Maybe it’s not the most sophisticated critical laurel, but Eric Puchner’s new novel, “Dream State,� made me miss my subway stop.
That rarely happens.
FaMaybe it’s not the most sophisticated critical laurel, but Eric Puchner’s new novel, “Dream State,� made me miss my subway stop.
That rarely happens.
Falling asleep on the subway and waking up when my book hits the sticky floor? Yes, that happens with alarming frequency. But looking up from the pages and realizing that, in every sense, I’ve been transported away from where I live is a rare pleasure.
I suspect that’s also the quality that inspired Oprah to choose “Dream State� as the next title for her book club.
Although Puchner’s novel is a long, deep ride that traverses half a century, it never labors under the weight of its broad scope. Instead, with every chapter, the story feels animated only by the spontaneous possibilities of moments in which loyalty is respected or ignored, passion resisted or sated. That vast procession of Schrödinger’s cats, stretched out over the decades, gradually coalesces into a family history that feels monumental.
There’s lots to be done before the wedding, of course, so Charlie makes sure his best friend, Garrett, drops by to help. The trouble is, Garrett is a brooding figure with “one of those pitiable mold-length beards, less a fashion choice than a flag of surrender.� Puchner, who treats him tenderly even while laying out his considerable flaws, notes that Garrett’s “heart was...
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Given the monastic pacing of Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional,� I suppose it’s appropriate that we’ve had to wait patiently for it. Wood’s fellGiven the monastic pacing of Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional,� I suppose it’s appropriate that we’ve had to wait patiently for it. Wood’s fellow Australians have been praising this story about a small abbey of nuns since the novel was published in 2023. Last year, it was a finalist for Britain’s Booker Prize. And now, as though publishing were operating by steam ship, “Stone Yard Devotional� has finally arrived in the United States.
It’s just as extraordinary as the whispers from abroad suggested. But don’t recommend it to your book club because if some of your members don’t like it � and some certainly won’t � you may not have the stamina to tolerate them any longer.
The unnamed narrator of “Stone Yard Devotional� is a woman of a certain age who’s joined a remote Catholic order � or, if not joined, at least moved in. With a caustic sense of wit and an unrelenting critical eye, she’s hardly the typical postulant. She’s troubled by “the savagery of the Catholic Church.� Shoveling compost is the closest she ever gets to prayer. She’s nauseated by sisters prattling on about how they “fell in love with Jesus.� Nobody asks, but she confesses that she’s an atheist.
And yet, for all the narrator’s self-conscious rejections of religion, “Stone Yard Devotional� is a deeply spiritual novel. Marilynne Robinson’s Calvinist heart might protest, but this tale of sojourn among the nuns is founded on the same rock of introspection that anchors the “Gilead� series. It’s a years-long night wrestling with an angel capable of dislocating a thigh or a life. Wood’s narrator pursues fundamentally spiritual concerns: What is our purpose? Can we be forgiven for acts of callousness and neglect? Why are we here?
Why the narrator is here in this abbey is a source of persistent mystery at the center of “Stone Yard Devotional.� On her first visit, she says, “The place has the feel of a 1970s health resort or eco-commune, but is not....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
After reading more than a dozen powerful novels by Louise Erdrich, I venture into each of her new books braced for heartbreak. And yet I still find myAfter reading more than a dozen powerful novels by Louise Erdrich, I venture into each of her new books braced for heartbreak. And yet I still find myself falling through comic trapdoors hidden under the carpet of her prose. Really, I should know better by now. This Native American author who has won practically every literary honor our country can bestow � including a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award � flexes through an emotional range that most writers would never dare attempt. Yes, there are books like “Shadow Tag� that present such adamantine despair that no splinter of mirth can worm in, but typically, even when confronting great suffering, her work is buoyed with scenes of striking levity.
In Erdrich’s latest novel, “The Mighty Red,� humor and sorrow are fused together like twined tree trunks that keep each other standing. The story begins in 2008 within a farming community in North Dakota’s Red River Valley. The Great Recession is biting hard. Everything here that still runs, runs on sugar beets � planting them, harvesting them, trucking them, processing them. The industry has bent the whole town around the pursuit of that ubiquitous sweetener, with bitter results. The soil is so exhausted that only a conspiracy of toxic chemicals and genetically modified seeds can keep these zombie fields ambling along.
