All Book Reviews

Kevin Kwan’s CRAZY RICH ASIANS TRILOGY focuses on a segment of the uber-rich many of us in the U.S. have rarely thought about—the extremely wealthy Chinese and Southeast Asians. But that’s all changed now: rich Asians are very much part of our public...

Comedy, tragedy, and magic join hands in HARRY’S TREES, a charming, if uneven, novel. Its appeal lies in the two main characters: Harry Crane, a middle-aged average-Joe kind of guy, and a cheeky, bossy nine-year-old named Oriana Jeffers. Both are in the throes...

Ackerman’s slender volume—more the size of a personal journal—packs a huge wallop. Only three characters carry the weight of the novel’s biggest questions: what does it mean to love someone, what does it mean to forgive, and what does it mean to be alive?...

When I think of Anne Tyler, I think of Baltimore, Maryland. That’s where so many of her books are set, and it’s also the city Tyler calls home. CLOCK DANCE, however, begins in Lark City, Pennsylvania, where we meet Willa Drake at the age of eleven. Later the...

If you have a poetic soul, or love Celtic literature and/or have a penchant for stories about orphans as I do, I hope you find time to settle down with GIRL ON THE LEESIDE by Kathleen Anne Kenney. Siobhan Doyle is the girl in question. Orphaned at the age of two under...

In her first two novels, Rachel Kushner does what a good writer is supposed to do: she transports readers into a richly created world and into the complex minds of her characters—so thoroughly that we mesh with both the world and its inhabitants. Ditto THE MARS ROOM,...

Stephen McCauley’s characters get a chance at new life in his funny, incisive new novel. The story’s three main players are unsettled and out-of-joint—David Hedges, a gay man, whose San Francisco apartment is being sold out from under him; Julie Fiske, a...

Because so much of the worth of THE WIFE BETWEEN US rests on its twists and turns, I will not be providing any spoilers, which means that means some of the review will seem overly vague. For that I apologize, but most readers (I may be the exception) hate spoilers. As...

Though this historical suspense novel is set in 1879, in many ways it seems relevant to today’s #Me Too movement. I was dumbfounded to learn that the age of consent for females in New York State was ten years old at that time. Also eye-opening was how poorly the...

My father bought me Pillars of the Earth when I was twenty-two. I winced at the thought of the investment; both his and mine—it was a thousand pages long. But Dad was a salesman and did his thing, so I went for it, and Follett became one of my favorite authors. I...

Marriage is like a den—it’s “not the most important room in the house”—says a minor character in ALTERNATE SIDE. The character may be minor (and unmarried), but her pronouncement is a major thematic concern in Anna Quindlen’s latest novel. Nora...

In her latest, THE GOOD LIAR, Catherine McKenzie demonstrates the same strong handle of suspense narratives that readers enjoyed in Fractured and Smoke. The story is told from intertwining perspectives, though the bulk of the pages follow the strong and relatable...