“Retelling wartime history as spy fiction is Downing’s deeply grounded path; pointing out the power of love and family within it, however, is his aria.”
“‘. . . in today’s historiography, where the focus on the individual is once again becoming stronger, it’s actually better for a forgotten artist to have been a woman than a man.
“A treasure . . . using both a close personal focus and a broader historical scope, Grossman has written a war epic that rightly deserves to be a classic.”
“David Szalay’s art accomplishes what arithmetic can’t: The whole adds up to more than its individual components, and in sum his Turbulence is a tour de force.”
“Etter has created that rare beast: an effective, startling poetic novel. Its story is coherent and progressive; Cassie herself is intensely sympathetic.
“Orange World and Other Stories exposes the difficulties of wanting. . . . Characters long for things that have no name. They live on the edge of terror.
The Ghost Clause by Howard Norman is a novel about intellectuals. Or rather, it’s a novel about marriage and American village life as seen through intellectual eyes.
In The Dream Daughter, time travel, the Vietnam War, North Carolina, and the modern digital world are all backdrop for a mother’s connection with and devotion to her unborn child.
“A classic story of good versus evil, in which evil, though seemingly overcome, may simply lie dormant until it’s strong enough to strike from a different source.”
