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Book Reviews
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Book reviews of the best new fiction and nonfiction books by NPR's Alan Cheuse, Maureen Corrigan, and Karen Grigsby Bates.
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'The Chemistry Of Tears' And The Art Of Healing
After a museum conservator's lover dies, she becomes consumed with reanimating a 19th-century silver swan automaton. Critic Heller McAlpin says that Peter Carey's new novel is part historical, part fanciful and completely wonderful.
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'Home': Toni Morrison's Taut, Triumphant New Novel
Toni Morrison's latest novel revisits the story of the prodigal son, as a Korean War veteran returns to his hometown in the pre-civil rights era South. Critic Heller McAlpin says Home is as accessible and visceral as anything Morrison has written.
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China Mieville's 'Railsea': 'Moby-Dick' Remixed
The new novel reimagines Moby-Dick in a future where the oceans have become barren wastelands teeming with fantastical carnivores, and crisscrossed by a network of railroads.
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'Tai Lake': Murder Most Ecological In China
A Chinese poet-turned-detective investigates a slaying seemingly linked to industrial dumping. Don't Cry, Tai Lake is the politically charged seventh novel in Chinese expatriate Qiu Xiaolong's Inspector Chen series.
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Haunted By 'Hunger' In The Soviet Gulag
In Nobel laureate Herta Muller's take on one of the great tragedies of the 20th century, a starving man in a Soviet labor camp hallucinates that hunger is an otherworldly being out to destroy him.
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'Newlyweds': A Big, Fat Cross-Cultural Marriage
In Nell Freudenberger's new novel, a young Bangladeshi woman marries an American man she meets online and struggles to adjust to life in Rochester, N.Y.
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'Almost Invisible': New Poems From Mark Strand
The new collection offers small treasures of wry amusement, elegance and effortlessness, but critic Joel Whitney wonders if Strand is just rehashing themes — and even lines — from his best books.
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'Power': Robert Caro's Life Of Johnson Hits The '60s
Robert A. Caro's multipart study of President Lyndon B. Johnson is hailed as one of the greatest biographies of the 20th century. Reviewing his latest, critic Michael Schaub writes, "Even at more than 700 pages, there's not a wasted word, not a needless anecdote."
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'Mother' Dearest: Alison Bechdel's Graphic Memoir
Alison Bechdel follows up her smash success Fun Home, a graphic memoir about her closeted gay father, with Are You My Mother? another beautifully crafted "comic drama," this time focusing on her emotionally distant mother.
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Lillian Hellman: A 'Difficult,' Vilified Woman
A fierce playwright, a fiery socialist and a pioneering feminist, Lillian Hellman lived unapologetically. But today she's remembered as a fabulist and a rabble-rouser — if she's remembered at all. A new Hellman biography, A Difficult Woman, hopes to set the record straight.
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In Sequel To 'Drive,' Sallis Delivers A Thrill Ride
In Driven, the sequel to the book that spawned the award-winning film Drive, the mysterious ex-stuntman Driver finds there's one thing he can't outrace: his own violent past. James Sallis' writing is taut and surprisingly philosophical.
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'Death And The Penguin' Captures Post-Soviet Reality
Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov writes short, surrealistic stories full of dark comedic surprises. His latest is The Case of the General's Thumb, but critic John Powers suggests starting with his 1996 novel, Death and the Penguin. It's a fast-paced, witty read and what Powers calls "an almost perfect novel."
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'Lots Of Candles': Growing Older Ecstatically
In her new book Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, Anna Quindlen says she "wouldn't be 25 again on a bet, or even 40." Her humorous memoir celebrates the confidence and contentment of women in their 50s.
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'Suddenly': Surreal Stories From A Modern Master
A killer is doomed to live out the afterlife as Pooh Bear. A magical goldfish grants wishes, and disgruntled divorced dads abound. Welcome to the absurd and very tender world of Suddenly, a Knock on the Door, the new story collection by Israeli writer Etgar Keret.
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Paging Dr. Freud: A Viennese Espionage Thriller
When Lysander Rief, a young actor undergoing treatment from one of Freud's disciples, is falsely accused of rape, he is dragged into a web of World War I-era intrigue. William Boyd's Waiting for Sunrise has all the ingredients of a surefire hit; why, then, is it so tedious?
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