The wives know what’s going wrong. At their book club, one of them says the wasteland Cormac McCarthy foresees in “The Road� needn’t come from an atomic bomb or a well-aimed asteroid: Just keep poisoning the ground.
Although Crystal Frechette hauls sugar beets for a living, she has more immediate worries than environmental collapse. During her 12-hour shifts on the highway, she can’t stop worrying about her daughter, Kismet. Once regarded as a strange goth girl who endured the cool kids� derision, at 18 Kismet is suddenly hot, even though she still might wear, say, “a cap-sleeved black 1950s cocktail dress and a boa of iridescent black rooster feathers� from the thrift store....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
It didn’t take a supercomputer to figure out we’d get another remarkable novel about artificial intelligence from Richard Powers.
In 1995, Powers publiIt didn’t take a supercomputer to figure out we’d get another remarkable novel about artificial intelligence from Richard Powers.
Well, almost three decades later � a millennium in computer time � Helen’s got her mojo back. Powers’s new novel, “Playground,� leaps across the circuits that enable large language models and delivers a mind-blowing reflection on what it means to live on a dying planet reconceived by artificial intelligence. The book won’t be officially released until Sept. 24, but it’s already been named a finalist for the Kirkus Prize and longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Although “Playground� is nowhere near as mammoth as the author’s Pulitzer-winning opus, “The Overstory,� it follows a similarly fragmented structure. But trust me, any disorientation will eventually melt into wonderment.
The main narrator, Todd Keane, was once “a soldier for the digital revolution� and is now its king. He’s a world-famous tech genius who created an app called Playground. Part Facebook, part Reddit, Playground has hooked billions of daily users by gamifying engagement in a self-contained economy that runs on Playbucks. Closely shadowing the influence of social media, Playground affords Powers the opportunity to satirize and mourn the platforms that have colonized our lives.
When we meet Todd, he’s been diagnosed with. . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
For millions of masked readers wringing their Purelled hands during the covid summer of 2020, Matt Haig’s novel “The Midnight Libraryâ€� was an answer tFor millions of masked readers wringing their Purelled hands during the covid summer of 2020, Matt Haig’s novel “The Midnight Libraryâ€� was an answer to a prayer. Dolly Parton kept it on her nightstand next to the Bible. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ users voted it the year’s best work of fiction.
The appeal was obvious: Haig’s story describes a fantastical library that offers a suicidal young woman the chance to experience an infinite number of alternative lives. If Clarence, the second-class angel from “It’s a Wonderful Life,� had pursued a library degree instead of a pair of wings, he might have whipped up this carousel of possibilities.
Now, four years later, Haig is back with another therapeutic fantasy that tastes like a medicated cherry Popsicle. The heroine of “The Life Impossible� is a 72-year-old retired math teacher stuck brandishing the allegorical name Grace Winters. When the novel opens in England, Grace receives a letter from a depressed college kid who used to be one of her high school students. Things have not been going well: His girlfriend dumped him. His mother died. He lost his faith. He’s drinking too much. He’s overwhelmed with anxiety, hopelessness and self-hatred. “At times,� he writes, “I have found it very hard to carry on.�
Instead of encouraging this young man to talk or to find the professional care he so clearly needs, Grace describes her own salvation from a similar bout of depression in a 300-page email message. If she were still employed as a teacher, someone would be obliged to report her for psychological negligence.
“What I am about to tell you,� Grace begins, “is a story even I find hard to believe,� which makes two of us....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Forty thousand years too late, Neanderthals are finally getting a chance to stand erectus and take a bow. Apparently, our uni-browed cousins weren’t dForty thousand years too late, Neanderthals are finally getting a chance to stand erectus and take a bow. Apparently, our uni-browed cousins weren’t dumb jerks like your brother-in-law, dragging their hairy knuckles across the den. Not at all. According to “Kindred� (2020), a fascinating book by archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Neanderthals used tools, made clothes and may have told stories and honored their dead. “They were state-of-the-art humans,� Sykes writes, “just of a different sort.�
In the 19th century, it felt easy to look down on these genetic neighbors of a different sort. After all, as the result of prehistory’s greatest mano-a-manoish battle, we won the deed to planet Earth. But in the early 21st century, Homo sapiens have lost their swagger. For all the wonders of modern culture � driverless cars, CRISPR, Taylor Swift � many of us fear we’re on the cusp of burning ourselves up.
