Review by New York Times Review
TRANSIT, by Rachel Cusk. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) The shadowy narrator of this novel, the second in a trilogy, moves to London and begins to renovate a dilapidated house as she recovers from the death of her marriage. She becomes a conduit for the stories told by the people she encounters. Compulsively readable and beautifully precise, the book is a meditation on the nature of self, freedom, narrative and reality. ARTHUR AND SHERLOCK: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes, by Michael Sims. (Bloomsbury, $27.) How did an obscure 26-year-old doctor achieve the most enduring literary accomplishment of his generation in just six weeks? Sims proves an ingenious investigator in this magnificent work of scholarship. SELECTION DAY, by Aravind Adiga. (Scribner, $26.) Poor brothers prepare to try out for Mumbai's elite cricket team in a sweeping novel that pulses with affection for Mumbai itself. Adiga writes with economy and humor in a sinewy, compact prose. A HOUSE FULL OF FEMALES: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. (Knopf, $35.) Ulrich, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and the descendant of generations of Mormons, consults diaries and letters to uncover how women experienced the contentious new practice of polygamy, embraced by the church in the 1840s. EARNING THE ROCKIES: How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World, by Robert D. Kaplan. (Random House, $27.) Describing a cross-country journey, Kaplan, a distinguished writer on foreign affairs, argues that geography and union made the United States a worid power. But he observes that globalization diminishes America's geographic advantages and erodes its unity. THE CROSSING, by Andrew Miller. (Europa, paper, $18.) A closed-off, mysterious woman leaves her husband and child and sails across the Atlantic alone in this elegantly written novel. THE PATRIOTS, by Sana Krasikov. (Spiegel & Grau, $28.) Krasikov's sweeping debut novel, a historical romance in the old style, juggles narratives and time frames as it sends three generations of an American Jewish family to Russia in their turns. ONCE WE WERE SISTERS: A Memoir, by Sheila Kohler. (Penguin, paper, $16.) A South African novelist writes with "eternal regret" about her sister, who was abused and possibly killed by her husband, in this moving memoir of love and sorrow. SIGNALS, by Tim Gautreaux. (Knopf, $26.95.) The 21 stories in this collection, many of them set in Louisiana, begin as realistic fiction but march inevitably into poetry. They reflect the influence of Gautreaux's teacher, James Dickey, as well as Flannery O'Connor.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Kohler (The Bay of Foxes, 2012; Dreaming for Freud, 2014) has previously written about her sister, Maxine, in her fiction. It was one way she dealt with her sister's tragic death, at only 39, in a car accident that Kohler is convinced Maxine's abusive husband orchestrated. In this memoir, Kohler writes about Maxine without the veil of fiction. The sisters grew up privileged in South Africa, where their parents' wealth made it possible for them to have a childhood that included servants, boarding schools, trips to Paris, and an ignorance to apartheid's injustices. Both girls married young, to passionate yet terrible and in Maxine's case, extremely violent men, and Kohler depicts idyllic childhood moments giving way to disturbing marital scenes. Uniquely, Kohler relies on her memory while also acknowledging its limits, even periodically allowing one of the included photos to negate her words on the page. It all makes for a tragic yet gorgeous story that will appeal to those interested in the nature of memory, South African history, and fraught family relationships.--Sexton, Kathy Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Kohler's crisp, clipped voice is ideal for her memoir, which begins with references to Nelson Mandela, Afrikaners, and various family members that all announce her South African heritage. Although she left her birth country at 17, Kohler (Cracks; Crossways) has retained her clear, concise pronunciation almost 60 years later. What feels like detached precision enhances her first work of nonfiction, ensuring that her raw, revealing focus on the death of her older sister almost half of Kohler's lifetime ago never devolves into maudlin, overwrought eulogy. At 37, Kohler's 39-year-old sister Maxine was killed in a car driven by her husband, leaving behind six young children: "This moment is the beginning of endless years of yearning and regret. It is also the beginning of my writing life." More than a dozen titles and decades later, Kohler, now in her 70s, recounts what came before and what happened after and examines how she might have saved Maxine, who, despite personal wealth, privilege, and mobility, stayed in a violent marriage to a philandering gay doctor. Achingly graceful, unabashedly forthright, Kohler bears witness to an unbreakable bond even death cannot sever. VERDICT An empathetic addition alongside Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air and Christa Parravani's Her.-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.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Novelist Kohler (Dreaming for Freud, 2014, etc.) reflects on her beloved older sister, Maxine, who was tragically killed in a car accident at the age of 39.In this intimate, exquisitely written memoir, the authors first work of nonfiction, she explores the impenetrable bond that can exist between sisters. As the daughters of a wealthy white timber merchant, Sheila and Maxine enjoyed all of the privileges of living on a vast estate outside of Johannesburg in the postwar years under apartheid. Yet upon their fathers untimely death, their seemingly idyllic lives were disrupted as their domineering and impulsive mother abandoned their home and moved with the girls to various new settings. In chapters alternately moving back and forth in time, Kohler recalls pivotal moments throughout their lives: their experiences living on the family estate, being shuttled off to an Anglican boarding school, and their glamorous travels to European cities together as young women, travels that unfortunately led to their early and regrettable decisions to marry. Eventually, raising their families in different cities, each was forced to confront unfaithful husbandsin Maxines case, an increasingly violent man who would become responsible for her death. Through these shifts of time and with an expanding consciousness, Kohler subtly seeks to unravel secrets that emerge within each individual. Maxines life and the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death serve as a touchstone and became a source of inspiration for the authors writing. In story after story, writes Kohler, I conjure up my sister in various disguises, as well as other figures from our past. Her bright image leads me onward like a candle in the night. Again and again in various forms and shapes I write her story, colored by my own feelings of love and guilt. In spare, delicate prose, Kohler brings a seasoned novelists skills to this deeply moving, compelling memoir. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
