Julian Barnes’s Departure(s), Ben Markovits’ The Rest of Our Lives, and Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This Is Where the Serpent Lives all feature among the best reviewed books of the month.
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1. Departure(s) by Julian Barnes
(Knopf)
8 Rave • 10 Positive
“The whole package is a culmination of sorts, shimmering with his silky, erudite prose; beneath the suave surface is an earnest investigation into the mysterious ways of the human heart … Absence itself—absence of love, absence of the beloved—becomes a crucial locus of meaning.”
–Adam Begley (The Atlantic)
2. The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
(Summit Books)
9 Rave • 5 Positive
Read a conversation with Ben Markovits and Jonathan Lethem here
“Wry, poignant … For middle-aged, passive-aggressive men playing out the clock in dismal marriages, reading The Rest of Our Lives may feel like performing open-heart surgery on themselves. But anyone willing to consider the thicket of fears, affections and recriminations that grows through the cracks of a long relationship will find in these pages an almost unbearable tenderness … Not a heavily plotted novel, but it accrues an irresistible momentum of sympathy … Devastating.”
–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)
3. This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin
(Knopf)
10 Rave • 1 Positive
“Sensitive and powerful … The women in This Is Where the Serpent Lives are sharply drawn, but their roles are more circumscribed … The magic in This Is Where the Serpent Lives is the up-close work. Mueenuddin makes the reader care about the romantic relationships, and the pages turn themselves … A serious book that you’ll be hearing about again, later in the year, when the shortlists for the big literary prizes are announced … I wish it were more unbuttoned.”
–Dwight Garner (The New York Times)
4. Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
7 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an interview with Madeline Cash here
“Delightfully cracked … Cash attends to the family crises with a winning mixture of black comedy and innocent sweetness … It’s an engaging, slightly cartoonish story that shows off Ms. Cash’s talent for producing rapid-fire dialogue and amiably oddball characters. It helps that the author has clearly enjoyed herself.”
–Sam Sacks (The Wall Street Journal)
5. Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo
(Grove/Black Cat)
8 Rave • 1 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an excerpt from Call Me Ishmaelle here
“A triumph … There is so much pleasure to be had in rereading old favorites—and part of the joy is meeting beloved characters, who have been updated or somehow arrive in a new form to resist old tropes and types. Guo’s recasting of Ishmaelle is no exception.”
–Leanne Ogasawara (The Los Angeles Times)
