The American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next List for April will name two books with the same title as the shared No. 1 pick: LIFE AFTER LIFE — both Kate Atkinson’s novel, publishing April 2 from Reagan Arthur Books, and Jill McCorkle’s novel of the same name, coming from Algonquin on March 26. The ABA says this is the first time two books have shared the No. 1 slot (let alone two books with the same title). “The reason is that they had an equal amount of support from the indie booksellers.” In a preview of the ABA’s Winter Institute, starting […]
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Buzz Reviews: The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides
Review by Alex Shephard Graduation is supposed to signify an end and a beginning, the transition between the ivory tower and the “real world.” But in The Marriage Plot, his first novel since Middlesex won the Pulitzer Prize almost a decade ago, Jeffrey Eugenides follows three newly-minted graduates to question the idea of a clean break between these two periods. In the process, he renders familiar insecurities, frustrations, and transformations into the most convincing and authentic portrait of post-graduate life in recent memory. Like the thousands of students who are receiving their diplomas in June 1982, the trio of students […]
Buzz Reviews: The Boy in the Suitcase, by Lene Kaaberbol & Agnete Friis
Review by Sarah Weinman The Scandinavian crime boom, which started with Henning Mankell and exploded thanks to Stieg Larsson, shows no sign of abating. Jo Nesbo’s now bestselling authors, James Patterson folded Liza Marklund into his team of co-writers, and publishers are pinning high hopes this summer and fall on books from Jussi Adler-Olsen, Lars Kepler, and Mons Kallentoft, among (so) many others. But the sleeper of the bunch, and among the best crime novels of the year, comes from the collaborative alchemy of internationally bestselling fantasy writer Lene Kaaberbol and children’s book author Agnete Friis, scooped up by Soho […]
Buzz Reviews: Blue Nights, by Joan Didion
Review by Rachel Syme When The Year of Magical Thinking appeared in 2005, it established Joan Didion as the high priestess of anointed grief counselors — her meticulous and minimalist memoir of losing her husband to heart failure hit a cultural and emotional chord that continues to reverberate. In Blue Nights, Didion’s new memoir, she turns to motherhood with a similar clinical detachment — again a shock, but in this case, one that feels much more uncomfortable. Didion’s gimlet eye is always welcome; the conclusions that she draws from it, maybe less so. Two months before Magical Thinking‘s publication, Didion’s 39-year-old adopted daughter, Quintana […]
Buzz Reviews: Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, by Susan Orlean
Review by Edward Champion Susan Orlean’s work has long circled the eccentric cauldron bubbling above the dutiful fire of American life. Orlean’s journalistic gifts have led her to souls who socialize on Saturday nights, the intoxicating originality of misunderstood artists like The Shaggs, and the wayward passions of orchid collectors. Now Orlean has discovered another effervescent subject hiding in plain sight: a cultural canine with a remarkably resilient heritage. You don’t have to be a dog enthusiast or a couch potato to appreciate this hearty tale, for Rin Tin Tin’s ascent and duration coincides with several high points throughout the […]
Buzz Reviews: Running The Rift, by Naomi Benaron
Review by Michael Schaub Over 17 years have passed since the world was shocked by the Rwandan Genocide, the systematic murder of hundreds of thousands of citizens of the east African nation. The massacre had its roots in the longstanding blood feud between the country’s main ethnic groups, the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority. After the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, in 1994, government forces and militias raped and murdered Tutsi citizens (as well as some uncooperative Hutus). These series of atrocities forms the backdrop of Naomi Benaron’s debut novel Running the Rift, the winner of the […]