Every month, we select a book that we love so much that we feel confident guaranteeing that you'll love it too, so much so that we'll give you your money back if you don't. Peruse this list if you're trying to remember one you missed or are looking for more recommendations like it.
November 2018
This wonderful story of a cat and the person he allowed to adopt him will leave you with a bittersweet happiness and an aching heart long after you turn the last page. —Amber
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October 2018
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September 2018
Lydia Kiesling’s Golden State asks the question: what if I just left this all behind? With her husband stuck in Turkey, his immigration status stuck in limbo due to a computer glitch, Daphne abandons her job at a prominent university and hits the road with her infant daughter to head for the fictional town of Altavista in the northern corner of California, but instead of finding the solace she hoped for Daphne is confronted with the reality of life in an isolated, small town, with residents that can just as easily spout islamophobic remarks or coo over her young child. At times a road novel, a campus novel and a classic California novel, Golden State is a nuanced and finely tuned look into our failings and blind spots as a culture as well as that ever elusive quest for a place to call home.
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August 2018
Spare in language but expansive in scope, The Incendiaries explores fanaticism, faith, and fellowship. It's a page-turner of intrigue and character, but also leaves much left unsaid. The intersection of loss and love provides all the kindling Kwon needs for this explosive debut.
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July 2018
An odd child finds her place in the world as a teenager: a part-time job at a convenience store provides the structure and rules she craves. But almost twenty years later, change--and her questioning of her place in the world--threatens stasis. This is an irresistible, quirky, layered novel that examines conformity, loneliness, and what's "normal."
June 2018
All the hype surrounding Tommy Orange is beyond well-deserved. A debut like this is one in a million. A multitude of characters, all for one reason or another on their way to one big Oakland powwow, fill these pages with stories of rage, beauty and despair. Orange Truly has a gift for voice and the characters in There There are destined to stay with you. — Emily
May 2018
Reading Disoriental is a bit like having a fever dream of a family you once had, but can only catch snippets of memories here and there. Nègar Djavadi's non-linear style kept leading me back into the dream, into the folklore of Kimiâ Sadr's family. Great-grandfathers with harems of wives, grandmothers with vivid blue eyes, and 7 uncles to name and hold close. It's the story of how a family can bind you to a place even when coups and revolutions exile you physically. Kimiâ of present day, sits in a French clinic waiting to be artificially inseminated, while past Kimiâ grows up amid the turmoil of 1970s Iran. I really can't recommend this book enough. It's got a bunch of my favorite things: queerness, epic family stories, strong women, political dissent, history, postcolonial themes, and amazing characters. — Sara
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April 2018
Despite its slender build of a mere 144 pages, reading Border Districts is an exercise in stamina. Gerald Murnane, always a rumored pick for the Nobel Prize, has melded together an impressive novel that deals with the constructs of memory in ways both philosophical and nostalgic. Our septuagenarian narrator relates to the reader his experience of remembering, itself mercurial and evasive, burying questions and uncertainty within his own recollections. The result is a rewarding and Proustian novel that takes you places while remaining stationary. Get on the Murnane train today. — John
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March 2018
I devoured Speak No Evil on a plane a few months ago, and I'm still haunted by the characters. This appears to be a blend of coming-of-age, coming out, and coming to America, but surprises lay ahead, too. It's a fast-paced narrative that will make you want to talk about it right away. — Pete
February 2018
Red Clocks is the story of four women in small-town Oregon, and how their lives change after the U.S. repeals Roe v. Wade, making abortion illegal again. It's a terrible world (it could act as the vanguard for Atwood's more developed dystopia in The Handmaid's Tale), but the book has so much hope. The women in Red Clocks, often referred to by their role in society -- the biographer, the student, the mother, and the mender -- struggle to find their own paths despite the conservative and devaluing attitudes that flourish around them. They have strong women from the past ("The Explorer") as well as each other to help them along on their journeys. It is literary "chick-lit," and I'm so down. Beautiful and soothing and a little weird in the best way. —Sara
January 2018
Told largely in four distinct sections, the Immortalists follows a group of siblings as they move toward their respective death dates, as foretold to them by a sybil when they were all children living in New York. Having already "spoiled" some of the drama with her expert premise, Chloe Benjamin still manages to conjure an incredible degree of drama and suspense throughout the book. Each character is fully imagined and the question of their fates proved to me irresistible, making the book impossible to neglect. Benjamin has truly arrived on the literary scene with this, just her second book!