Could the humble Neanderthals, who still lurk in our DNA, hold the secret to a better life? For Rachel Kushner’s new novel, “Creation Lake,� that question is the woolly mammoth in the room.
Since her 2008 debut, “Telex from Cuba,� Kushner has proved to be one of America’s most intellectually curious novelists, capable of interrogating radical political and cultural ideas in strikingly original plots. Her terrific 2013 novel, “The Flamethrowers,� roared through the world of avant-garde art. And now, “Creation Lake� � longlisted for the Booker Prize � bears all the hallmarks of her inquisitive mind and creative daring.
The first satisfying surprise is that Kushner has designed this story as a spy thriller laced with a killer dose of deadpan wit. The narrator, currently using the nom de guerre Sadie Smith, is an agent of chaos. Fired from her job with U.S. intelligence, she’s now working for the highest bidder. “It was a relief to be in the private sector,� she says, “where there are no supervising officers, no logbooks, and no...
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Death has not appreciably slowed Michael Crichton’s publication schedule. Since he passed away in 2008, several of his manuscripts caught in the amberDeath has not appreciably slowed Michael Crichton’s publication schedule. Since he passed away in 2008, several of his manuscripts caught in the amber of time have been zapped to life and set free to stomp around the world alongside “The Andromeda Strain,� “Jurassic Park,� “Congo� and his many other best-selling novels.
Still, one story that Crichton had worked on for 20 years remained dormant on his hard drive. In a recent statement, Crichton’s wife, Sherri, described discovering the unfinished draft: “When I came to the abrupt end, it was the ultimate cliffhanger � though, for the first time, not one that Michael had meticulously planned.�
This fragment might never have seen the rising sun, but when enough money is involved, life finds a way. So now, trailing thunderous clouds of publicity, the summer’s ultimate literary mashup arrives June 3: “Eruption,� a Crichton manuscript completed by James Patterson. As author partnerships go, this is Godzilla’s head grafted onto King Kong’s body. Of course, Hollywood is already buzzing around it, and why not? Together, these two authors � or their brands � have sold an estimated 675 million copies, one for every year since the Neoproterozoic era.
“Eruptionâ€� opens with a prologue set in Hawaii at the Hilo Botanical Gardens. Rachel, a park biologist, “just couldn’t believe her eyesâ€�: Three banyan trees have died and turned black. “Rachel had never seen or read about anything like this. . . . This was something else. Something dark, maybe even dangerous.â€� An old friend tells her, “Don’t panic,â€� but “she was ²õ³¦²¹°ù±ð»å.â€�
This is an opening sure to leave amateur gardeners on the edge of their Adirondack chairs. The rest of us will have to take it on faith that even greater horrors than a few withered trees lie ahead.
Sure enough, nine years later, when the action picks up again, 36-year-old John “Mac� MacGregor hears a deep rumbling and feels the beach shaking. As director of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, Mac understands what that means. “He’d always known this day would come.� Steam is already wafting up from the top of Mauna Loa, the planet’s biggest active volcano, a colossus that rises almost six miles off the ocean floor. “The eruption was only....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
T.S. Eliot claimed, “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.� That whimper is the sound of me being buried under novels about iT.S. Eliot claimed, “This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.� That whimper is the sound of me being buried under novels about it.
This week I’m recovering from one apocalyptic novel, reviewing a new one, reading a forthcoming one and wearily eyeing two more. Clearly, we’ve arrived at the future in which everyone writes about the collapse of civilization for 15 minutes. If the world is really about to end, I wish it would hurry up.
The strange thing about doomsday, though, is its infinite adaptability. Note, for instance, how graciously the eschatology of previous millennia swelled to accommodate fears of nuclear annihilation in the 20th century. And now climate change, seasoned with a soupçon of political tyranny, promises to cook all our anxieties in a final vat of despondency. The result is a literary doom loop that keeps spinning faster. Over the last few years, I’ve read so many dystopian novels that I had to look up the plural spelling of “apocalypse.�
It’s comforting to imagine that the persistence of this bleak genre is a perverse kind of optimism: Despero, ergo sum! After all, we’ve survived long enough for Sandra Newman to publish a retelling of �1984� called “Julia.� When I first read George Orwell’s terrifying book in the 1970s, I worried we’d never make it to 1984, let alone to the 21st century.
