Review by New York Times Review
A RAGE FOR ORDER: The Middle East in Turmoil, From Tahrir Square to ISIS, by Robert F. Worth. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $15.) A masterly account of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, and the region's decline into violence and anarchy, by a former New York Times foreign correspondent. Our reviewer, Kenneth M. Pollack, called the book "a marvel of storytelling, with the chapters conjuring a poignancy fitting for the subject." THE MIRROR THIEF, by Martin Seay. (Melville House, $17.99.) Linked narratives brimming with delightful, esoteric detail unfold in three Venices: 16thcentury Italy; 1950s Venice Beach, Calif. ; and the Venetian casino in Las Vegas in 2003. A card counter, the man hired to track him down and an oblique book of poems weave through a series of schemes in this novel, with a structure that recalls David Mitchell's "Cloud Atlas." FREE SPEECH: Ten Principles for a Connected World, by Timothy Garton Ash. (Yale University, $22.) Protected speech is under siege on a wide front and is caught up in a number of modern controversies, from the role of government surveillance to the criminalization of hate speech and the prosecution of whistle-blowers. Garton Ash examines 10 such cases, framed with his call for "more free speech but also better speech." THE NEST, by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney. (Ecco/ HarperCollins, $16.99.) A $2 million trust fund is set aside for the Plumb siblings, who are each counting on their share to rescue them from financial straits. But months before they are set to receive the money, Leo, the eldest, squanders a majority of the sum after a car accident; the ensuing family drama of "firstworld problems proves to be an enjoyable comedy of manners as Sweeney artfully skewers family dynamics," our reviewer, Patricia Park, wrote. LAROSE, by Louise Erdrich. (Harper Perennial, $15.99.) While hunting buck, Landreaux does the worst thing imaginable: He accidentally kills his best friend's child. As penance, he offers his own son, LaRose, to the grieving parents, setting in motion a powerful story of ancestry, justice and forgiveness. JOE GOULD'S TEETH, by Jill Lepore. (Vintage, $16.) Gould - a New York eccentric friendly with many of the early 20th century's bestknown artists - decided to record everything anyone said to him, aiming to "widen the sphere of history as Walt Whitman did that of poetry." The project, known as "The Oral History of Our Time," acquired a near-mythic status - and then some wondered if it ever existed at all. Lepore, a New Yorker staff writer and Harvard historian, sets out to discover the manuscript's fate.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 16, 2017]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Novelist extraordinaire Erdrich proves she is also a gifted voice actor in the audio edition of her latest novel. She reads with a soft but authoritative voice that works so well with her subject matter-the lives of contemporary Ojibwe in North Dakota torn between their modern ideas and sensibilities and the traditions of their ancestors. Erdrich reads fluently, at a conversational pace that easily draws listeners in. As in The Round House, the story explores the quest for justice and the thirst for retribution. Landreaux Iron, an Ojibwe man, accidentally shoots and kills Dusty, the five-year-old son of his best friend, who is not a member of the tribe. In his anguish, Landreaux turns to an Ojibwe tradition that holds that he must give his own son, LaRose, to Dusty's parents. Erdrich's reading captures the complex emotions of both sets of mothers and fathers and each of their children; of the lonely, jealous alcoholic who years ago gave his son to the Iron family because he couldn't raise him; and of the local priest painfully in love with LaRose's mother. Erdrich's narration adds depth to this contemporary story intertwined with the long history of the LaRose name and Ojibwe culture. A Harper hardcover. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In rural North Dakota, Landreaux and Ravich are friends and neighbors, further bound by their wives who are half sisters. With a single gunshot, their lives change forever, when Landreaux aims at a buck at the edge of a field bordering both properties and kills Ravich's five-year-old son instead. In a shocking act of mourning and forgiveness, Landreaux adheres to an ancient native tradition and delivers his own five-year-old son LaRose, who was also the dead boy's best friend, to the grieving parents: "Our son will be your son now.... It's the old way." From that double cleaving, both families forge new paths toward acceptance and healing, but most of all young LaRose, who moves back and forth between a family who desperately needs him and one who can never fully release him. National Book Award Winner Erdrich (The Round House) narrates her latest novel with solemnity and grace, never resorting to outbursts and manipulation. Just as her prose remains understated and subtle-shockingly so, at times-her reading never wavers from elegance and control. VERDICT Another mesmerizing accomplishment from an unparalleled storyteller. ["Erdrich creates a contained world in the dying prairie town of Pluto, a reservation border village, where white and tribal history come together and where Catholic and traditional spirit worlds, modernity, and the forbidding past intersect": LJ 5/15/16 review of the Harper hc.]-Terry Hong, -Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