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November 2017
Can you imagine a world in which the patriarchy has been destroyed? How would you like to grab it back, and have it matter? This is the amazing world of Naomi Alderman's The Power!
October 2017
Heaven is All Goodbyes is both a mirror held up to San Francisco’s many communities and a glimpse into the complexities of the reflective mind of bay area native Tongo Eisen-Martin. This collection of passionate new poems is a balance between surreal vignettes and salient insights into America’s socio-political landscape. Readers will find themselves stunned by questions with no easy answers. Heaven is All Goodbyes washes over readers the same way a jazz musician immerses listeners in a venue, at times conjuring every preceding note into one dense emotive solo rich with evocative meaning. Tongo Eisen-Martin’s background as a black studies educator, local political organizer, and fiercely creative writer all come clearly into view in this powerful body of work. Heaven is All Goodbyes is an invitation to San Francisco and America-at- large to grapple with its ghostly demons-- displacement, gentrification, poverty, mass-incarceration, and slavery-- in order for us to arrive in a world that has moved beyond oppression.
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September 2017
My Absolute Darling is a gut punch of a novel, with a lead character you will NEVER forget. Set vividly in Mendocino County, this is the story of a semi-feral girl named Turtle, her abusive father, her community, her coming of age, and her resilience. You think you don't want to go there, but Turtle will stay with you for a long time. The truly intense praise for this book from all corners--from Stephen King to the NY Times to Celeste Ng--means everyone you know will be talking about this book sooner or later. Read it first, and brag that Green Apple turned you onto it!
August 2017
June 2017
Gengoroh Tagame (think a living, Japanese Tom of Finland) has been a staple of gay erotic manga for decades. With the English-language release of "My Brother's Husband", his first all-ages title, Tagame introduces himself to a whole new audience. Tagame's crisp, distinct artwork and simple storytelling style shine in this entry-level volume. Hop on now and discover the artist Chipp Kidd calls his hero.
May 2017
Simply put, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds may just be the best book ever written on how to build a leftist movement since the 60's. adrienne marie brown (styling her name with lowercase letters in the spirit of bell hooks) places her fingers on the pulse of contemporary political movements and masterfully distills the most salient lessons and strategies into Emergent Strategy--brown's gift to a future generation of changemakers and marginalized people looking to end oppression as we know it. Co-editor of the acclaimed Octavia's Brood collection, adrienne maree brown builds on the understanding that "all organizing is science fiction." She takes lessone embedded in Octavia Butler's science fiction work, and applies them to her analyses of a lifetime of grassroots movement building. She weaves a rich collective of scientits, healers, organizers, authors, and life companions into each section, creating a truly emathetic, holistic, and well rounded book on social justice that any reader can engage with. With beautiful prose and striking insight, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds creates a sustainable path to egalitarian futurity, and inspires us in the real world to believe that we are the change we have been waiting for.
April 2017
What a strange, wonderful, sweet book. Eggshells is easily my favorite literary stroll around Dublin. And while the narrator, Vivian, is more than a bit unreliable, her heart is in the right place. After all, don’t we all want to find our home?
September 2016
A Gentleman in Moscow begins after the Bolshevik Revolution: Count Rostov is placed under house arrest at the Metropol hotel in Moscow. He’s lost his family, his estate, and most of his treasures, and he can never leave the hotel. Ever buoyant, though, Rostov makes the best of it, thanks to a rich cast of characters at the hotel that provide intrigue and diversions. Lose yourself in this grand, sweeping story, so richly detailed you’ll forget the fog that surrounds you.
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August 2016
Christodora is the story of a building and its inhabitants, a city and its citizens, a country and its crisis. In elegant prose spanning several decades, Tim Murphy has crafted an incredibly detailed portrait of the AIDS epidemic and its devastating effect on a whole host of characters. Murphy, who has covered the outbreak and fallout for years now, also creates a moving portrait of a couple and their adoptive son—cataloging their struggles through the New York art world and beyond. Readers will find a story complete with heart equaled by its overall significance as a historical artifact to our culture at large. — John
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July 2016
Being a Beast chronicles Charles Foster's attempt to inhabit the lives of a half dozen animals. In it, Foster regales us with tales of foraging through urban refuse (as a fox); dashing across moors with dogs in chase (as a deer); burrowing in the woods (as a badger), and more. It's a wacky project but Foster proves himself to be a storyteller of uncommon ability, which helps his book become something more than a curiosity. Instead, it's one of the most audacious and engaging books I've read in ages. Full of humor, brash opinions, and constantly verging on wildness, Being a Beast proves just how tantalizingly close--and yet ever-distant--we are to our fellow creatures. It's the kind of mind-expanding work that challenges readers, in the most fun way imaginable, to reconsider their own humanity. Read it! -- Sparks
June 2016
Homegoing traces the history of a family through a series of linked stories that span several centuries, from the time of the Atlantic slave trade to present day America. Yaa Gyasi is a young writer with a surprisingly mature ability to capture telling moments, whether of the dehumanizing horror of slavery or the manifestations of those very human traits that enabled a people to survive through unimaginable hardship. Written in a rich, lyrical prose, Homegoing has the mark of a classic, a book that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the best of Toni Morrison.
