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Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky, Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, and Moon Unit Zapa’s Earth to Moon all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.
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Fiction
1. There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
(Knopf)
7 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed • 2 Pan
“The risk with multiple overlapping narratives is that the reader can become more invested in one. The pace of the longer descriptive passages is slower than the character-driven sections, but no less forceful or imaginative … This novel moves between continents, centuries, cultures and communities with intelligence and ease. Shafak raises big ideas around artefacts and ownership of cultural heritage and handles them with care … A tribute to the power of language.”
–Henrietta McKervey (The Irish Times)
2. Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen
(St. Martin’s Press)
4 Rave • 2 Positive
“Pedersen maintains a sense of doom, building suspense and expectation … Pedersen weaves eerie sentences together from archaic language, and the novel builds with a gruesome, anxious energy as the author reveals its connection to Chinese mythology … The novel’s final pages are a wild frenzy of beauty, vengeance and viscera.”
–Heather Scott Partington (The Los Angeles Times)
3. The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera
(Pantheon)
2 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
“This is an epic story, a remarkable achievement for a writer making her first foray into the literary landscape. Balibrera demonstrates a fearlessness that is rare … This is not a perfect novel. Deep into the story, too many minor characters are introduced with flourish, never to reappear. The end seems hurried, as if the Furies had suddenly been released and couldn’t decide which direction to go. But these are mere blots on a richly drawn canvas. Mainly, what emerges triumphantly from Balibrera’s pages is a gifted new storyteller with a nose for history and a prodigious imagination.”
–Marie Arana (The New York Times Book Review)
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Nonfiction
1. Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
(Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
5 Rave • 3 Positive
“An unabashed celebration of Lorde … There is no room for Lorde’s flaws in this book; she is a goddess, an avatar, an icon. As an entry point into Lorde’s poetry, though, Gumbs’s persuasive close readings create a virtuous circle, shining a light on how the life generated the poems, which now elucidate that life … Gumbs honors Lorde’s desire for an expansive legacy.”
–Ayten Tartici (The New York Times Book Review)
2. Earth to Moon: A Memoir by Moon Unit Zappa
(Dey Street Books)
3 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“For such a thoroughly dispiriting saga, Earth to Moon is somehow an unconscionably entertaining read. This is in no small part thanks to the prose … She emerges to claim her own narrative at last. And what a narrative it is.”
–Nick Duerden (The Guardian)
3. The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country by Rosie Schaap
(Mariner)
4 Rave
Read an excerpt from The Slow Road North here
“Schaap’s prose is characterized by well-crafted, even sublime sentences, erudite literary references and sharp, dark humor … Vivid … A patient book, exceptional when Schaap shows us what brings joy to her life after so many years of grief. You’ll find a fortifying dose of grace in these pages.”
–Ann Neuman (The New York Times Book Review)
