July’s Best Reviewed Fiction

Kevin Barry’s The Heart in Winter, Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword, and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Long Island Compromise 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. The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
(Doubleday)

13 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an interview with Kevin Barry here

“A rare thing. The Irish writer Kevin Barry’s fourth novel is a strongly plotted book that offers a doomed love affair, horses, high mountains, bad weather, a desperate journey and even a knife fight; a Western, in short, and a good one. But that plot is the least compelling thing about it, and the novel’s real force lies in the mordant wit of its language … Barry’s sentences are often long and flowing and yet sharply angled too. They lilt but don’t lull, and are virtually impossible to quote at length … What sets him apart is the bright black hole, the grim laughter, of his language, with his sentences all ‘bass tones and bottom.’ This short, tight novel pulls one so swiftly along that it can be read on a summer’s afternoon.”

–Michael Gorra (The Wall Street Journal)

2. Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
(Random House)

11 Rave • 2 Positive • 3 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an interview with Taffy Brodesser-Akner here

“Brodesser-Akner is ridiculously clever, but never overly so and never merely for the sake of showing off her prodigious way with words. A big reason I love her writing—in any medium—is that every sentence serves the whole. Every word is carefully chosen and I trust that the journey she takes us on will end at a destination worth visiting … This isn’t a breezy beach read and, like Fleishman, you want to restart it as soon as you’re done, to find what you missed.”

–Rochelle Olson (The Star Tribune)

3. The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
(Viking)

8 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The Bright Sword here

“Resoundingly earns its place among the best of Arthurian tales … The book is long, more than 600 pages, and it feels long. The story meanders, but other than a few back story chapters that are, if not unnecessary, perhaps mistimed, nothing feels superfluous. This is a narrative that demands and rewards patience … Grossman…is at the top of his game with The Bright Sword, which is full of enviable ideas and execution. Few authors could accomplish what he has, grounding such an ambitious novel in so much tradition and history while still making it accessible and deeply affecting.”

–Kiersten White (The New York Times Book Review)

4. Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu
(Knopf)

6 Rave • 3 Positive

“The kind of anti-characterization that Mengestu plays with here is risky. Rather than merely feeling disassociated, Mamush courts featurelessness…Rather than become a tragic, mysterious father figure, Samuel could end up just a bundle of confusions that resist interpretation—Schrodinger’s dad. But Mengestu’s solution is a sharp one: He makes the urge to craft a coherent story something of a character in itself, revealing how desperate we are to contrive narratives from scattered parts. In the closing chapters, Mengestu concocts a kind of fantasia out of this instinct, building an imagined story about Samuel from the available evidence, shaped by Mamush’s own uncertain yearnings … in Mengestu’s hands, plotlessness and incomprehension never seemed so essential to getting the story right.”

–Mark Athitakis (The Los Angles Times)

5. Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler
(Random House)

5 Rave • 4 Positive

“There are some novels so searingly precise in their ability to capture a certain moment or experience that you have to stop every few pages to send another perfect quote to your group chat. Halle Butler’s latest, Banal Nightmare, is one such book … Will have many millennials intently nodding along to Butler’s clever insights. While not necessarily the first in the category of the millennial midlife novel, Banal Nightmare may be one of the most essential.”

–Amil Niazi (The New York Times Book Review)