The Gulf by Belle Boggs
★★★☆☆ Belle Boggs’ first novel The Gulf takes a few interesting toys out of the toy chest, lines them all up, then abruptly sweeps them into the trash. The novel succeeds when humorously skewering...
Category: Literature
Henry, Himself by Stewart O’Nan
★★★★☆ Returning to the fictional Maxwell family of Pittsburg, Stewart O’Nan’s Henry, Himself provides the backstory for two of the author’s previous, highly appreciated novels. The first, Wish You Were Here (2002), introduced the...
Friend of My Youth by Amit Chaudhuri
★★★☆☆ Amit Chaudhuri upends the traditional homecoming tale with his seventh novel, Friend of My Youth. Meta-narrated by a character named Amit Chaudhuri, this short work tracks his begrudging return to Bombay to...
The Parade by Dave Eggers
★★★★☆ Dave Eggers’ The Parade is a concise, finely executed work of understated elegance. It’s the kind of extended parable that need not flood you with backstory about its principal characters, and is even...
Nothing but the Night by John Williams
★★★☆☆ Written in 1948 while the author was stationed in Burma, Nothing but the Night is a curious early work by celebrated American novelist John Williams (1922-1994). The novella investigates the haunted past of...
Golden State by Ben H. Winters
★★☆☆☆ Unwarranted comparisons to 1984 should be punished with the severity of Orwellian dictatorships. Ben H. Winters really wants his novel Golden State to land among the authoritarian greats, but he spends too much...
Milkman by Anna Burns
★★★☆☆ Compellingly anxious and paranoid, Anna Burns’ Milkman (winner of the 2018 Booker Prize) is a timely, rambling novel set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Burns’ narrator is a thoughtful eighteen-year-old woman with a...
Trump Sky Alpha by Mark Doten
★★★★☆ Mark Doten’s Trump Sky Alpha is one of few recent novels with something salient to portray about our current Trump era. Compare this to last year’s Gary Shteyngart novel Lake Success, which, while...
The Age of Light by Whitney Scharer
★★★★☆ Is The Age of Light worth a million bucks? If you follow the book business, it’s a question you’ll be asking yourself the minute you pick up author Whitney Scharer’s debut novel, which...
