By
New York Times:
- Janet Maslin on Still Missing by Chevy Stevens: "Ms. Stevens treats Annie's captivity as a long and
emotionally fraught battle of wills. She resists the pyrotechnics of sadomasochistic love that
show up in Chelsea Cain's grisly cat-and-mouse thrillers like "Heartsick," which pairs a
beautiful serial killer with the detective who was once her prisoner and still finds something
erotically thrilling in her cruelty. Ms. Stevens's version of this prisoner-captive dynamic is
quieter, less gory and extremely creepy in its more subdued way." - Kakutani on Walks With Men by Ann Beattie: "Things happen abruptly like this in Beattieland. Although she's
made a concerted effort in her later fiction to connect the dots "” sometimes resorting to
ridiculously contrived plots, as in the unfortunate 1997 novel, "My Life, Starring Dara Falcon"
"” Ms. Beattie's most famous work tends to renounce causality and consequence. Accidents and
random events plague her characters, and many of them, like Jane here, are oddly passive,
drifting or going with the flow, trying to live willfully in the present, as if past choices and
mistakes never piled up." - Maslin on So Cold the River by Michael Koryta: "Even though much about "So Cold the River" seems to have been
tacked on rather than coaxed forth organically, the surreal nature of the water has a unifying
effect. Mr. Koryta is able to suggest that something fearsome has been uncorked by Eric's
investigation and that it won't be going back into its bottle any time soon.
This novel moves past its churned-up yet exciting finale toward a suggestion that the curse of
the Pluto Water has by no means been resolved. Someone asks at the end of the story: Is the
worst over? Mr. Koryta leaves his readers with the hint of a sequel and the feeling that his
premise hasn't run dry." - Richard Eder on The Spot by David
Means: "It does indeed require light to shape and configure an image of darkness; thus,
chiaroscuro. Yet in "The Spot," Mr. Means's new collection, the dark is so impenetrable that the
reader is apt to feel lost in it."
Los Angeles Times:
- Eric Banks on The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell: "The narrative is pockmarked with
too many meanwhile-back-at-the-temple leaps, and the thread shows too often when Mitchell tries to stitch together the book's set pieces and
character studies. In his earlier books, the disconnect of stories across time and space
were fascinatingly and proddingly jarring. Here, they're frequently just jarring. Which isn't to
say that "Thousand Autumns" is a flop "” far from it. When not tripping over the intricacies of
its plot line, the novel features some of Mitchell's most luscious writing yet." - Our own Jeff VanderMeer on The Most Powerful Idea in the World by William Rosen: "A young Steampunk's dream, William Rosen's "The Most Powerful Idea in the World" manages to make sense of the many threads that together tell the story of the origins and applications of steam power. The book has a crackling energy to it, often as riveting as it is educational. Rosen, in pursuit of evidence, makes interesting, even exciting, such subjects as patent law from the Roman Tiberius on, technological innovation in ancient China and the role of practice in separating out accomplished performers from the "merely good." If Rosen at times seems too hell-bent on single-minded pursuit of his enthusiasms, at least that's better than a dull book."
- David L. Ulin on You Never Give Me Your Money:The Beatles After the Breakup
by Peter Doggett: "'You Never Give Me Your Money' posits a nuanced afterlife for the Beatles, if "afterlife" is the right word. For Doggett, their breakup was a process, beginning in late 1967, after the death of longtime manager Brian Epstein, and dragging on in some form or another to the present day. His book is remarkable for many reasons, not least that 48 years after the release of "Love Me Do," he has found a new lens (and much new information) through which to consider the band. Yet even more striking is his sense of the textures, the delicate interplay of individual and collective history, that continued to define the members of the Beatles long after they had ceased to function as a cohesive entity."
Globe and Mail:
- Charles Foran on The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell: "A writer as naturally curious, generous and able to translate an acute perceptivity to, and wonder at, the natural world as David Mitchell isn't likely to produce a hushed, low-key novel. For some, Black Swan Green was even a little muted: Mitchell with the volume kept too low on his singular voice "“ or, rather, his glorious voices. Though direct in its storytelling, Jacob de Zoet marks a return to full amplitude. That means occasionally over-long scenes and one or two rambling monologues. But it also guarantees fiction of exceptional intelligence, richness and vitality."
- Don Tapscott on The Facebook Effect by
David Kirkpatrick: "Kirkpatrick dramatically chronicles many of the company's amazing contributions to solving social problems, from fighting kidnappers in Colombia to helping Barack Obama become president. One is left with a clear picture of the positive power of one of the most significant communications revolutions ever." - Randy Boyagoda on The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker: "Gerbrand Bakker's debut novel, The Twin... is unapologetically slow-paced, patient in its revelations, almost ritualistic in its descriptions of quotidian things, melancholic and meditative in its narrative voice and capable, at its best moments, of bringing off remarkably moving and tense passages concerning a middle-aged Dutchman's fraught relationship to his aged father, a relationship permanently and tragically forged in fracture by the accidental death of the Dutchman's twin brother "“ the always preferred son "“ when they were teenagers."
Comments