But now that Leif Enger has written an apocalyptic novel, the world may actually be coming to an end. Enger, you’ll remember, launched his career in early September 2001 with a mega-bestseller called “Peace Like a River� � an inspiring adventure about a family that regularly experiences miracles. As the twin towers smoldered, coldblooded critics recoiled at his novel’s unabashed spirituality, but I thought it was divine.
Almost 25 years later, Enger’s idealism is contending with a world even grimmer than the Armageddon envisioned at the end of a Trump-branded Bible. His new novel, titled “I Cheerfully Refuse� (a bit too on the nose), describes a future swamped by climate change, economic disparity and political decay. Sixteen wealthy families � so out of touch that they’re referred to as “astronauts� � own all the “mineral rights and satellite clusters and news factories and prisons and most clean water and such shipping as remained.� How comfortingly familiar!
But other trendlines from our time have reached their inevitable conclusion in the wasteland Enger describes: Pandemics have thinned the population. Indentured servitude is back in vogue and the government provides “compliance therapeutics� to keep workers docile and obedient. Nitrous oxide has become a common form of self-medication, and that’s the least of it: A drug called Willow, “a rising star in the market of despair,� is ingested by individuals, entire families and sometimes whole neighborhoods to commit suicide.
Naturally, these calamities have been ushered in by a deep suspicion of learning, particularly of literature. Fundamentalists have closed.....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
“The Morningside� takes place in Island City, a swampy version of Manhattan after climate change has flooded the coast. Rather than detailing the political structure of this battered place, Obreht drops provocative hints about the latest efforts to rebuild the city’s infrastructure and the government’s image. So many citizens have fled the rotting metropolis that federal authorities have recruited desperate refugees from abroad to participate in a Repopulation Program. Lured by the promise of a better, safer, more stable life, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free have arrived from Back Home.
As always, what they find is not what they were promised, but they’re cheap, eager labor, and the National Bureau of Posterity admonishes them to keep the faith. Just a little more belt-tightening, a little more hard work, and surely they would find themselves “back in the Island City of before. The city as it had always been, and still was, under or above water: The city of fanfare and electric autumns, of lamplit streets and music and dazzling marquees, of lovers tangling furtively in windows, of lush parks, of townhomes glowing warmly on a moonless night. The ensuing party would be magnificent.�
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
With the country locked in ice, “True North,� Andrew J. Graff’s warmhearted story about a summer of white-water rafting, sounds like the vacation we aWith the country locked in ice, “True North,� Andrew J. Graff’s warmhearted story about a summer of white-water rafting, sounds like the vacation we all need. Graff’s second novel offers just enough drama to be exciting and just enough reassurance that everybody will get home safe.
But the stakes couldn’t be higher for Sam Brecht, the optimistic young man who puts this adventure in motion. Desperate to save his failing marriage, he’s already run through a series of bold visions, including a pick-your-own blueberry farm that, somehow, never got off the ground. Now, with two kids and a new baby, Sam suspects he’s about to lose his job as a high school art teacher, so he needs a sure thing.
I’m no financial adviser, but when your best side hustle starts with buying a brand-new 23-foot-long Winnebago, you’re on the scenic route to bankruptcy. And yet that monster vehicle is only the smallest part of Sam’s last-ditch scheme. With money from his retirement savings � surely vast, given his degree in ceramics � he’s also bought a run-down rafting company in Wisconsin. Back in the day, he and his wife, Swami, had fallen in love near a river. “Maybe,� he thinks, “another river could make everything right again.�
This would be a brilliant plan if the fundamental problem with Sam’s marriage was dehydration.
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
By the time ghosts start gathering in Daniel Mason’s “North Woods,� it’s too late to flee. You’re already rooted to this haunting, haunted novel aboutBy the time ghosts start gathering in Daniel Mason’s “North Woods,� it’s too late to flee. You’re already rooted to this haunting, haunted novel about a homestead in western Massachusetts.
Don’t be afraid: Go in the house.
I’ve been raving about Mason’s work since his gorgeous debut, “The Piano Tuner,� was published more than 20 years ago while he was in medical school. He’s since won fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, along with a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Prize and a National Magazine Award. In 2021, his first collection of short stories, “A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth,� was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction.
