Review by New York Times Review
MY STRUGGLE: Book 6, by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Translated by Don Bartlett and Martin Aitken. (Archipelago, $33.) This hefty volume concludes the Norwegian author's mammoth autobiographical novel with lengthy exegeses on art, literature, poetry and Hitler (whose "Mein Kampf" gives Knausgaard his title). LAKE SUCCESS, by Gary Shteyngart. (Random House, $28.) Shteyngart's prismatic new road-trip novel stars a Wall Street finance bro, loaded down with job and family woes, who impulsively hops on a Greyhound bus headed west. We do not root for him, but we root for his comeuppance. THE FIELD OF BLOOD: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War, by Joanne B. Freeman. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) A noted historian uncovers the scores of brawls, stabbings, pummelings and duel threats that occurred among congressmen between 1830 and 1860. The mayhem was part of the ever-escalating tensions over slavery. OHIO, by Stephen Markley. (Simon & Schuster, $27.) This debut novel, set at a class reunion, churns with such ambitious social statements and insights - on hot-button issues of the past dozen years - that at times it feels like a kind of fiction/op-ed hybrid. HIS FAVORITES, by Kate Walbert. (Scribner, $22.) A middle-aged woman recalls, haltingly, how she was groomed by a charismatic high school English teacher in this powerful novel of trauma and survival that couldn't be more timely. The looping narrative amounts to a cathartic experiment in taking control of one's own story. IMMIGRANT, MONTANA, by Amitava Kumar. (Knopf, $25.95.) Kumar's novel of a young Indian immigrant who recounts his loves lost and won as a college student in the early 1990s has the feeling of thinly veiled memoir. It's a deeply honest look at a budding intellectual's new experience of America, filled with both alienation and an aching desire to connect. PASSING FOR HUMAN: A Graphic Memoir, by Liana Finek. (Random House, $28.) Finck's cartoons in The New Yorker offer dispatches from an eccentric, anxious mind. Her memoir grapples with what it means to accept your own weirdness and separation from a world that doesn't understand you. THE WINTER SOLDIER, by Daniel Mason. (Little, Brown, $28.) In this crackling World War I novel, a young medical student is dispatched to a desolate hamlet on the Eastern Front, where he teams with a rifle-wielding nun to treat soldiers. THE ASSASSINATION OF BRANGWAIN SPURGE, by M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin. (Candlewick, $24.99; ages 10 and up.) In this wildly original book (a National Book Award contender), emissaries of the feuding elf and goblin kingdoms seek peace. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Anderson's latest foray into middle-grade fantasy is executed with all the smarts and finesse his fans have come to expect. Joining him on this storytelling adventure is Yelchin, who supplies illustrated sections identified as Top Secret Transmissions that move the story along, much like the artwork in Brian Selznick's illustrated novels. The story opens by flinging readers into the goblin city of Tenebrion, alongside elfin historian Brangwain Spurge. Entrusted with a rare jewel from Elfland, a gift to forge peace between the two kingdoms, Brangwain regards his diplomatic mission with a mix of stoicism and disdain. On the other hand, his goblin host, Archivist Werfel, is brimming with excitement over the opportunity for cultural and scholarly exchange. While the two await a summons from the goblins' ruler, Brangwain regularly sends reports to the elves' secret police (Top Secret Transmissions!), revealing his clandestine role as spy. The true joy of this novel is in the two scholars' rapport, especially as their irreconcilable views on their kingdoms' war-torn history emerge; but as circumstances send the pair running for their lives, misconceptions begin to be stripped away. Yelchin's black pen-and-ink illustrations, in medieval style, capture the humor and fantastical details of the text, as well as Brangwain's changing view of goblins. Biting and hysterical, Brangwain and Werfel's adventure is one for the history books.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In a witty, offbeat adventure, elfin historian Magister Brangwain Spurge is sent by Lord Ysoret Clivers, of the Order of the Clean Hand, to the allegedly wicked goblin court of Ghohg the Evil One; once there, Spurge is to present the ruler with a carved gemstone and broker peace. After crossing the Bonecruel Mountains via crossbow capsule, Spurge is welcomed by his host, the unfailingly polite goblin historian Werfel the Archivist, who is eager to make friends with a professional fellow and show him his beloved culture. But most of goblin culture involves rehashing its conflict with Spurge's people, leading to a chain of interpersonal misunderstandings. Things go sideways when Spurge tries to present his gift to Ghogh the Evil One, and the two must flee the city, then rely on each other to survive murderous bandits and ogres, firestorms, and treachery. Told in narrative and illustrated pages-Werfel's experiences and Spurge's visual dispatches back home-the story by Anderson (Feed) and Yelchin (Arcady's Goal) blends the absurd and the timely to explore commonality, long-standing conflict, and who gets to write a world's history. Final art not seen by PW. Ages 10-12. Author's agent: David McCormick, McCormick Literary. Illustrator's agent: Steven Malk, Writers House. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Horn Book Review
Historian and diplomat Brangwain Spurge has been sent from Elfland to the neighboring goblin kingdom to return a precious artifact. On the surface, its a gesture of goodwill to a rival nation, but hes secretly spying for the elves, sending back reports while he sleeps. Spurge is initially contemptuous of his polite and ingratiating host, the goblin archivist Werfel. As Spurge waits to deliver the artifact into the hands of the goblin ruler, he warms up to Werfel, and the two develop a genuine friendship. Unbeknownst to them both, however, their respective nations are preparing for war. Spurges spy reports, not always reliable, are represented by Yelchins digitally assembled pen-and-ink illustrations, which, like those in Selznicks The Invention of Hugo Cabret, wordlessly carry a large part of the narrative. With the look and feel of medieval lithographs, they include touches of humor, whimsy, irony, and menace; as such, they are well suited to both the acerbic wit and the affecting tenderness of Andersons prose. The result is a fantasy that couldnt feel more real and timely, obliquely referencing a political climate marked by a lack of civility, underhanded diplomacy, fake news, widespread bigotry and prejudice, and the dehumanization of marginalized people. jonathan hunt (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Spy thrills meet fantasy rivalries as an elitist elf and a bookish goblin strike up a cross-cultural kerfuffle in Anderson and Yelchin's collaborative meditation on prejudice.Scholar Brangwain Spurge of the Realm of Elfland is sent to deliver a historically significant gift to the ruler of the neighboring goblinsand to make some covert observations. Little does he know that his spy mission, related in multipage wordless sequences of black-and-white illustrations, is in fact an assassination. Meanwhile, in an interleaved third-person prose narrative, Werfel, a goblin archivist, is thrilled to meet and host the elf historian, sure that they will find fertile common ground to begin easing the 1,000-year-old tension between their two kingdoms. Dismayed, however, by Spurge's lack of appreciation and downright snobbishness, Werfel is horrified to find his guest has betrayed his hospitality and caught the attention of the goblin secret police as their two kingdoms head, once again, toward conflict. Occasional letters from Elfland's spymaster assist the two primary narratives. The book makes no secret about its own position even as it cheerfully asks readers to think critically about ideologies and their agendas and the manufactured barriers of misinformation and misunderstanding. Together, Anderson and Yelchin craft something that feels impossible, a successfully unorthodox epistolary, pictorial, and prose narrative that interrogates the cultural ramifications of unchallenged viewpoints and the government violence they abet even as it recounts the comedic blunderings of a spy mission gone wrong.Monty Python teams up with Maxwell Smart for a wrestling match with Tolkiensplendid. (Fantasy. 10-16) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
