Book Review

I knew I wanted to read Death in Her Hands , Ottessa Moshfegh’s newest novel, before I knew anything about it. Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation was one of the best books I read in 2019 —a darkly comic novel about a young woman’s extended hibernation with a battery of prescription meds—and I couldn’t wait to see what the author would do next.

I took a road trip recently—a long road trip—and downloaded a few audiobooks to pass the time. One was The Push , a debut novel by Ashley Audrain. And oh. My. Gosh.

This coming weekend is the unofficial kickoff to summer. Which means summer reading. Which means—for lots of folks—a little something light and funny, maybe set in a sunny locale.

During a visit to my local bookstore a couple weeks ago, a bookseller ushered me over to the nonfiction table and grabbed a copy of Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad. “A Memoir of a Life Interrupted” was the subtitle. On the cover, a photo of the author and her terrier, Oscar, atop a goldenrod-colored Volkswagen bus.

The COVID-19 pandemic turned some of my friends into master do-it-yourselfers. Quarantined at home, they took on home improvement projects, learned to quilt, went crazy with sourdough starters and baked artisan breads. Me—not so much. I grew some tomatoes. I cooked some meals. But when it comes to most practical life skills, I’m still sorely lacking. Enter, Sharon and David Bowers.

Sometimes it’s the smallest books that pack the most powerful punches. Think George Orwell’s Animal Farm , John Steinbeck’s The Pearl , Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea . None are much longer than an average short story, but they tackle heavy themes such as communism, greed, and the struggle between good and evil. Address Unknown is just such a work.

Novelist Patricia Engel was born to Colombian parents. Her newest novel, Infinite Country , is a wonder of storytelling no doubt inspired by, if not her own upbringing, then the stories of countless immigrant families who seek a better life in the United States.

My friend Carrie keeps chickens in her backyard in Wichita, and whenever she goes out of town, I volunteer to feed and check on them. Chicken sitting, I call it. It’s not a bad gig and comes with rewards, like the occasional fresh egg with a yolk so orange and creamy, it doesn’t even resemble the ones you get in the grocery store. So I know a little bit about chickens and the people who love them. That’s why I picked up Jackie Polzin’s debut novel, Brood —a slender little story about one woman’s attempt to keep four chickens alive amid the frigid cold, searing heat and countless predators around her Minnesota home.

There are times when you don’t finish a book in time for a book club discussion but you go anyway. I mean, it’s all about the wine and conversation, right? But then there are times when you’re halfway through a book that’s full of twists, turns and gasp-inducing surprises, and you just have to send your regrets: “See you next month,” I told the KMUW Literary Feast regulars recently. Because SPOILERS.

You might be asking yourself, “How many novels about World War II does a person really need to read?” And the answer is: at least one more.

About three years ago, author Kristin Hannah began writing a novel about hard times in America—the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, economic collapse, massive unemployment and income inequality. “Never in my wildest dreams,” Hannah writes in the author’s note of her new novel, “did I imagine that the Great Depression would become so relevant in our modern lives.”

For a writer like me to review a writer like Joan Didion seems downright ridiculous. Didion is an icon, a legend—a writer of novels, memoir and nonfiction that will be studied by journalists and writing students long into the future.

It’s a new year—thank goodness—and a great time to take stock of your reading habits and set new goals for what and how you’d like to read in 2021. One great way to do that is to join a reading challenge.

I’m not a regular reader of “Southern Living” magazine—save the occasional recipe for shrimp and grits if I’m feeling homesick—and I don’t believe I’ve ever picked up an issue of “Garden & Gun.” But the magazine pieces that make up Rick Bragg’s latest book make me want to buy a subscription. Where I Come From: Stories from the Deep South is a collection of personal columns by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, who is probably best known for his memoir, All Over but the Shoutin’ . Bragg grew up dirt poor among the ridgelines of northeastern Alabama, and his love for the place shines through in this collection, which sparkles with the wit and tenderness of a Pat Conroy novel. Topics range from Harper Lee to hot chicken, fire ants to Fat Tuesday, and “grandmothers with their arms full of fat babies and their giant purses stuffed with butterscotch candies and Juicy Fruit.” He recalls the perils of trying to travel in winter—“You do not really fly out of Birmingham,”

Several years ago, when I read the 2012 novel Beautiful Ruins , I recall setting the book down and promising myself that I would read anything and everything Jess Walter ever wrote. The man can spin a tale better than almost any novelist alive today—and his newest work, The Cold Millions , does not disappoint.

There’s a lot of talk these days about “Own Voices” novels. It’s a term that refers to an author from a marginalized or under-represented group writing about his or her own experiences, from an authentic, lived perspective.

Earlier this year, as the coronavirus began to spread across the globe, Alice Quinn reached out to American poets to see what they were writing under quarantine. The result is Together in a Sudden Strangeness , an anthology that reflects the fear and isolation the pandemic wrought, as well as the deep reflection and creativity that has come from it.

Irish author Maggie O’Farrell won this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction for Hamnet , a novel inspired by and named after William Shakespeare’s only son—and the possible inspiration for his tragedy “Hamlet.”

Don and Mimi Galvin had a dozen children—10 boys and two girls—born between 1945 and 1965, perfectly spanning the baby boom.

In Yaa Gyasi’s new novel, Transcendent Kingdom , a Stanford Ph.D. candidate named Gifty studies reward-seeking behavior in mice and the mysterious synapses that can lead to addiction or depression. She does it because her brother, Nana, was a gifted basketball player before an injury led to an OxyContin addiction and eventually to a deadly heroin overdose. And she does it because her mother, a Ghanaian immigrant, is depressed and living in her bed. Gifty wants to better understand the science of suffering. Meanwhile, she grapples with the evangelical faith of her youth — and the salvation it once promised her. “‘What’s the point of all this?’ is a question that separates humans from other animals,” Gyasi writes. “Our curiosity around this issue has sparked everything from science to literature to philosophy to religion. When the answer to this question is ‘Because God deemed it so’ we might feel comforted. But what if the answer to this question is ‘I don’t know,’ or worse still,