FullReviews Index
Infinite Jest
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace's 1996 novel of addiction and recovery, popular entertainment, and tennis has been hailed as a work of genius, one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It is a long and complex work bearing the labyrinthine threads of plot and stylistic intricacies for which Wallace was famous, and certainly one of the most engrossing novel I have ever read.
Wake Up, Sir!
What kind of book has Jonathan Ames written this time? Well, think of Cervantes' Don Quixote, except that "Wake Up, Sir!" is not as good. Alan Blair is a young, loony writer with numerous problems of the mental, emotional, sexual, spiritual, and physical variety. He's very good at problems. He's also quite skilled at getting into trouble. But luckily for Alan, he has a personal valet, a wondrously helpful fellow named Jeeves, who does his best to sort things out for his young master.
Her Fearful Symmetry
Audrey Niffenegger, renown for her wonderful debut 'The Time Traveler's Wife,' proves herself yet again in 'Her Fearful Symmetry,' in which she explores the unseen world of spirits. Chicago twins, Julia and Valentina Poole, inherit their deceased aunt's estate, on the condition that they live in her London flat - overlooking Highgate Cemetary - for a year.
The Wild Things
'The Wild Things' is a novelized version of 'Where the Wild Things Are,' Maurice Sendak's wonderfully captivating children's book about a young boy, who after being sent to his room for making "mischief of one sort and another," sails off into the world of imagination to a jungle island populated with a small cast of monsters who proclaim him their king.
The Last Song
It seems that it took only a moment for 'The Last Song' to reach number one on both the 'USA Today' and 'New York Times' lists of best-selling books. Such is the norm when Nicholas Sparks publishes a new novel. His previous novels, and the films made from them, have created a built-in and extraordinarily loyal audience. And, he is loyal to his audience, always trying to give them what they want.
The Winner Stands Alone
Internationally bestselling author Paulo Coelho's latest novel, The Winner Stands Alone, is like his bestselling The Alchemist, but with a murderer on the loose. In this psychological thriller, the action takes place during twenty-four hours at the Cannes Film Festival, where supermodels, film producers, and fashionistas are all vying for their fifteen minutes of fame. And one man is there to thwart that moment in the spotlight. Read more.
Dragon House
'Dragon House' marks John Shors' third novel, after 'Beneath a Marble Sky' and 'Beside a Burning Sea.' Each novel has moved forward in time from Moghul India to World War Two to the present. A fourth novel is due for release in September 2010, 'The Wishing Tree.' All of his novels have been set in some corner of Asia. Each has deftly caught the milieu and language of its setting.
The Blue Notebook
James A. Levine's standout debut novel, 'The Blue Notebook,' is a difficult kind of fiction. It's the kind of fiction that reveals a truth so painful you hope it remains within the book's pages. It's the kind of fiction that convinces you of a disturbing reality that exists beyond the story itself, even though you wish it didn't.
The Angel's Game
Carlos Ruiz Zafón's (The Shadow of the Wind)latest novel, The Angel's Game, is told from the perspective of David Martin, a Barcelona youth who makes his living as a journalist and writer of pulp fiction novels. Martin survives his troubled childhood by taking refuge in stories until — at the age of seventeen — he gets the chance to begin writing his own. Under the patronage of Pedro Vidal, Martin makes a quick rise to fame by telling tales of Barcelona's gritty underworld.
Overqualified
In Overqualified, Joey Comeau spins a narrative of love and loss via a most unusual vehicle: a series of letters. Not your ordinary epistolary collection, Comeau's missives are in fact letters of application for employment - cover letters, purportedly mailed to companies like HBO, Rand, and Parker Brothers.
Little Bee
'Little Bee' is the story of a tenuous friendship that emerges between a Nigerian refuge girl and a white British magazine editor.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet is a 12-year-old cartographer living on the Coppertop Ranch just 4.73 miles North of the tiny town of Divide, Montana. His middle name is in honor of the bird that met its demise against the Spivet kitchen window at the exact moment of the boy's birth. T.S. keeps the skeletal remains of that sparrow on his drafting table, in a bedroom flanked by shelves crammed with the notebooks in which he maps his world. This is no ordinary Montana ranch boy.