And yet Mason somehow still feels always about to break out. The literary gods are inscrutable � the book club overlords even more so � but I’m praying you’ll consider getting lost in “North Woods� this fall. Elegantly designed with photos and illustrations, this is a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic.
The novel begins some 400 years ago with two naughty Pilgrims fleeing their settlement and hiding from soldiers sent out to drag them home. “They were Nature’s wards now,� Mason writes. “Barefoot they ran through the forest � to the north woods.� They dare to marry themselves in the hollow of an old oak and swim naked in the brook. The young man, an “ungodly� rake who “consorted with heathens,� hauls a flat stone out of the water and sets it down in a clearing to mark the corner of their new home. From that act of illegal passion and wild optimism arises a vast tale that eventually contains. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Robert Frost gave us so little choice when he wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice.�
What about plague, flood, zombies, killeRobert Frost gave us so little choice when he wrote, “Some say the world will end in fire, / Some say in ice.�
What about plague, flood, zombies, killer robots, ocean acidification, nuclear accident and alien invasion? Fortunately, in these latter days before climate collapse, our apocalyptic literature comes in a grim smorgasbord of flavors.
And now we have an apocalyptic novel that is all about flavors. “Land of Milk and Honey,� by C Pam Zhang, is the haunting story of an ambitious chef desperate to keep cooking even as 98 percent of the commercial crops fail and the world’s store of food dwindles to gruel.
The narrator, unnamed, is in her 20s when a mysterious smog arises from Iowa and blocks out the sun around the world. “Biodiversity fell. Wildlife and livestock perished for lack of feed,� she remembers. “What it amounted to was skies that were gray and kitchens that were gray. You could taste it: gray. No olives, no quails, no grapes of the tart green kind � no saffron, no buffalo, no polished short-grain rice.� On and on rolls this inventory of culinary devastation, a vast catalogue that invokes delicacies only by noting their absence. For a chef, such bare cupboards portend a tasteless existence sustained only by mung-protein flour.
Zhang is such a cool writer that salmon steaks could stay fresh in her prose for weeks. But there’s something absurd about this narrator’s single-minded obsession with haute cuisine during what sounds like Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.� As the restaurant where she works in England runs out of supplies, she makes a bold choice: “I quit that job to pursue recklessly, immorally, desperately, the only one that gave me hope of lettuce.�
The endive is near!
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Don’t let the fanged narrator of Henry Hoke’s new novel scare you off. Yes, “Open Throat� is about a queer mountain lion, but only in the way “The MetDon’t let the fanged narrator of Henry Hoke’s new novel scare you off. Yes, “Open Throat� is about a queer mountain lion, but only in the way “The Metamorphosis� is about a large bug. Give this sinewy prose poem a chance and you’ll fall under the spell of a forlorn voice trapped in the hellscape of modern America.
As fantastical as “Open Throat� sounds, Hoke was inspired by a true tale of feline adventure. Around 2012, a cougar � an actual cougar � was spotted prowling around Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Over the next decade, the 123-pound cat, designated P-22, became Hollywood’s coolest, most elusive celebrity � the subject of chance encounters, branded merchandise and social media posts.
Hobbled by traumatic injuries, P-22 was captured and euthanized in December. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called him an icon and an inspiration. Tickets to his memorial service at L.A.’s Greek Theatre reportedly sold out in hours.
But Hoke’s novel is far removed from that aura of fame and adoration. When we meet the cat, he’s “a secret member of town.� He hasn’t had a proper meal for weeks and can’t remember the last time it rained. He’s thirsty and hungry � and transfixed by what he’s seeing. The park draws all sorts of people looking for refuge or stealth. Through a thicket of branches that camouflage him perfectly, he watches a woman filming an
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
“This is the way the world ends,� T.S. Eliot predicted, “not with a bang but a whimper.�
Nope, says epic world-ender Justin Cronin.
In 2010, Cronin publ“This is the way the world ends,� T.S. Eliot predicted, “not with a bang but a whimper.�
Nope, says epic world-ender Justin Cronin.
In 2010, Cronin published “The Passage,� one of the most frightening apocalyptic novels of the modern age. If there was any whimpering in that bang-up job, it was the smothered chorus of millions of people being eaten by vampires.
