August’s Best Reviewed Fiction

Chang-Rae Lee’s A Tender Age, Téa Obreht’s Sunrise, and Paul Yoon’s Etna all feature among the best reviewed fiction titles of the month.

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.

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1. A Tender Age by Chang Rae-Lee
(Riverhead)

11 Rave • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan

“Luminous … In his masterful almost-ending, Lee shrouds what exactly happened on that life-altering precipice, brilliantly inviting room for interrogation and interpretation..”

–Terry Hong (Shelf Awareness)

2. Sunrise by Téa Obreht
(Random House)

10 Rave • 1 Pan
Read an interview with Téa Obreht here

“Obreht is riveting in each time frame as she exults in emulating and subverting tales of the Old West while exposing the poisonous complexities of gender, taboo love, myth, history, and our desecration of the wild in a breathtaking, shocking, and reverberating survival story.”

–Donna Seaman (Booklist)

3. Etna by Paul Yoon
(Scribner)

8 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Etna here

“For all its compactness, Etna has the shape of an epic … Stands out among Yoon’s work … This is, at times, a wrenching novel, strewn with broken bodies, but its atrocities never overwhelm its faith in creaturely communion, and in grief and longing that clarify, rather than obscure, one’s desires and selfhood.”

–Rachel Vorona Cote (The Atlantic)

4. Triage by Claudia Rankine
(Graywolf)

4 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed

“Colorfully, referentially, and intellectually dynamic … A glossy-paged, art exhibition catalog-worthy book … Though the narrative’s ending verges on negative abstraction, Rankine clearly demands that we confront our failure to prioritize Gazans and reckon the massive resultant losses, personal, ethical, and human alike.”

–Walton Muyumba (The Boston Globe)

5. The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian
(Doubleday)

7 Rave
Read an essay by Chris Bohjalian here

“Bohjalian’s wonderful book is a morality tale, a snapshot of a strange, careless time in a particular slice of America, a psychological exploration of guilt and its repercussions, a portrait of a girl going off the rails—and then, because of an exciting plot twist, a courtroom drama.”

–Sarah Lyall (The New York Times Book Review)