February’s Best Reviewed Fiction
Featuring Ali Smith, Anne Tyler, Curtis Sittenfeld, and More
Ali Smith’s Gliff, Anne Tyler’s Three Days in June, and Curtis Sittenfeld’s Show Don’t Tell 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. Gliff by Ali Smith
(Pantheon)
14 Rave • 3 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an excerpt from Gliff here
“A tricksy masterwork that straddles formal lines while reimagining Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel … Gliff’s language is sparer than in her famous Quartet, yet she’s still throwing everything—art, literature, social justice, tart humor—against atrocities that damage our moral compasses and cripple our lives … Can art and language shield us from our worst instincts? Smith wrestles with this question, veering from swaggering confidence to quiet resignation as she snaps the pieces of her puzzle into place.”
–Hamilton Cain (The Washington Post)
2. Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser
(Catapult)
10 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Theory & Practice here
“Deftly crafted … The excesses of 1980s academia are ripe fodder for de Kretser’s mordant wit, but her aim here is more ambitious—and the results more rewarding. An Australian novelist of the first rank… de Kretser has long been fascinated by the gap between our ideals and our actions … A taut, enthralling hybrid of fact and fiction impossible to disentangle, situates itself firmly in the mess.”
–Emily Eakin (The New York Times Book Review)
3. Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
(Riverhead)
10 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an excerpt from Stone Yard Devotional here
“Somber, exquisite … The novel is, in many ways, an extended meditative vigil … The wrestling in this novel is with the nature and meaning of penance, atonement … Activism, abdication, atonement, grace: In this novel no one of these paths is holier than another.”
–Lauren Christensen (The New York Times Book Review)
4. Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
(Knopf)
9 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
“A svelte, finely constructed novel … In my carping youth, I regarded the recurrent elements of Anne Tyler’s stories as a flaw. But I’ve grown to see her decades-long focus on quirky families and wounded people as no more limiting than the rules for writing a sonnet. With a sufficiently powerful microscope, a drop of water reveals the ocean.”
–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)
5. Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
(Random House)
8 Rave • 3 Positive
“It is hard to find fault with what is a bravura collection. Sittenfeld may demonstrate more creative risk-taking in her novels…but what she displays in her expertly crafted and hugely engaging short-form fiction is, quite simply, supremely accomplished storytelling.”
–Malcolm Forbes (The Washington Post)