Now, Cronin is looming over us again with another apocalyptic novel, this one more batty than vampiric. “The Ferryman� grabs bits of stardust from several sci-fi classics. The trippy effect is like watching “Inception� on an airplane while the passenger next to you watches “The Matrix� without earphones. Indeed, to get through this chaotic story, you’ll need the red pill and the blue pill and some Adderall.
The eerie first half � by far the better � is set on Prospera, an island paradise hidden from the rest of the world by an impenetrable electromagnetic barrier. “Prosperans,� as the glorious inhabitants are called, enjoy a civilization “free of all want and distraction.� They devote their attractive selves entirely to “creative expression and the pursuit of personal excellence.�
Like good Republicans, Prosperans imagine that everything about their system of static privilege is “entirely beneficent.� But members of the vast “support staff� harbor a somewhat different impression. Crammed onto a dreary adjacent island known as the Annex, these men and women of supposedly “lesser biological and social endowments� are expected to perform their various duties without complaint. And mostly, they do. If a few stress fractures are starting to zigzag across the surface of that social arrangement, the powers that be remain convinced....
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
“Birnam Wood� opens with “a spate of shallow earthquakes� in a remote part of New Zealand, but by the end those tremors will reverberate across the pl“Birnam Wood� opens with “a spate of shallow earthquakes� in a remote part of New Zealand, but by the end those tremors will reverberate across the planet. The title, aside from being a prophetic allusion to “Macbeth,� is the name of an obscure environmental group. The members of Birnam Wood are guerrilla gardeners, who raise vegetables on public land and unattended private property, sometimes with permission, sometimes without. While they might think of themselves as fearless revolutionaries, their antics rarely extend much beyond stealing a hoe from a wealthy neighbor’s garden shed.
Nevertheless, Mira, the de facto leader of this supposedly leaderless collective, dreams of “nothing less than radical, widespread, and lasting social change, which would be entirely achievable, she was convinced, if only people could be made to see how much fertile land was going begging, all around them, every day.� In the words of Mao, “Let a hundred flowers bloom,� but make sure they’re peas, tomatoes and cucumbers.
As the novel opens, Mira spies a potentially rich new target. A landslide has buried a stretch of highway, almost completely cutting off the town of Thorndike and canceling development of a 375-acre plot abutting a national park. What better place for Mira’s merry band of subversive farmers to till the soil in relative secrecy! If they get arrested, even better: The publicity will amplify their cause.
The only problem is that this land has already caught the attention of Robert Lemoine, an American billionaire. He plans to construct a luxurious bunker here where he can, when the moment arrives, wait out the apocalypse. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Lydia Millet’s most recent novel was a polished rapier called “A Children’s Bible.� One of the best books of 2020, it begins with the tipsy tedium of Lydia Millet’s most recent novel was a polished rapier called “A Children’s Bible.� One of the best books of 2020, it begins with the tipsy tedium of a summer vacation involving several families. But then it quickly slips into a national apocalypse fueled by climate change and anarchy.
Millet’s new novel, “Dinosaurs,� is surprising in an entirely different way. The plot is laced with trace elements of foreboding, but danger never reaches concentrations that produce actual drama. Indeed, the story is so gentle that it’s a safe choice for any reader with a heightened startle reflex.
There is actual tragedy in “Dinosaurs,� but most of it takes place before the book opens � so long ago, in fact, that the central character, Gil, can barely remember it. As we learn through a few brief references, when he was a child, Gil lost both his parents in a car accident. His severe grandmother cared for him for several years, but then she died, too. He remained in her house, where a series of well-paid guardians looked after him “like a fly trapped in amber.� And when he finally turned 18, Gil came into possession of a trust fund so vast that it could never be depleted.
“Dinosaurs,� then, is a story about an extraordinarily wealthy White man struggling to make his way in the modern world. You may be under the impression that there are more urgent stories being told these days. This novel will confirm that suspicion. I kept expecting to feel the deadly edge of Millet’s satirical wit, but Gil is allowed to luxuriate in his gold-plated self-pity largely unscathed. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Last year’s most unlikely bestseller was “Matrix,� a novel by Lauren Groff about an obscure medieval poet named Marie de France and a 12th-century nunLast year’s most unlikely bestseller was “Matrix,� a novel by Lauren Groff about an obscure medieval poet named Marie de France and a 12th-century nunnery. Maybe two years of covid seclusion had primed us for a story of monastic adventure, and certainly Groff’s rich style helped the book sing to many readers. But in addition to her enormous fan base � which includes Barack Obama � the novel succeeded because it eschewed fusty Christian theology and projected modern feminist ideals onto its ancient canvas.
