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

Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter, David McWilliams’ The History of Money, and Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book 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. The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller
(Europa Editions)

7 Rave • 2 Positive • 2 Mixed

“Although the canvas of this novel is a relatively small one…The Land in Winter manages to capture something of this era of social upheaval … This is a quiet book about quiet lives; internal turmoil trumping external drama. But the delicate attention Miller affords his characters’ inner lives makes for incredibly satisfying reading. Also notable is his elegant, measured prose.”

–Lucy Scholes (The Financial Times)

2. The Silver Book by Olivia Laing
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

7 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
Read an interview with Olivia Laing here

“Sublime … The beating heart of The Silver Book is Nicholas and Donati’s love story. Laing affectingly renders this mentor-apprentice relationship, exploring the complexity of its vulnerabilities, jealousies and petty frustrations. But where the book really soars is in its visceral portrait of Italian renegade filmmaking … Given the extravagance of this world, it might have been tempting to use a maximalist style to match the material. Instead, Laing’s prose is taut and cleareyed, even at its most sensational.”

–Christopher Bollen (The New York Times Book Review)

3. Evensong by Stewart O’Nan
(Atlantic Monthly Press)

5 Rave • 2 Positive

“How can a novel about getting old, losing friends, growing frail, be anything but depressing? But in O’Nan’s hands it is buoyant and hopeful … His novels are unexpected and very different from one another. But always, he is a master at quotidian details, a master at human emotion. Always, he writes with a huge and generous heart … Tender and funny, poignant and true. The novel is a little miracle: here it is, life, on the page.”

–Laurie Hertzel (The Boston Globe)

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Nonfiction

1. The History of Money: A Story of Humanity by David McWilliams
(Henry Holt & Co.)

4 Rave • 2 Positive

“Enjoyable and insightful … [A] clear conceptual map then enables McWilliams to spin a coherent global history of money out of an exceptionally colourful and wide-ranging set of yarns … McWilliams’s book is a hugely ambitious and very readable history of money, whose appeal will run well beyond just monetary cranks like me.”

–Felix Martin (The Financial Times)

2. Without Consent: A Landmark Trial and the Decades-Long Struggle to Make Spousal Rape a Crime by Sarah Weinman
(Ecco)

2 Rave • 3 Positive

“Weinman tells the stories of Greta and the other survivors with empathy and respect, offering readers a well-researched and thoughtful narrative that sheds light on their experiences and broader systemic issues.”

–Vada Bunker (Library Journal)

3. The American Revolution: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns
(Knopf)

2 Rave • 2 Positive

“The book covers a vast terrain, chronologically and geographically. It is a sprawling canvas in every sense, including its generous use of paintings and maps … Their narrative is interrupted six times, by interventions from well-known historians … These essays bring sharpness. They also create a mild tension, at odds with the more lyrical tone that Ward and Burns bring to their narrative … The wide angle helps to promote another recent strain of research, by showing the complexity.”

–Ted Widmer (The New York Times Book Review)