Fyodor Dostoevsky's White Nights (1848), a tale of unrequited love that's made waves on the video platform TikTok, and Agatha Christie's mega-bestseller And Then There Were None (1939). Plus, we bring you coverage of other classics and new paperbacks, February Books We're Excited About, a giveaway of Adelle Waldman's Help Wanted, and much more.

This issue causes us to reflect on many things we shouldn't take for granted, including your support — thank you so much for being a BookBrowse member!

— The BookBrowse Team

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Dear BookBrowsers,

Happy 2025! In this issue, we kick off the year's reading with standout novels featuring richly imagined versions of our world. In Nnedi Okorafor's Death of the Author, a struggling writer finds success in penning a sci-fi story about a post-apocalyptic Earth — our accompanying Beyond the Book article explores other fascinating examples of "novels within novels." The Capital of Dreams by Heather O'Neill tells the tale of a teenage girl swept up in an attack on the fictional …more country of Elysia, where modern sensibilities meet a fairytale past.

Samantha Harvey's Orbital, recipient of the 2024 Booker Prize, is a vivid fictionalized depiction of the International Space Station crew going about their day as they contemplate our planet from afar. Jason De León's National Book Award winner Soldiers and Kings tracks the lives and quotidian concerns of human smugglers moving migrants to the US border.

We generally only feature books we can enthusiastically recommend with a 4 or 5-star rating, but sometimes we run a 3-star review to add to the conversation around a title. Here, we include coverage of Adam Ross's Playworld, which trails a young actor who is also a high school wrestler, excelling at moments when it reads like a sports novel. Juhea Kim's City of Night Birds is another foray into extreme athleticism, following a ballerina's dramatic return to the stage.

Looking for something a bit lighter? Asia Mackay's A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage relates the humorous story of a relationship between murderers gone stagnant.

Plus, check out other reviews and articles, previews of upcoming releases, our giveaway of John Dufresne's My Darling Boy, new First Impressions books, and much more. And if you haven't already, enjoy our literary quiz recapping last year's Top 20.

Thanks for being a BookBrowse member!

Nick
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

As we near the end of 2024, we feature the Top 20 Books of the Year chosen by our subscribers, and announce our Award Winners. Plus, our reviewers cover four books voted in by write-in nomination especially for this issue. We're grateful to everyone who participated for contributing to a fantastic annual roundup.

The winner of our Top Debut award is Eve J. Chung's sweeping Daughters of Shandong, which follows a mother and her daughters escaping from China to Taiwan during …more the Communist revolution. This book is on our list of favorite First Impressions reads of the year, also in this issue.

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, an intriguing fictionalized drama of the real-life midwife Martha Ballard, takes the Top Fiction prize.

The Demon of Unrest, Erik Larson's absorbing exploration of pre-Civil War tensions, comes out ahead of the pack for our Top Nonfiction distinction.

And this year's Top YA ranking goes to one of our write-in nominees, Everything We Never Had, Randy Ribay's compact but moving tale of the complicated and shifting relationships between four generations of Filipino men.

Besides Ribay's novel, the newly reviewed books in this issue are Hisham Matar's Booker-longlisted and National Book Award finalist My Friends, the expansive but quietly reflective story of a Libyan exile living in London; Marjan Kamali's compelling The Lion Women of Tehran, centered on the friendship of two girls coming of age during a tumultuous period of contemporary Iranian history; and Lynda Cohen Loigman's The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern, a cozy literary romance that may just offer the perfect winter escape. Other Top 20 books include Percival Everett's James, winner of this year's National Book Award for Fiction; Elizabeth Strout's latest character-driven marvel Tell Me Everything; and The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich, a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction.

Big Holiday Wordplay fans, you'll be pleased to know that this year's mammoth conundrum is bigger and better than ever. Solve as many of our whopping 15 (yes, 15) clues as you can and enter for a chance to win a free one-year membership.

Thank you again to everyone who voted, and thank you for subscribing to BookBrowse — we couldn't do this without your support!

Davina & Nick
Founder & Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In our second-to-last issue of the year, we feature recent books from acclaimed authors that paint vivid pictures of lives in retrospect. Alan Hollinghurst's Our Evenings spans a British actor's memories from the 1960s to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and André Aciman's Roman Year recounts a period spent in Rome as a young adult after his Jewish family was exiled from Egypt. Weike Wang's upcoming Rental House also travels through time, examining American society …more through a couple's fraught vacations five years apart.

In addition to new or soon-to-be-released books, we cover a sprinkling of lesser-known gems from earlier in 2024, including Maureen Sun's The Sisters K, a modern gender-flipped retelling of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and Jessica Zhan Mei Yu's But the Girl, which follows an Australian PhD student on an artist residency in the UK as she ponders creativity, her Malaysian heritage, and her complicated academic relationship with Sylvia Plath. Alongside these two classic-inflected contemporary debuts, we bring you a Beyond the Book article on the unique publisher they share, Unnamed Press, as well as one on beloved poet Plath's only novel, The Bell Jar.

Another glowing debut, Before the Mango Ripens by Afabwaje Kurian, tells the complex and hopeful tale of a village in 1970s Nigeria under the influence of American missionaries.

And Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny's powerful posthumous memoir Patriot lays out a vision for the "normal country" he imagined his homeland could become.

You can also enjoy other reviews and articles, recommendations for book clubs, author interviews, a roundup of Our Most Anticipated Books for 2025, a new Wordplay, and more.

Thanks for subscribing to BookBrowse!

Davina & Nick
Founder & Publisher

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