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May 2016
This book has it all: nature, love, science, drama, heartbreak, joy, and plenty of dirt. Not since Cheryl Strayed's Wild have I read such a rich and compelling nonfiction narrative. Lab Girl is the story of Jahren's life in science, and her writing on the wonders of nature will renew your sense of awe. But more than that, it is an exploration of friendship, mental illness, parenthood, and the messiness of life. The only flaw -- these pages fly by too quickly, leaving you wondering what you could possibly read next that will be just as good.
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March 2016
Anders' new novel is witty, empathetic, otherworldly, and imaginative. Here is the story of Patricia, a misanthropic, witchy Luddite who can converse with the parrots on Telegraph Hill, and Laurence, an endearing super-genius with impressive technological prowess. As the plot progresses, their lives intertwine in San Francisco, and the stakes become unbelievably high--as in, We-Gotta-Do-Something-Or-The-World-Is-Doomed high. My favorite book of the year so far!
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February 2016
Greenwell's debut novel, which has earned raves in the NY Times, the New Yorker, and elsewhere, follows an English teacher's changing relationship with a hustler in Eastern Europe. This beautifully-written story examines the burdens of desire and love, shame and guilt, with disarming, almost uncomfortable intimacy and honesty.
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November 2015
At long last, Drawn + Quarterly presents Adrian Tomine's Killing and Dying, his first short story collection in over a decade. To be sure, Tomine's been busy over the last 10-odd years, most visibly in his frequent contributions to the New Yorker, as well as his auto-biographical lark Scenes from an Impending Marriage, and the under-appreciated, long-form Shortcomings, one of the better works addressing post-millennial race relations in America.
Killing and Dying exhibits a new level of maturity compared to Tomine's earlier works. Anyone who's looked beyond the surface level of his illustrations (and to be fair, it's a really great-looking surface) knows that his stories have always had an absurdist bent to them, focusing on characters trapped in drab situations, usually of their own making.
Tomine's newest work is different in that now "escape" seems attainable. Be it from obsessing over one's own (questionable) talents ("A Brief History of the Art Form Known as 'Hortisculpture'"), an unhealthy relationship gradually reaching its breaking point ("Go Owls"), or a distressing, perpetual case of mistaken identity ("Amber Sweet"), these six stories are the work of someone who has come to realize that everything is transitory.
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October 2015
Aaron Englund uproots his life suddenly when he decides to leave his life-long partner Walter in Albuquerque to settle in San Francisco where he teaches ESL at a local school and lives in a garage-turned-studio-apartment by the ocean. His self-imposed bachelorhood forces him to confront his past: his Midwestern roots, an abusive father, a mother of not-quite-sound mind who abandoned him as a child, and a traumatic memory he has curiously blacked-out. A private investigator friend extends a helping hand when he offers to track down Aaron’s mother, who has maintained radio silence throughout his adult life. A coming-of-middle-age tale, that’s told with heart and bravado by Lori Ostlund, a long-time master of the short story now making her foray into the world of the novel. Ostlund delights with turns of phrase and humor throughout. Every detail, every sentence, every nuance, every hyphen is placed as carefully and as an acupuncturist’s needle—we feel alongside these characters and understand the depths of their predicaments and emotions. Ostlund succeeds in turning the everyday into the exceptional!
September 2015
Beauty is a Wound opens with a woman twenty years dead clawing her way out of the grave. From there the novel manages to become even more memorable. Written by Indonesia's greatest living writer, this sweeping epic of love, lust, and war is peopled by an unforgettably colorful cast of characters. Kurniawan, who has two novels in translation being published this fall (by different publishers), is worthy of assuming the place left by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He's that good.
