Editorial reviews

About The Locals: A Novel

The Locals is first intriguing, then exasperating, and finally rather admirable in its open-ended narrative.

About Beautiful Animals: A Novel

Beautiful Animals is compulsive reading.

About The History of Bees: A Novel

Illuminating if not much fun.

About The Locals: A Novel

An acute examination of life in a small New England town in roughly the decade after 9/11, it’s social realism or fictional sociology of the highest order.

About The Locals: A Novel

From the murky perspective of here and now – summer 2017 – it seems clear that the so-called greatest nation needs to keep a close eye on itself in the mirror while considering its legacies, values and truths. Dee does precisely that. He deserves to be read.

About Living the Dream

Debut novelist Berry creates relatable characters who can laugh at themselves even when they fall down hard, but the gist of the book can be summed up when one of them approaches a problem by “produc[ing] a piece of writing about it and put[ting] it all behind her.”

About Made for Love

Whether it's Nutting's swift, biting humor or wildly funny scenes like the one involving a drunken Hazel's awkwardly intimate encounter with Diane, she demonstrates a mastery of comic timing and an ability to pump unflagging energy into her plot.

About Autopsy of a Father

The novel haunts on all levels, both in the reader’s desire for a hint of hope, and in the author’s refusal to console. Once read, this story is not forgotten.

About Mrs. Fletcher: A Novel

Perrotta admirers will admire much of Mrs. Fletcher, though they may mourn the better version that’s visible in the margins.

About Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash

Tedious, and unpleasantly so.

About The City Always Wins

The City Always Wins is a tale of defeat and dashed dreams and of hope’s persistence told in a poetic prose. The style is at once pared down and highly expressive.

About Behold the Dreamers: A Novel

Mbue’s prose is mostly straightforward and unadorned but her characters are complex, with contradictory motivations, which provide the story with depth and quiet power.

About Goodbye, Vitamin

“Goodbye, Vitamin” never minimizes the difficulty of caring for someone with Alzheimer’s. But it also shows how this care can be rewarding.

About Do Not Become Alarmed: A Novel

In the end, the author leaves the reader with many questions about contemporary parenting: What is real fear? And what is manufactured fear? How do we measure our own pain against the others? Can we truly understand other people’s suffering and grief? Meloy doesn’t neatly answer all of these questions by the conclusion of her suspenseful novel, but she certainly leaves the reader a lot to think about.

About The Accomplished Guest: Stories

The women of “The Accomplished Guest” may be felled by inertia, whether self-imposed or a hazard of aging, but its men are losing control.

About Florence in Ecstasy

The novel’s pleasures arise from the jostling together of elements that vitalize and dimensionalize its story: the beauty and rhythms of the fabled city, its locals and visitors, seasons, festivals, food and drink, surrounding countryside and townships, art and architecture, and, never least, the music of the Italian language (a sprightly character unto itself, easily understood because of the deft way Chaffee sets it in context).

About Border Child: A Novel

I defy anyone reading “Border Child” to feel anything but compassion for these people who crossed the border only because they wanted a better life for their family, and lost so much as a result of that hope.

About Less: A Novel

Although Greer is gifted and subtle in comic moments, he’s just as adept at ruminating on the deeper stuff. His protagonist grapples with aging, loneliness, creativity, grief, self-pity and more.