October’s Best Reviewed Fiction

Alan Hollinghurst’s Our Evenings, Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, and Jeff VanderMeer’s Absolution all feature among the October’s best reviewed fiction titles.

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

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1. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
(Random House)

14 Rave • 2 Positive • 4 Mixed • 1 Pan

“Languorous, elegant … No page-turner; it moves with the heavy tread of a royal procession. It insists on patience as it doles out its pleasures … That rare bird: a muscular work of ideas and an engrossing tale of one man’s personal odyssey as he grows up, framed in exquisite language.”

–Hamilton Cain (The New York Times Book Review)

2. The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
(Harper)

12 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The Mighty Red here

“Flexes through an emotional range that most writers would never dare attempt … Humor and sorrow are fused together like twined tree trunks that keep each other standing … Erdrich is so good at romantic comedy, with her special blend of Austen sense and Ojibwe sensibility. As the funny scenes flow one after another, you may not even notice the stray drops of blood scattered along the novel’s margins … As usual when closing a book by Louise Erdrich, I’m left wondering, how can a novel be so funny and so moving? How can life?”

–Ron Charles (The Washington Post)

3. Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon
(Doubleday)

8 Rave • 3 Positive • 2 Mixed

“The stories in this splendid new collection are inspired by an eclectic variety of sources … The work of a consummate storyteller, the brilliantly conceived Dogs and Monsters illuminates a variety of species, both real and mythical, including our own.”

–Hilma Wolitzer (The New York Times Book Review)

4. Blood Test by Charles Baxter
(Pantheon)

7 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
Listen to an interview with Charles Baxter here

“As with any successful knockout punch, part of its force is that you don’t see it coming … By announcing itself a comedy, Blood Test isn’t wrong, but it undersells itself. It is a profound and unsettling—and, yes, frequently funny—snapshot of our current tribulations, cast in relief against the stubborn peculiarities of the American character.”

–Adam Sternbergh (The New York Times Book Review)

5. Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer
(MCD)

6 Rave • 3 Positive

“VanderMeer has outdone himself … Area X does strange things to the bodies, and perhaps more importantly to the consciousness, of deserving and undeserving alike. VanderMeer has similar ambitions; he seeks to broaden his readers’ horizons and expand their sense of the possible. Maddening, haunting, and compelling, this is essential reading for anyone interested in the boundaries of speculative fiction. Just as Lowry finds it difficult to think without his swear words, many readers will find it near impossible to discuss Absolution without superlatives.”

–Matthew Keeley (The Boston Globe)