Hi all,
Multiple links to full-length professional reviews of the following
books released in the US have been added to http://www.reviewsofbooks.com
in the last week:
"Song Yet Sung" by James McBride - In "Song Yet Sung," Liz Spocott is
a slave who has run away from her ***ually abusive master to the
eastern shores of Maryland in the 1850s. Liz is captured by the
notorious Patty Cannon, who uses her gang of both white and black men
to track down runaway slaves for her own purposes. While chained
together with 14 other slaves in Patty's attic, Liz learns coded
sentences and clues called "the code" that lead to the Underground
Railway. The other captives call Liz "The Dreamer" because of her
prophecies of the future of the black race. Liz leads an escape from
Patty's attic, heading off to the wild shores where the code guides
her, but where any encounter with either white or black people could
mean either redemption or betrayal. Patty Cannon, her reputation
sullied, vows revenge. Liz's master doubles the stakes, luring a
legendary slave catcher out of retirement to hunt her down also.
James McBride's novel has received positive reviews with the Rocky
Mountain News saying, "McBride borrows liberally from actual
historical events and figures to fabricate this engrossing tale, and
then emphasizes the implications of past actions by interspersing them
with Liz's recurring nightmares of the future. His vivid descriptions
of the tangled lands and waterscapes of the eastern shore create a
claustrophobic sense of place - readers will extrapolate the need for
a moral compass, as well as a literal one."
All reviews are at:
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/song_yet_sung
Amazon.com link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594489726/?tag=reviewsofbooks8-20
"The Somnambulist" by Jonathan Barnes - "The Somnambulist" of this
novel's title is an eight-foot hairless man who is mute, and
apparently neither bleeds nor suffers injury when stabbed by swords.
He's the companion to Edward Moon, a 19th-century conjurer and amateur
detective whose fame and career are flagging. The London they inhabit
is shared by every Victorian oddity imaginable; some are terribly
ugly, others incredibly fat, albinos, a time traveler, circus freaks
and other deformed humans, and a brothel that caters to unique, if
not, disgusting tastes. Moon is asked by the police to help with a
pair of murders, and in hopes of restoring his fame, he agrees. What
he and the Somnambulist uncover, though, is a conspiracy by utopians
to destroy the city and rebuild it in their own vision. Jonathan
Barnes's debut novel has received positive reviews with the Wa****ngton
Post saying, "There is much that is strange, magical and darkly
hilarious in this book, at least if one savors the sardonic and the
bizarre. At various points it recalls Dickens, 'Alice in Wonderland'
and 'Frankenstein,' but it remains an original and monumentally
inventive piece of work by a writer still in his 20s."
Excerpt and all reviews are at:
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/somnambulist
Amazon.com link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061375381/?tag=reviewsofbooks8-20
"The Soul Thief" by Charles Baxter - "The Soul Thief" begins in
Buffalo in the early 1970s where Nathaniel Mason is a graduate
student. He's just a face in the crowd and his social circle revolves
around three people. Theresa is beautiful woman who keep an emotional
distance, Jamie is a lesbian for whom Nathaniel feels a romantic
longing, and Jerome Coolberg is a genius with some unknown grand
destiny. Somehow, Jerome begins to speak about things in Nathaniel's
past that Nathaniel never shared with him and there are repeated
burglaries in Nathaniel's room. Nathaniel begins to suspect that
Jerome is stealing his life and identity, and this loss of sense of
self sends his world spiraling out of control. Charles Baxter's novel
has received mostly positive reviews with the San Francisco Chronicle
saying, "Baxter's newest work, though, gives us ****vers for more than
just this eerie exploration of identity and identity theft. It's the
story of a sentimentalist wrestling with sentimentality, charity and
friend****p, all focused through a middle-class American lens."
Excerpt and all reviews are at:
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/soul_thief
Amazon.com link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375422528/?tag=reviewsofbooks8-20
"The Age of ****va" by Manil Suri - "The Age of ****va" is narrated by
Meera, a 17-year-old girl when the novel begins in a newly independent
India in the 1950s. She's aroused by her older sister's suitor, an
aspiring pop singer named Dev, and manages to snatch him away for
herself. Wanting to escape her overbearing father, Meera marries Dev,
and finds she's made a mistake. She lives with Dev's family, whom are
poorer and a lower class than her family, as well as more religious.
Forced to be subservient to Dev, whose drinking inhibits any career he
might have, Meera is forced to turn to her father for help. The birth
of her son provides a conduit for all her dreams and aspirations of
the life she wished she'd have lived. "The Age of ****va" has
received mostly positive reviews with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
saying, "With Meera, Suri displays a complex understanding of the kind
of emotional struggle only a mother can face. Behind Suri's
crystalline ****trait of Meera and her family is the hazy but
optimistic vision of an India learning to cope with independence."
All reviews are at:
http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/age_of_****va
Amazon.com link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393065693/?tag=reviewsofbooks8-20
Happy reading!
Bill - administrator of http://www.reviewsofbooks.com
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