September’s Best Reviewed Nonfiction

Jonathan Raban’s Father and Son, Annie Ernaux’s The Young Man, and Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger all feature among the best reviewed nonfiction titles of the month

Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s book review aggregator.

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1. Father and Son: A Memoir by Jonathan Raban
(Knopf)

7 Rave • 4 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Offers a final reckoning (Raban died in January this year), less egotistical, more rueful, informed by a catastrophic sense of the damage that can come one’s way. Raban is far too good a writer to make the parallel blunt, but the stroke is his war, and from the perspective of a wheelchair-bound hemiplegic he sees his father differently … A fine achievement, a wide-ranging and compelling account with the author’s hallmarks of intelligence, erudition, humor and honesty.”

–Norma Clarke (Times Literary Supplement)

2. The Young Man by Annie Ernaux
(Seven Stories Press)

6 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an conversation between Annie Ernaux and Yuko Tsushima here

“That Ernaux can do so much—The Young Man tackles love, aging, desire, loss, misogyny, class and death—in such a small space is clearly the hallmark of a writer who has honed her craft to be razor sharp. It cuts to the bone.”

–Jessica Ferri (The Washington Post)

3. Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations by Simon Schama
(Ecco)

4 Rave • 6 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Foreign Bodies here

“Eloquent, discursive … Schama wisely avoids reportage, which is still evolving, and leans, instead, into the past, crafting a play in three acts: smallpox, cholera and bubonic plague … Casts familiar and lesser-known figures in a fresh light … Sterling cultural history, but it also reminds us that political concerns mold our choices as future pandemics brew.”

–Hamilton Cain (The Star Tribune)

4. Sure, I’ll Join You Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere by Maria Bamford
(Gallery Books)

6 Rave • 2 Positive

“Some of her misadventures—among them, being committed to a psych ward and accidentally killing a beloved pug — feel like anything but laughing matters. But it’s a testament to Bamford that she’s able to fill these pages with stories that are relatable and consistently hilarious, even when they’re harrowing … This material, and the quirks of its presentation, make the memoir feel like a 270-some-page portal directly into Bamford’s mind. That notion would probably be terrifying to Bamford, who worries frequently on the page that she may be coming across as a massive narcissist. But there’s an authenticity to her words that elevates them into something beyond the category of comedy memoir … Bamford has created a work destined to shine much-needed light on mental illness. Illuminating those serious moments with humor is her true triumph.”

–Zach Ruskin (The Washington Post)

5. Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

5 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed
Listen to an interview with Naomi Klein here

“This story of mistaken identity would on its own be gripping and revealing enough, both as a psychological study and for its explorations of the double in art and history, the disorienting effects of social media, and the queasy feeling of looking into a distorted mirror. But the larger subject of Doppelganger turns out to be a far more complex and consequential confusion: Its guiding question is how so many people have in recent years broken with conventional left-right political affiliations and a shared understanding of reality.”

–Laura Marsh (The New Republic)