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August 2015
Barbarian Days is full of joy, inquisition, passion, travel, and, of course, waves. If you know a surfer, this is a no-brainer, joy-inducing gift. The OB chapter alone is worth the price of admission, and his years traveling the globe in search of a great, empty wave make for a riveting travelogue. Beyond the waves, though, this thoughtful memoir definitely transcends the "surf" genre. The Chronicle review put it best: "Were I given unlimited space to review this book, I would simply reproduce it here, with a quotation mark at the beginning and another at the end."
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July 2015
As a bookseller, writer, and reviewer, a lot of books find their way into the teetering stacks near my bed. I picked up Mia Alvar's In the Country with few expectations, thinking I'd read the first couple of stories to gauge my interest. Cut to two days later when I finished the last piece on the 38R, almost tearful at knowing I'd have to leave Alvar's meticulously-crafted, intoxicatingly-detailed worlds. And yes, I do mean "worlds," plural -- within the first few paragraphs of each story, I slipped into Bahrain, Manila, upper-crust Boston, and Queens like one overtaken by a wave. For those of you who are skeptical of a collection of short stories as opposed to a novel (I'll admit, you perplex me), this is an easy foray into a different genre. Some of these pieces share characters, and their themes and locations are tethered by Alvar's interest in home & belonging, the elusive, slippery prize these people seek. Read this post-haste if you love clean, impactful prose a la Jhumpa Lahiri, Chimamanda Ngoze Adichie, or Jennifer Egan. If that doesn't impress you, consider the fact that this is Mia Alvar's debut (difficult to fathom), and that a first-timer's collection of short fiction (notoriously hard to sell) landed at a prestigious major publisher. Prepare to be walloped.
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June 2015
When I first picked up The Travels of Daniel Ascher, it felt heavy for such a small book, as if something invisible were weighing it down. I opened to the first page, and began a journey that I was not expecting. I found myself immersed in a love story, a mystery, a tragic retelling of horrors from the past, under the guise of a novel about a children's book author whose stories take place in remote and exotic locales. What begins as a curious investigation into where the ideas for his books come from, poetically transforms into an account of love and loss, of personal tragedy and redemption. Ultimately, it is a profound and moving story with sadness, reassurance and bits of humor sprinkled in for good measure. The beautiful heft of this book does not come from any physical attribute, but from the solid purpose and placement of each word on the page by an author who is truly magnificent in her craft.
May 2015
A is for awe, which is what I feel reading about these women: Angela, Billie Jean, Carol, Dolores, Ella — women who have changed and inspired the world. Awe as in awesome, which is what this book is, what these women are. Awesome as in rad, the root of radical. It’s radical that this book exists: not only because we need a feminist primer for children that cuts across race, class, and gender politics, but because it’s cool. Cool, as in: this isn’t just a book for kids, it’s a book I want to gift to my mom, to all my friends. Rad American Women is as fun as it is informative, as approachable as it is inspiring.
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April 2015
With each successive book, T.C. Boyle just continues to impress. Set in Fort Bragg, California and its surrounding environs, this novel—based on real events—follows Adam, an extreme anarchist to the max, as he continually evades and breaks the law. The manhunt that ensues stirs empathy for all characters involved, even the killer himself. Boyle is dialed in, and at his best here.
January 2015
From Scott McCloud, the author of the highly praised, Understanding Comics, comes the tale of a young sculptor who trades his life for his art.
David has 200 days to live.
What happens in 200 days?
Boy meets death.
Death cuts boy an irresistible deal.
Boy agrees.
Death abides.
Boy meets girl.
Girl is damaged.
Boy owes money to tough Russians.
Girl hides boy.
Boy creates beautiful misunderstood sculptures.
Girl confuses boy.
Boy confuses girl.
Things come together.
Things fall apart.
Death keeps his promise.
A great story for those who do and do not read graphic novels, The Sculptor ties together word and image so perfectly that the story leaps from the pages and into the heart of the reader.
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December 2014
On average, I recommend this book to someone once a day, maybe even two times. It is hands-down one of my favorite novels of 2014. Miriam Toews is a well-known author in Canada, her home, and she deserves to be a household name here in the U.S., too, next to Lorrie Moore, and Annie Proulx. Her writing is elegant yet crisp and she tackles the difficult topic of suicide with perfect balance, using humor as a bulwark against despair. Highly and forever recommended!
—Clara
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November 2014
Michel Faber's Book of Strange New Things is an unforgettable story of love, distance, and desire. You can call the novel science fiction if you'd like--it does feature a bizarre alien race and the end of the world (not at all in the way you think)--but sci-fi elements aside, it's really an epic of the strangeness of life. Faber is a master at developing plot and character; you'll find yourself swept up in this enchanting universe.
