Karen Russell’s The Antidote, Helen Garner’s How to End a Story, and Torrey Peters’ Stag Dance all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
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1. The Antidote by Karen Russell
(Knopf)
8 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an interview with Karen Russell here
“Russell constructed a novel underpinned by an elaborate embroidery of social, geological, historical, and environmental research on the impact of American Western expansion … She effortlessly weaves in other characters whose unique gifts shed light on the lacunae of history … If this sounds like a dense novel, you’re only halfway right. The book is threaded with more subplots and histories as well as characters than I can elaborate upon here. However, her sharp narrative grasp guides the reader from character to character as the book unfolds. Russell’s vivid characters retain an element of mystery, which speaks to the novel’s larger point.”
–Lauren LeBlanc (The Los Angeles Times)
2. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
(Random House)
8 Rave • 1 Mixed
“Peters excels at plumbing the murky hearts of queer people … A great Torrey Peters story feels like punching yourself in the face, laughing at the bleeding bitch in the mirror and then shamefacedly realizing you’re aroused by the blood on your lips. The four pieces in Stag Dance will leave you bruised, broken and wanting more.”
–Hugh Ryan (The New York Times Book Review)
3. Goddess Complex by Sanjena Sathian
(Penguin)
4 Rave • 1 Mixed
Read an essay by Sanjena Sathian here
“Inventive … Astute about the repetitiveness of misery, and how pain can accrete like an enclosing wall, rising to block out the rest of the world … Haunting and hilarious, Goddess Complex is at once a satire, a Gothic tale, a novel of ideas, a character study. Like any individual life, the book bristles with possibilities.”
–R.O. Kwon (The New York Times Book Review)
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1. How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978-1998 by Helen Garner
(Pantheon)
4 Rave • 1 Positive
“It gets off to a tentative and makeshift start … By a quarter of the way in, I was utterly in her hands … Garner has an ideal voice to express late-night pangs of precariousness and distress, some more comic than others. Her prose is clear, honest and economical.”
–Dwight Garner (The New York Times)
2. We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine by Alissa Wilkinson
(Liveright)
2 Rave • 2 Positive
“Thoughtful, perceptive … Has lots of excellent details like this for the dedicated Didion fan. But its strongest sections are the ones that question rather than venerate her. Wilkinson is superb at dissecting the overlap of film and politics in Didion’s worldview … Wilkinson seems to start out adulating Didion before moving uneasily into a more realistic diagnosis of her, as a rattled declinist … Searching, conscientious.”
–Charles Finch (The New York Times Book Review)
=2. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
(Flatiron)
2 Rave • 2 Positive
“Engages the reader on several levels. It contains eye-opening accounts of behaviour at the top of the company and serious accusations against some Facebook executives. It’s a painful story of how unimaginable amounts of power and money corrupted an organisation that started off full of hope and high-mindedness. And because Wynn-Williams is a sharp and funny writer, it’s a highly enjoyable read … The story arc is compelling and depressing.”
–Emma Duncan (The Times)
