{"id":231948,"date":"2024-01-11T10:17:38","date_gmt":"2024-01-11T15:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/?p=231948"},"modified":"2024-01-22T13:22:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-22T18:22:47","slug":"5-book-reviews-you-need-to-read-this-week-1-11-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/5-book-reviews-you-need-to-read-this-week-1-11-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Book<\/a><\/p>\n

Our smorgasbord of sumptuous reviews this week includes Patricia Lockwood on Blake Butler\u2019s Molly<\/em>, Elizabeth Gonzalez James on \u00c1lvaro Enrigue\u2019s You Dreamed of Empires,\u00a0<\/em>MJ Franklin on Claire Oshetsky\u2019s Poor Deer<\/em>, Sigrid Nunez on Cynthia Zarin\u2019s Inverno<\/em>, \u00a0and\u00a0Ron Charles on Hisham Matar\u2019s My Friends<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Brought to you by Book Marks<\/a>, Lit Hub\u2019s home for book reviews.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"Molly<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe reading was like falling, into a level that hovered just below my bed. A horizontal experience. Into the secret life that was Molly\u2019s. I was supposed to be writing something about the book, but everything sounded mad: a document you might find in someone\u2019s papers after their death. I only am escaped alone to tell thee. The book begins at the end of language, someone at a bombsite or in a burned-out church, the words and phrases jarred out of their places, as if they too had heard the gunshot and started running; as if the ripples of the act, the derangement in the air, had entered into English itself. Or Blake\u2019s breath, running to find her in the field, past the grown-together pair of trees Molly said might be them in their old age. That is the way that it is. Why should words be available when he has for so long stored them in her? \u2026<\/p>\n

Molly, more than anyone else, understood there would be a book called\u00a0Molly<\/em>; what did she want that book to contain? \u2026 It does not seem we should be able to see Molly there in her field, but these things happen out in the world. He is telling us that. His wish: that we should look upon her face, see even the fly. Hear what he hears in the firework, now. Go into Dante\u2019s dark wood, and experience language as useless, in him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Patricia Lockwood on Blake Butler\u2019s Molly<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (London Review of Books<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"\u00c1lvaro<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cEnrigue spins a seductive tale despite the fact that everyone already knows how, in reality, it ends\u2014spoiler alert: Spain won. And yet, immersed in the world Enrigue builds, we read beyond the shadow of this ending hoping that just maybe, this time around, the story will be different. In his hallucinatory prose, anything could happen \u2026 It is tricky to write against a backdrop as well known as the Spanish conquest of the New World, though it is precisely this limitation that allows Enrigue to take his biggest risks \u2026 And once we have allowed time and history to collapse in on itself in this instance, the centuries folding over and sitting atop one another like one city built on the ruins of another, we allow what Enrigue does later on, which is to introduce a Calvinoesque tipping of his hand into the narrative \u2026<\/p>\n

The ending of You Dreamed of Empires<\/em>, the aftermath of that fateful meeting, is both expected and surprising, the author having a bit of cake and eating it too.\u00a0It has been pitched as a colonial revenge story, restitutive, and revolutionary. But these descriptors shift focus toward what happens and away from what I believe is the novel\u2019s greatest strength: its comfort in the murky could-have-been. I find little solace in revenge and restoration\u2014what would that even look like 500 years on? What Enrigue does in this novel is better than revenge\u2014it is an attempt to understand. Why did Moctezuma let Cort\u00e9s in? Why didn\u2019t he kill him where he stood? Would it have made any difference if he had? All we can do now is recognize, imagine, wonder, fight, and stand until it is our own turn to fall. We don\u2019t last. And yet, in that span, we may dream multitudes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Elizabeth Gonzalez James on \u00c1lvaro Enrigue\u2019s You Dreamed of Empires<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (Los Angeles Review of Books<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Poor<\/p>\n