—Stephen Sparks
June 2014
Roz Chast's memoir is a deeply human look at her relationship with her aging parents. At turns angry and sad, but always filtered through Chast's trademark humor, Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? articulates the concerns that many of us are (or soon will be) experiencing with our own parents. This is the rare book that manages to successfully pull off what it risks. It's got the feel of a classic.
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May 2014
Rivka Galchen's much-anticipated new book is a sly and wondrous love letter--and maybe Dear John letter, too--to her literary forebears. These ten stories, which each reframe a classic story by writers as unalike as James Thurber and Jorge Luis Borges (among others), demonstrate Galchen's subtle and wry sense of humor, her keen sense of psychology, and her lyrical prose. Moving from the mundane to the surreal and everywhere in-between, American Innovations is a brilliant feat of imagination by one of the best literary minds in contemporary fiction.
I recommend it enthusiastically. Really, ask me about it. You'll have a hard time getting me to shut up.
- Sparks
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April 2014
I am not generally one to be drawn to novels that can be described as “magical” or “mystical,” and especially not “feel-good,” but all of those words can be applied to The Plover, along with “salty,” and even “brilliant.” The Plover is the simple story of a man getting onto his little boat and heading out to sea to escape the world, but the world follows him out and keeps him company. It is a beautiful novel filled with extraordinary characters who will carry you away on a journey of solitude, of mysticism and exploration.
Books like this don't come along very often, so dive in and enjoy each pleasant surprise.
December 2013
As starkly sarcastic and manly as you'd expect from our favorite mustachioed, woodworking Parks and Rec star, these "fundamentals for delicious living" include (but are not limited to): performing, drinking, loving, and worshiping Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, song, and theater.
Nestled between stories about his life in theater, woodworking, and growing up in rural Minooka, Illinois, are essential guides such as "How To Be A Man" (eat steak, drink whiskey, punch a socialist) and how to "Be Smart While Getting Stupid" (a healthy approach to mind-altering substances like beer or pork rinds). These guides even include drawings of Offerman performing tasks from these guides, original poems about his wife (Megan Mullally) and, of course, paddling your own canoe.
In his own words, "each story comes with a delicious fundamental—advice about living life that I hope you'll find useful...how an average human dipsh*t like myself, relying solely on warped individuality and a little elbow grease, can actually rise from a simple life of relative poverty to one of prosperity, measured in American dollars and Italian band saws, sure, but more importantly, laughter, wood shavings, and kisses."
- Ronnie
October 2013
I picked up this book because I love David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas and more. When I started his introduction I had no idea just what I was in for. Naoki Higashida is a 13 year old boy with autism. Although Naoki is unable to communicate verbally, his mother and teacher have devised a system that allows him to slowly form words and sentences that evolve into poems and stories--which resulted in The Reason I Jump. This is a heartfelt and touching account of Naoki trying to describe why he might react a certain way in different situations. That itself is pretty intense, but the beauty of this book lies in Naoki's understanding of and connection with nature. I can see why David Mitchell and his wife Ka Yoshida wanted to pass this book on to the English-speaking world, as it should be translated into every language. This book doesn't just open your eyes to what it is like to be be autistic but what it is like to be human.
- Nick
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August 2013
This book is not about the invention of murder so much as the sensationalizing of crime in Victorian England. Flanders retells gruesome stories of many different types of murder, both famous and obscure: from Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd to Burke and Hare's body-snatching business in Edinburgh. The British loved murder. Not the actual act itself, but the telling: You'll see murders through multiple editions of newspapers hawked on the streets, bestselling novels, stage plays, musicals, and even puppet shows. Not to mention the birth of the detective novel. If you think that obsession with and media saturation of murder is a modern phenomenon (Hello Nancy Grace), get ready to have your mind changed. With an irresistible cast of swindlers, forgers, poisoners, the mad, the bad and the utterly dangerous, The Invention of Murder is both a mesmerizing tale of crime and punishment, and history at its most readable.
- Martin
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July 2013
Dreadful is a thoroughly researched, sympathetic portrayal of a talented, mercurial, heavy-drinking, and ultimately tragic novelist who wrote one important book.
John Horne Burns's 1947 masterpiece--The Gallery--was praised by every critic and WWII novelist--Hemingway, Michener, Vidal. It was a revelation at the time, illustrating the confrontation between often obtuse US soldiers and the citizens of Naples. One landmark (at the time) chapter illustrates the personalities of a Napoli gay bar frequented by gay soldiers.
