Restitution by Tamar Shapiro (Regal House Publishing). Reviewed by D.A. Spruzen. “Shapiro deftly weaves past and present as she reveals the secrets and betrayals that plague an Eastern Bloc society where every neighbor is a potential informer and any hint of dissent brings swift and harsh retribution. Secrets and betrayals beset Kate and Martin, too, as they play tit-for-tat in their ever-increasing distrust of one another.”

Metamorphosis: A Natural and Human History by Oren Harman (Basic Books). Reviewed by Julie Dunlap. “Metamorphosis is steeped in wonderment, equal parts history of science, collective biography, and ‘meditation of a father-to-be.’ It is also hauntingly timely; today, the work of empiricists like Maria Sibylla Merian is again threatened by ideology. Our very planet is transforming, and knowledge un-freighted with dogma is more essential than ever. With Harman’s expansive definition of radical change, here is the most penetrating question he raises: What kind of beings do we want to become? This probing book is for anyone who appreciates the splendor of the scientific enterprise and especially for anyone who doesn’t.”

Our Precious Wars: A Novel by Perrine Tripier; translated by Alison Anderson (Europa Editions). Reviewed by Frances Thomas. “Recalling the early death of her younger sister, she conjures grief via pointillist scenic description: ‘the leaves sodden with dirty rain, the slippery road winding between two slopes of soggy grass, the bare trees, mineral monoliths of dead life.’ The season and geography of watershed moments — whether tragic, as in first grief, or blissful, as in first love — are not incidental but integral to their enduring grip on her psyche.”

Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed by Ron Rosenbaum (Melville House). Reviewed by Charles Caramello. “Rosenbaum has listened closely to Dylan’s prodigious catalog of songs and albums since the 1960s, tracking their evolution and its correspondence to Dylan’s biography, and he clearly has mastered the now vast literature on the musician. Equally important, he enjoyed uncommon access to Dylan for a full week for his Playboy interview and, as he charges a fellow interviewer, is still ‘dining out’ on the encounter. From his studies, interviews, and conversations with Dylan cognoscenti, he has fashioned in Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed an original if uneven piece of work.”

Evensong: A Novel by Stewart O’Nan (Atlantic Monthly Press). Reviewed by Aaron Labaree. “Also, while Evensong shifts frequently among the various members of the Humpty-Dumpty Club, it’s hard not to notice that their voices are awfully similar. All the women are so equally sensitive, mild, and reasonable that, for the first 50 pages or so, it’s easy to mix them up. It’s unfair to compare any author to that masterful observer of middle-class life, John Updike, or that pitiless chronicler of old age, J.M. Coetzee, but in a book like Evensong that deals so much with aging and frailty, I couldn’t help occasionally wanting a break from the mildness, for some of Updike’s cool skepticism or Coetzee’s bleak realism.”

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