\u201cMidway through Claire Oshetsky\u2019s beautiful, terrifying sophomore novel, a mother asks her daughter: \u2018Did you leave Agnes Bickford in that cooler to die, Bunny?\u2019\u00a0This turns out to be the central question of Poor Deer<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0\u2026 This setup frames Poor Deer<\/em> like a thriller, but the novel is less a mystery about what happened on that fateful day, and more a psychological deep dive into how Margaret, and all those who orbited the girls, grapple with the tragedy \u2026<\/p>\n

Grief is a well-trod territory in fiction, but in Oshetsky\u2019s hands, this familiar topic becomes fresh and strange. The book\u2019s narrative structure mirrors the grief-stricken mind\u2014starting, stopping, looping back, stuttering, marching grimly forward \u2026 With Poor Deer<\/em>, Oshetsky proves themself the bard of unruly psyches. They show how loss warps our realities, and how that distortion can be both a coping mechanism and a destructive force.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013MJ Franklin on Claire Oshetsky\u2019s Poor Deer<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Cynthia<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI would in fact recommend this book to any reader for whom a chief pleasure to be found in literature is beautiful sentences. The elegance and incantatory power of Zarin\u2019s prose, along with her virtuosity at observation, are undeniable, but, like many original works, Inverno<\/em> resists easy description. Central to the novel is a love story, one that, like most love stories, is at once simple and terribly complicated \u2026 The narrator has a riveting, lyrical voice and a deliberately digressive but expertly controlled style \u2026<\/p>\n

Love and time. Each is commonly said to have the power to heal, but Inverno<\/em> is all about that other power they share: to annihilate. As the narrator finds herself \u2018running behind something or someone that is leaving forever,\u2019 the reader finds herself slowing down, the better to savor Zarin\u2019s allusive, evocative prose. To see the chaos of suffering shaped into something beautiful is one of the main reasons we turn to art. There is not a banal sentence or purple patch to be found in this book, which only a poet could have written.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Sigrid Nunez on Cynthia Zarin\u2019s Inverno<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (The New York Times Book Review<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

\"Hisham<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPart historical fiction, part cultural reflection, this is a story about the way exile calcifies the heart into an organ of brittle longing\u00a0\u2026 It\u2019s gratifying to see this thoughtful writer take all the time he needs to wrestle until daybreak with the mysterious angel of his disquieted conscience \u2026 Matar writes with cool solemnity in phrases that are often epigraphic but never contrived \u2026 Sorrowful as this novel often is, it\u2019s not a Shakespearean tragedy nor an elegy. Matar\u2019s previous books have always felt slender\u2014never slight, no, never that, but compressed, the work of a displaced man aware of the need to pack only what\u2019s essential. With My Friends<\/em>, it\u2019s gratifying to see this thoughtful writer take all the time he needs to wrestle until daybreak with the mysterious angel of his disquieted conscience \u2026<\/p>\n

Matar writes with cool solemnity in phrases that are often epigraphic but never contrived. Such is the muted intensity of his tone that it feels entirely natural for a character to say, in full-throated Rumian splendor: \u2018Where would humanity be without morning? Even the most violent need is calmed by dawn, and you can almost catch the fresh scent of hope\u2019 \u2026 But sorrowful as this novel often is, it\u2019s not a Shakespearean tragedy nor an elegy in the spirit of \u2018In Memoriam.\u2019 It\u2019s a profound celebration of the sustaining power of friendship, of the ways we mold ourselves against the indentations of those few people whom fate presses against us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Ron Charles on Hisham Matar\u2019s My Friends<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (The Washington Post<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our smorgasbord of sumptuous reviews this week includes Patricia Lockwood on Blake Butler\u2019s Molly, Elizabeth Gonzalez James on \u00c1lvaro Enrigue\u2019s You Dreamed of Empires,\u00a0MJ Franklin on Claire Oshetsky\u2019s Poor Deer, Sigrid Nunez on Cynthia Zarin\u2019s Inverno, \u00a0and\u00a0Ron Charles on Hisham Matar\u2019s My Friends. Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub\u2019s home for book reviews. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":873,"featured_media":231949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43069,6,43070,43135],"tags":[36298,15654,13821],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Inverno.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-Yl6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231948"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/873"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}