What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week

Gish Jen’s Bad Bad Girl, Virginia Giuffre’s Nobody’s Girl, and Claire-Louise Bennett’s Big Kiss, Bye-Bye all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.

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

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Fiction

1. Bad Bad Girl by Gish Jen
(Knopf)

10 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an essay by Gish Jen here

“Oscillates between plainspoken narrative and bold, italicized dialogues between Gish and her kvetching dead mother. The conceit is risky but pays off. The imagined colloquies punctuate the prose like counter melodies … The exchanges are edged with humor and skepticism: the mother scoffing at or replying brusquely to her daughter’s reminiscences, questions, speculations … What transforms it into a transcendent work of art is Jen’s empathy for all her characters.”

–Rhoda Feng (The Boston Globe)

2. Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett
(Riverhead)

5 Rave • 4 Positive • 3 Mixed

“Themes of relationships and communication might seem at odds with Bennett’s quest to shuck off the self and write from somewhere deeper, but therein lies the magic of Big Kiss, Bye-Bye … Fertile new ground for the author, and her prose is ideally suited to exploring them. Shape-shifting and splendid in its disregard for conventional wisdom and contemporary minimalist tastes, it weaves rococo abundance and brazen mundanity into something as porous and unknowable as the narrator’s inner world. Claire-Louise Bennett is a true original, working at the brink of what language can do.”

–Annie McDermott (Times Literary Supplement)

3. The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers
(Simon & Schuster)

4 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from The Ten Year Affair here

“Funny, sexy, depressing, and realistic … Somers’ observational style and deadpan comedy make Cora’s mess both relatable and unenviable as she navigates the subtle madness of marital commitment, the alienation of motherhood, and the absurdity of life in general.”

–Annie Bostrom (Booklist)

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Nonfiction

1. Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vaill
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

4 Rave • 2 Positive

“A thoroughly fascinating biography, filled with Vaill’s signature warmth, humor and insight … If the book lags at times, it is when describing the battles between men, on and off the field. But then, it’s a testament to the force of the Schuyler sisters’ personalities that they dwarf both the Revolutionary War and the political disputes that followed. Angelica emerges as especially sparkling.”

–Jennifer Wright (The New York Times Book Review)

2. Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
(Knopf)

5 Rave

“Throughout the book, Giuffre beguiles, apologizes and cheerfully breaks the fourth wall in an effort to soften the distaste she assumes her story will trigger … While the book is relentlessly, shockingly hard, it is also a clear-eyed and necessary account of how sex offenders operate … Narrative does what deposition can’t by taking us into the room with her. The book breathes life into Giuffre’s legal status as a victim … Important, courageous.”

–Emma Brockes (The Guardian)

3. Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy by Julia Ioffe
(Ecco)

4 Rave • 1 Positive

“Interspersed with flashes of memoir, family stories and journalistic encounters, the book acts as a gender-inflected primer on the past hundred years of Russian history … She writes with warmth, charisma and exuberance and is adept at zooming in and out, mixing precise personal detail with broad historical insights … Cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed.”

–Viv Groskop (The Guardian)