Review by New York Times Review
THIS FIGHT IS OUR FIGHT: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class, by Elizabeth Warren. (Metropolitan/Holt, $28.) In this smart, tough-minded manifesto, the Massachusetts senator rails against income inequality and its consequences and discusses how it can be reduced through public policy. LAST HOPE ISLAND: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War, by Lynne Olson. (Random House, $30.) Olson, in her fourth book about World War II, argues that the people of occupied Europe and the expatriate leaders did far more for their own liberation than historians have realized. WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY, by Lesley Nneka Arimah. (Riverhead, $26.) Originality and narrative verve characterize the stories in this first collection by a British-Nigerian-American writer. A witty and mischievous storyteller, Arimah is especially interested in the cruelty and losses brought about by clashes between women, especially girls. DEMOCRACY: Stories From the Long Road to Freedom,by Condoleezza Rice. (Twelve, $35.) The promotion of democracy should shape America's foreign policy in the 21st century, the former secretary of state writes in this important new book, even though she recognizes that it's "really, really hard." BETWEEN THEM: Remembering My Parents, by Richard Ford. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $25.99.) In two discrete sections written 30 years apart, Ford describes his parents' lives and deaths by turn, driven by his curiosity about who they were. This slim beauty of a memoir is a remarkable story about two unremarkable people. BORNE, by JeffVanderMeer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) A climate change survivor in a post-apocalyptic city in a sea of toxicity tries to adopt a nonhuman life-form capable of changing and learning. Her companion, along with a defunct (probably) biotech company and a flying bear, also make appearances. This coming-of-age story signifies that eco-fiction has come of age. FEAR CITY: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, by Kim Phillips-Fein. (Metropolitan/Holt, $32.) Phillips-Fein narrates the story of New York City's fiscal crisis of the 1970s with fresh eyes, suggesting that the transformation into two cities it set in motion was not an inexorable evolution but a political choice. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem, by George Prochnik. (Other Press, $27.95.)When he embraced Jewish tradition as a source of meaning, Prochnik sought out Scholem, a scholar who introduced the kabbalah to secular society. NOTES OF A CROCODILE, by Qiu Miaojin. Translated by Bonnie Huie. (New York Review Books, $27.95.) First published in 1994, this cult classic novel depicts a group of quick-witted and queer friends, students at a university in Taipei, and an obsessive love. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Qiu's novel, originally published in 1994 and now translated into English for the first time, follows a young college student, nicknamed Lazi, as she comes to terms with her homosexuality in late-1980s Taipei, shortly after the lifting of Taiwan's long-standing martial law. Most of the novel chronicles Lazi's on-again, off-again toxic romance with classmate Shui Ling, who leaves her miserable and obsessed. As Lazi meanders from apartments and classes, trying to figure out the mysteries of love, she sees herself as a crocodile, a character that appears in several brief chapters and that dresses as a human, afraid to show its true self as it goes about its life. Lazi also strikes up friendships with Chu Kuang, his sometimes-boyfriend Meng Sheng, and girlfriends Tun Tun and Zhi Rou, who all appear at various intervals to offer Lazi support and companionship. Qiu (Last Words from Montmartre), who died at the age of 26, creates a relatively plotless coming-of-age tale that once challenged norms, but in 2017, Lazi's adventures are relatively tame. Though intriguing, the novel is slightly unfocused, and Lazi's observations are frequently overwrought with youthful naïveté. Still, as a piece of counterculture literature, the novel is worth examination. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A college student's romantic obsession with another woman threatens to derail her happiness.Taipei in the late 1980s. Lazi is 18, newly enrolled in college, and describes herself as "an innately beautiful peacock" who is "pure carrion inside." Depressed and self-harming over her attraction to women, Lazi enters into a toxic relationship with Shui Ling, a fellow student. During the course of their on-again, off-again unconsummated relationship, Lazi turns to a group of friends whose love lives are as complicated as her own. Qiu (Last Words from Montmartre, 2014), who died in 1995 at the age of 26, structures her essentially plotless novel as a series of eight notebooks that take us through Lazi's college years. These notebooks can be unabashedly adolescentsentences like "The glow on her face was like rays of sunshine along a golden beach" abound. Also true to the college experience are the long pages of abstract conversation Lazi and her friends engage in, usually late at night. But in many ways, Qiu's willingness to show youth at its most self-absorbed and earnest is part of the book's appeal. Most readersperhaps especially those who identify as LGBTQwill see themselves somewhere in Lazi's agonized social circle. But Qiu also reminds her readers at every turn how truly isolating otherness can be: interspersed with Lazi's musings, Qiu tells a kind of surreal, contemporary fable of a crocodile, the subject of equal parts bigotry and misplaced reverence. The crocodile's plight, as it "got home from work [and] removed the sweat-soaked human suit clinging to its body," serves as an odd, but perfect, metaphor for Lazi, whose true heartbreak is feeling so alien as to scarcely feel human. A meandering, but moving, look at queer identity. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
