Review by New York Times Review
THE HOUR OF LAND: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks, by Terry Tempest Williams. (Picador, $18.) After visiting 12 national parks, Williams examines their role in shaping the country's politics, history and people in these essays. Her writing can take on an activist's urgency: Williams's "alarm at humanity's calamitous impact on nature is indelibly imprinted in her writing," our reviewer, Andrea Wulf, said. NICOTINE, by Nell Zink. (Ecco/ HarperCollins, $15.99.) With her father in hospice, Penny returns to his childhood home in New Jersey, where she encounters a troupe of squatters who have overrun the homestead. She soon falls in love with their unofficial chief, Rob, and with their way of life. But when Penny's family moves to evict the squatters, she must act to protect their fragile community. REVOLUTION ON THE HUDSON: New York City and the Hudson River Valley in the American War of Independence, by George C. Daughan. (Norton, $18.95.) As a central economic channel, connecting New England to the other colonies, the Hudson River was a critical strategic front for both sides during the Revolutionary War. But Britain's intense pursuit of winning control of the region during the conflict may have cost it victory, Daughan argues. MISCHLING, by Affinity Konar. (Lee Boudreaux/ Back Bay, $16.99.) In this affecting and occasionally lyrical debut novel, Konar draws on real-life figures from World War II, including Josef Mengele, who inflicted unspeakable horrors on prisoners at Auschwitz - and had a particular interest in twins. This story's central characters, Stasha and Pearl, twin sisters who are fiercely close, arrive at the camp when they are 12; Mengele's experiments on them threaten to distance one sister from the other. MAGIC AND LOSS: The Internet as Art, by Virginia Heffernan. (Simon & Schuster, $17.) The internet is too often hailed as simply a technological achievement, without enough attention to its creative foundation, Heffernan, a journalist and critic, says. She approaches the web as an artistic masterpiece, structuring her book around what she sees as its aesthetic building blocks: design, text, photography, music. SELECTION DAY, by Aravind Adiga. (Scribner, $16.) Two brothers in India are groomed by their poor fcv"' father to become cricket Jfc/' stars. The story "pulses with affection for Mumbai," our reviewer, Marcel Theroux said, praising the book's "broad sweep, accomplished with commendable economy and humor, in a sinewy, compact prose that has the grace and power of a gifted athlete."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* No zoo ever operated on more devilish principles than the cruel zoo of paired human specimens maintained by Josef Mengele, who culled twins from the prisoners at Auschwitz for insidious comparative experiments. Yet in the factual testimonies of survivors of this monstrous zoo, Konar finds inspiration for fiction of rare poignancy and astonishing hope. Daughters of a Jewish physician spirited into oblivion by Nazi goons, the 12-year-old twins Stasha and Pearl Zagorski find themselves among Auschwitz Zoo specimens, in the hands of a doctor fiendishly unlike their tender father. Victims themselves of Mengele's malevolence and witnesses of his atrocities against others, Stasha and Pearl sustain each other through role-playing games of death-defying imagination. Unfolding out of Stasha's anguished psyche, Konar's compelling narrative conveys a surviving twin's intense grief when Pearl disappears and her courageous refusal to succumb to that grief, or to pain, starvation, or despair, even in the waning months of the war, when Auschwitz's overlords desperately destroy evidence of their crimes. With Feliks another zoo specimen who has lost a twin sibling Stasha escapes from a death march of Auschwitz inmates, aflame with fantasies of vengeance against Mengele and with luminous if jumbled dreams of a better future. An unforgettable sojourn of the spirit.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Actress Johansson's audio narration of Konar's achingly beautiful novel is notable for its light touch in vocalizing, so vividly, the 12-year-old identical twins Pearl and Stasha, who were tortured by the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, at Auschwitz. The Jewish twins, from Poland, are separated from their family upon arrival at the death camp and taken to Mengele's "zoo," along with other twins and children with albinism, for barbaric experimentation. Pearl and Stasha take turns describing their encounters with Mengele and with other characters; their telepathic-like bond binds them close, even as they become physically separated and one twin is subjected to horrific suffering. Reader Johansson captures the novel's focus on the twins, not Mengele, and conveys their childlike innocence, even as they endure agonizing physical pain and sadistic mind games. Johansson doesn't make the sisters' voices highly distinguishable from each other, which would be a flaw in a less adept voice actor, but it's a wise calculation here that keeps the focus on Konar's gorgeous, elegant prose. An LB/Boudreaux hardcover. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Josef Mengele was a Nazi doctor at -Auschwitz during World War II. He had a particular interest in human oddities-twins, triplets, albinos, little people-and collected examples of these individuals as they arrived at the concentration camp to use in medical experiments. Twins Pearl and Stasha are placed in Mengele's "zoo," where they struggle in the face of his horrific cruelty. Their mental connection helps them to survive, even after they become separated. After the liberation, Stasha travels to Warsaw hoping to find and kill Mengele. Konar captures the innocence of youth and the tenacity of hope in the human heart, even when it is submerged in horror and death. The twin's voices alternate to tell the story, balancing vengeance and forgiveness throughout. Vanessa Johansson's narration is compelling and heartbreaking. VERDICT Highly recommended. ["This searing work deepens our understanding of the Holocaust": LJ 8/16 starred review of the Lee Boudreaux: Little, Brown hc.]-Joanna -Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence © Copyright 2016. 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.