Now comes Emma Donoghue, another popular and critically acclaimed novelist, with “Haven,� a monastic story of her own. But Donoghue has ratcheted up the stakes by taking on a trifecta of bestseller killers: First, she moves the clock back even further, to around 600 A.D. Second, she portrays a culture inhabited only by men. And third, her characters live and move and have their being in an atmosphere fully imbued with their primitive Christian faith.
In short, very few readers have been praying for a novel like this. But “Haven� creates an eerie, meditative atmosphere that should resonate with anyone willing to think deeply about the blessings and costs of devoting one’s life to a transcendent cause.
The novel opens with a kind of preface set at Cluain Mhic Nóis, a relatively new monastery with about three dozen monks in the center of Ireland. Not 200 years have passed since St. Patrick converted the island to Christianity, but. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Miami is booming. According to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, the cost of apartments is rising faster in and around the Magic City than anMiami is booming. According to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal, the cost of apartments is rising faster in and around the Magic City than anywhere else in the United States.
“In some desirable neighborhoods,� the Journal reports, “landlords are doubling the rent after a lease expires because they know transplants from the Northeast and West Coast are willing to pay that much more.�
Before loading your moving van, read “The Displacements,� by Bruce Holsinger. Yes, it’s just a novel, but Holsinger has built an apocalyptic plot on ground more secure than the foundations of many Miami homes. After all, considering the risks of hurricanes and floods driven by climate change, Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan economic think tank, called Miami “the most vulnerable major coastal city in the world.�
Of course, we’re tragically adept at discounting scientific projections about storm surges and deaths per 100,000, particularly if those surges cause the deaths of people we never meet. But Holsinger brings the cost of climate change home � home to McMansions in Coral Gables, Fla. The folks in this wealthy community imagine that tornadoes hit only trailer homes and that if the weather turns nasty for a spell, they can always decamp to their cottages in Michigan. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Nothing could be more ordinary. But that common tale of woe feels shocking in Julia Armfield’s debut novel, “Our Wives Under the SeLovers drift apart.
Nothing could be more ordinary. But that common tale of woe feels shocking in Julia Armfield’s debut novel, “Our Wives Under the Sea.�
The very first line of her exceedingly moody story warns us to expect the unexpected: “The deep sea is a haunted house,� Armfield writes, “a place in which things that ought not to exist move about in the darkness.�
And yet even that gothic portent can’t prepare us for what lies beneath the surface of this queer romance.
In one sense, the plot is simple, even daringly static. Two young women are stuck in their apartment, where they will remain almost until the end of the novel. Leah works as a marine biologist, and Miri writes grant applications, but their normal lives have been entirely suspended.
When the novel opens, Miri is caring for Leah, who’s just returned from a deep-sea disaster. We learn that a three-week research mission went horribly awry and dragged out over six hope-crushing months before she was unexpectedly rescued. During that period of worry and arrested grief, Miri fantasized about. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Lidia Yuknavitch’s extraordinary new novel is the weirdest, most mind-blowing book about America I’ve ever inhaled. Part history, part prophecy, all fLidia Yuknavitch’s extraordinary new novel is the weirdest, most mind-blowing book about America I’ve ever inhaled. Part history, part prophecy, all fever dream, “Thrust� offers a radical critique of the foundational ideals that conceal our persistent national crimes. As we march from Juneteenth to July 4, this is a story to scrub the patinated surface of our civic pride.
There’s a tidal movement to “Thrust,� whose chapters ebb and flow across 200 years in and around the New York Harbor. At the opening, we catch a vision of immigrants working on a colossal new monument designed in France and shipped in pieces to the United States. With allusions to Walt Whitman, Yuknavitch gives voice to the multitude. “We were woodworkers, iron workers, roofers and plasterers and brick masons,� the narrator intones. “We were. . . .
To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post: ...more
Loading...