Margolick's scholarship, aided by Burns's prodigious correspondence, will make you cringe at how many wrong decisions one man can make--literary success for Burns was followed by burning bridges with critics, his peers, and his day job, then followed by self-immolation through alcoholism just shy of his 37th birthday.
This re-examination of Burns and The Gallery is especially prescient today in light of new research around American GI's treatment of Europeans in the months following V-day. John Horne Burns and his landmark novel deserve this valuable book.
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June 2013
All of the (rave) reviews you will read about The Son will call it a "western" and make comparisons to the works of Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy. These comparisons are right, but The Son is also much more than that; it is nothing less than a micro-history of the settlement of the North American continent, as told through the bloody, rapacious story of five generations of one Texas family. Beginning with the butchering of patriarch Eli McCullough's family by Comanches in 1849, and ending with oil Baroness Jeanne Anne's story in 2012, we follow the family as it grows in wealth and power, sometimes honestly, but more usually not. There aren't many 576 page novels that you wish were longer, but as I neared the end of this epic tome, I began to grow nostalgic for it even as the remaining pages were counting down. The Son is a great book.
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April 2013
Rachel Kushner, of Telex from Cuba (2008) fame, reaffirms her remarkable ability to capture readers with The Flamethrowers, a novel about a young female artist newly arrived in New York City. Upon her arrival from the Midwest, Reno (a reference to her place of birth) finds herself stuck on the fringe of the artistic culture of SoHo and the East Village. An affair with Sandro Valera, an artist and heir to a fortune built upon motorcycles, draws her deeper into his world and ultimately to his family's estate in Italy. After learning of her lover's true nature, Reno leaves the protection that Sandro's wealth affords her and becomes caught up in the socio-political revolution engulfing Italy at the time. This atmosphere of violence and poverty allows Kushner's vivid examination of gender, culture and class to speak simultaneously about the 1970s and today.
March 2013
Reader, meet your next book club book. Schroder has a clear hook: Eric Schroder (who has gone by Eric Kennedy since his youth trying to fit in as an immigrant), has kidnapped his six-year-old daughter during a parental visit. It's a week on the road and on the lam. Beyond the compelling hook, though, this novel explores all kinds of complexity: what it means to be a good parent; what makes us "American;" and so on. Schroder is both a page-turner and a lyrical meditation on parental love. Both of Gaige's previous books have been Green Apple favorites, but now she has really hit her stride with this triumph of voice
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January 2013
Recently enshrined Nobel laureate Mo Yan's latest novel is a rip-roarin', gut-bustin', greasy meal of a book. Pow! chronicles the rough and tumble childhood of Luo Xiaotong, a perpetually hungry boy growing up in Slaughterhouse Village, a place where meat is king and looks are deceiving. Little Ziaotong, who's already been called Mo Yan's Candide, would like nothing better than to overcome his insatiable desire for the pleasures of the flesh (both cooked and, um, uncooked), but a whole army of forces, some of which appear to be supernatural, conspire against him, which leads to some of the wildest scenes in contemporary fiction. Pow! is a hilariously slapstick affair, salted with subtle critique of a corrupt government and well-seasoned with sly satire. It's a resounding confirmation of Mo Yan's place among the best writers of our time.
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December 2012
Proposing that diversity is what connects us all, Solomon looks at a fundamental dilemma of parenting: to what extent parents should accept their children for who they are, and to what extent they should help them become their best selves. He explores the cultures and lives of those who have fallen "far from the tree:" deaf children of hearing parents, dwarfs, children born of rape, and so on.
This is one of those big idea books that can either totally consume a few weeks of your free time or be read in chunks over months. Either way, you will be left with a new appreciation for the human experience in all its diversity.
Still don't believe me? See this NYT review for how Far From the Tree will make you a "more imaginative and understanding parent - or human being."
-Pete
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August 2012
Jess Walter's novel Beautiful Ruins, as the title suggests, is the story of what happens to a group of people who are all trying to re-capture what once or never was. It begins with the filming of the 1962 film Cleopatra, in a small town in Italy where a young starlet has been hidden away as part of the scheme by a master manipulator of Hollywood lore. The novel then leaps around in time, from that small Italian town to present day Los Angeles with several stops in between, touching several apparently unconnected lives with a thread that it eventually uses to gather them seamlessly together. The result is what can only be described as a big story, one that would seem to have jumped right off the silver screen inhabited by the likes of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton (a character in the book), were it not for the fact that it's Walter's undeniable skill as a novelist that makes what could just be Hollywood lore feel true.
-Molly