The Great Perhaps
In the weeks leading up to the 2004 presidential election, the Caspers are a family in decline, each member watching helplessly as the ties that bind them unravel despite utter devotion to the simple tenets they believe will save them. In 'The Great Perhaps,' Joe Meno dashes the efficacy of simple answers with a story woven together in intricately structured five part harmony, each part with its own distinct voice.
Out of My Skin
In 'Out of My Skin' John Haskell's narrator-protagonist moves to Los Angeles to write movie reviews and, in an act of self-transformation, ends up a Steve Martin impersonator.
The Ten-Year Nap
As one of the endorsements points out, Meg Wolitzer is a social observer of Tom Wolfe-ian status, and her writing style mimics his to a tee. 'The Ten-Year Nap' includes both deliciously pointed observations and annoying, too-clever remarks. Despite the promise of this unflinching and sharp-eyed look at career women who return home to raise their children, I ended up disappointed. Read more.
Drop City
It is 1970, and a California commune devoted to peace, free love, and the simple life has decided to relocate to the last frontier - the unforgiving landscape of interior Alaska. Armed with the spirit of adventure and naive optimism, the inhabitants of "Drop City" arrive in the wilderness of Alaska only to find their utopia already populated by other homesteaders. T.C. Boyle's ninth novel is a tour de force infused with the lyricism and take-no-prisoners storytelling for which he is famous.
Lowboy
John Wray's novel 'Lowboy' is about a schizophrenic teenager who has stopped taking his medication and escaped the asylum into the New York subway. The novel follows William Heller, aka "Lowboy," below ground and above, as he pursues what he perceives as his quest to save the world.
Terrorist
John Updike's twenty-second novel tells of eighteen-year-old Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, the son of an Irish-American mother and an Egyptian father who disappeared when he was three, and his devotion to Allah and the words of the Holy Qur'an, as expounded to him by a local mosque's imam. Ahmad is pulled by two forces: that of a guidance counselor who strives to steer Ahmad from fundamentalist influences, and of a Lebanese jihadist, whose guidance would lead Ahmad in a more dangerous direction.
The Mermaid Chair
Sue Monk Kidd, author of the bestselling 'Secret Life of Bees,' is back with her second novel, 'The Mermaid Chair.' Jessie Sullivan returns to Egret Island,off the coast of South Carolina, to care for her mother and finds herself attracted to a young monk at a Benedictine Monastery where "resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion."
Testimony
'Testimony' opens with a shocking description of child pornography that may leave Anita Shreve's regular audience gasping for air, and perhaps even reaching for one of her previous novels to make sure she is the same author that they remember. As the story progresses, however, it becomes clear that this was in fact the author's intention, and not merely an unfortunate miscalculation by a normally perceptive writer.
Family Planning
As this comic tour de force says, "A family of thirteen in modern-day India was a disaster, a game of marbles that had lost its marbles ... a pack of wolves with no Mowgli to raise, a team of jihadis so bored they'd declared holy war on one another." The family that Mahajan so succinctly chronicles is a disaster before it even becomes a family.
My Revolutions
Hari Kunzru's "My Revolutions" is a thrilling novel with a plot that readers will find more than relevant in today's political climate. Idealism, anger, and social ambition fuel the fictional Michael Frame's involvement with a group of radical activists who protest the Vietnam War in 1960s London. The main character's turn to terrorism runs a recognizable course and offers striking insight into the modern tensions between individual and family, nation and state.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
In 'The Story of Edgar Sawtelle' (2008), far and away the best debut novel of the year, David Wroblewski creates a beautifully imagined world filled with people who grapple with real issues. There is even a dog, Almondine, who shares her thoughts with us. This may be fiction, but it has the feel and punch of Life.
Indignation
Philip Roth's 'Indignation' is narrated by a young Jewish man from New Jersey and follows him as he escapes his overly-protective father by transferring to a college in Winesburg, Ohio for his sophomore year, having spent his freshman year a little too close to home at a local college. Although he comes from a long line of kosher butchers, he is determined to work hard to improve his social status, and to avoid being drafted by the armed forces for service in the Korean War.
Everyman
Philip Roth turns his attention to one man's confrontation with mortality. Roth's Everyman is a hero whose youthful sense of independence and confidence begins to be challenged when illness commences its attack in middle age. A successful commercial advertising artist, he is the father of two sons who despise him and a daughter who adores him. He is the lonely ex-husband of three very different women. Inevitably, he discovers that he has become what he does not want to be.