We came, we read, we gushed. Here’s a recap of the titles that left us especially warm and swoony last month.
Like the Appearance of Horses: A Novel by Andrew Krivak (Bellevue Literary Press). Reviewed by Marilyn Oser. “This pattern of leaving the land; of experiencing danger, trauma, and imprisonment of one kind or another; and of eventually returning to the same place but a different reality — this death and rebirth — forms the core of the family’s saga. The narrative, though, is anything but linear. It unfolds in eight sections that move back and forth in time, like jigsaw pieces of a picture, each segment deepening a part of the story until all of it has been laid bare.”
American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life by Jennifer Lunden (Harper Wave). Reviewed by Wendy Besel Hahn. “I first encountered a draft of Lunden’s book in 2016 at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, when we were in a nonfiction workshop together. As someone who suffers with rheumatoid arthritis, possibly triggered by an undiagnosed case of chronic Lyme disease, I found the premise of her work astonishing. Like many of the patients she writes about, I’d been through a frustrating period of taking supplements and trying new diets. When I received an advance reader copy of American Breakdown, I worried my expectations that her work would go beyond mere self-help might leave me disappointed. Yet what I found in its pages far exceeded my imagination.”
Shakespeare’s Book: The Story Behind the First Folio and the Making of Shakespeare by Chris Laoutaris (Pegasus Books). Reviewed by Bob Duffy. “When he died in 1616, William Shakespeare left behind a circle of prominent admirers: actors, playwrights, poets, and patrons among the nobility and even on the throne. Critically, the circle also included printers and booksellers. Notable members of this select company, including fellow poet/playwright Ben Jonson, hit upon a singular means of honoring Shakespeare’s memory: publishing a collection of all his plays, an unprecedented tribute. This volume, issued some seven years after his death, has become known as the First Folio, and it’s the subject of Chris Laoutaris’ Shakespeare’s Book, a masterful and engaging study of the circumstances surrounding the volume’s creation, as well as its historical setting and physical production. It’s also impressively readable, written with pace and assurance.”
Forgiving Imelda Marcos: A Novel by Nathan Go (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Reviewed by Keith Donohue. “At the time the novel begins, Lito is running out of time. Alone and dying in a hospital, he reaches out to his estranged journalist son in America, promising him a ‘scoop’ beneficial to his career, and shares through a series of letters the story of the drive with Cory Aquino and the secret meeting between the two old rivals, the oligarch and the reformer. Notionally a gift to his prodigal son, Lito’s letters soon expand and digress into the tale of his hardscrabble life; the role of his own largely neglectful father; the circuitous journey Lito took from a communist-guerrilla commune in the mountains to being taken in as a young man by the Aquinos; how he met his son’s mother; and, ultimately, the consequences of his lifetime separation from his child.”
A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation by Rachel Louise Martin (Simon & Schuster). Reviewed by Carr Harkrader. “Martin conducted oral-history interviews with Clinton residents over the course of many years, and it’s these recollections that form the book’s foundation. The author lets people speak for themselves, and their voices come through on the page, giving the narrative an emotional veracity not always found in works documenting the past. Thanks to the author’s descriptive storytelling, skillful pacing, and respect for her subject, A Most Tolerant Little Town offers a vivid portrayal of Clinton High School’s long-ago desegregation and the lingering consequences of racism in Tennessee and across the nation.”
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel (Knopf). Reviewed by Charles Caramello. “Finkel has crafted The Art Thief with finesse and élan. He tells his tale of obsessive desires and ornate objects in measured and unadorned prose; employs a supple structure that separates the multiple threads of the tale while also exploring their weave; and advances the linear plot with narrative strategies that not only anticipate its foregone conclusion without giving it away, but also incorporate into the unfolding events his retrospective analyses of them.”
A Stranger in Baghdad: A Novel by Elizabeth Loudon (Hoopoe). Reviewed by AA Bastian. “As Mona reaches adulthood and the climate becomes more volatile, Diane is increasingly caught between two very different players in the country’s political dynamics: Duncan and her husband. While both seek to conceal from her precisely what they’re doing, she seems to know more than they’d like. This makes her a threat. The author looks at her characters from multiple angles throughout the novel, exploring their foibles and prejudices alongside their triumphs and passions. In the process, she conjures an intimate, intricate portrait of how people’s lives are jostled and remade as a changing country’s fortunes ebb and flow.”
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