Angela Flournoy’s The Wilderness, Jill Lepore’s We the People, and Samanta Schweblin’s Good and Evil all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
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1. The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
(Mariner Books)
6 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The Wilderness here
“Expansive and intimate … This is not your generic book club selection, celebrating four friends living, laughing, loving. But if you want a ruminating, clear-eyed look at friendship as a means of survival, this is it … The rigorous work of authentic friendship asks us if we’re doing all we can for ourselves and the world we live in. Flournoy holds this mirror up to her characters and shows how modern life distorts those images despite everybody’s best intentions … Galvanizing and sustaining.”
–Lauren LeBlanc (The Boston Globe)
2. Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin
(Knopf)
7 Rave • 1 Mixed
“Masterly … Quiet, devastating lucidity is a hallmark of Schweblin’s prose, captured with magnificent precision in a long-standing collaboration with translator Megan McDowell … We have the impression of a writer absolutely and entirely in control, as Schweblin’s meticulous clarity is never compromised by the horror of her subjects. But if we trust her to take us to the bottom, almost always she will reward us with a glimmer.”
–Francesca Segal (The Financial Times)
3. Wolf Bells by Leni Zumas
(Algonquin)
3 Rave • 3 Positive
“Zumas’s compassion shines through … Rarely does a story plead with such urgency for a touch of sentimentality, but Zumas never gives in … Striking … Urgent.”
–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)
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1. We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore
(Liveright)
5 Rave • 1 Positive
“May be [Lepore’s] best yet, a capacious work that lands at the right moment, like a life buoy, as our ship of state takes on water. She’s not here to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic; she’s here to convey—in vigorous, crystal-clear sentences—what we’re losing, and why … Lepore senses peril but also a whiff of democratic revival. Asymmetries lie at the foundation of our government; as this gifted scholar reminds us, it’s our duty to tend to them.”
–Hamilton Cain (The Los Angeles Times)
2. Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach
(W. W. Norton & Company)
4 Rave
“An incredible journey of discovery, humor, awe and inspiration … Surprises and delights … Offers humorous anecdotes and peculiar facts … These curious facts, with attendant and laugh-inducing footnotes, keep us turning the pages, but the real power of the book lies in its humanity … Praises the progress science has made without resorting to the spectacle and fanfare of the futurist, and without losing sight of the people.”
–Brandy Schillace (The Wall Street Journal)
3. Animal Stories by Kate Zambreno
(Transit Books)
3 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
“A view on the world using a deep field of focus that renders details near and far with equal clarity. Ostensibly unrelated figures are thus united within the writer’s rich conceptual frame … Blazingly erudite … An expressive account … Many of these glimpses into Kafka’s life and predilections make for pure entertainment … It is indeed fun, and all its captives are paradoxically but fully free.”
–Melissa Holbrook Pierson (The Brooklyn Rail)