What Should You Read Next? Here Are the Best Reviewed Books of the Week
Featuring Michael Clune, the Everly Brothers, Linn Ullman, and More
Michael Clune’s Pan, Barry Mazor’s Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story, and Linn Ullman’s Girl, 1983 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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1. Pan by Michael Clune
(Penguin Press)
5 Rave • 5 Positive • 1 Pan
Read an excerpt from Pan here
“I am protective enough of the strange, idiosyncratic beauty of this book to worry in turn that some readers might not be up to the challenge of following his more baroque trains of thought … A testament to the novel’s powers of enchantment; it seduces you into thinking like a child again … Clune has achieved a remarkable sleight of genre, threading realism’s dull needle with a semi-magical thread.”
–Jessi Jezewska Stevens (Bookforum)
2. Girl, 1983 by Linn Ullmann
(W. W. Norton and Company)
6 Rave • 1 Postive • 1 Mixed
“Beautiful … Elegantly spare and precise language heightens and underscores the woman’s anxiety and unease. A quietly absorbing portrait.”
–Anne Foley (Booklist)
3. Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee
(S&S/Summit Books)
5 Rave • 1 Positive
“A truly delightful story … It took me a few pages to latch onto the arrhythmic, almost jazzy flow of the novel, but the stylistic turbulence is appropriate for a life so thoroughly upended … Maggie is unfettered by allusions to current events and so comes off as almost timeless … That perennial quality also shines through in the narrator’s determination to become ‘someone who can separate her life from her family’s and still survive.’ It’s maybe not the easiest or cheeriest lesson to learn, but it’s an invaluable one that Yee shares with aplomb in this heartfelt debut.”
–Cory Oldweiler (The Star Tribune)
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1. The Sleep Room: A Sadistic Psychiatrist and the Women Who Survived Him by Joe Stock
(Abrams Press)
4 Rave • 3 Positive • 1 Mixed • 1 Pan
“A damning portrait … Stock meticulously details Sargant’s methods and idea … Chilling … An utterly shocking yet all-too-familiar story.”
–Ian Sansom (The Telegraph)
2. Blood Harmony: The Everly Brothers Story by Barry Mazor
(Da Capo)
3 Rave • 3 Positive
“The first in-depth biography of one of pop music’s most influential duos … Barry Mazor strikes a balance between the Everlys’ stormy lives and their enduring music, making a strong case for the Everly Brothers as more than pioneering rock songbirds.”
–Eddie Dean (The Wall Street Journal)
3. The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne by Chris Sweeney
(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)
3 Rave • 2 Positive
“Sweeney’s simple, elegant writing makes the technicalities of Laybourne’s work easy to understand and the sexism she dealt with infuriating … It also captures what a vivid, contradictory character she was … Sweeney gives us just enough information about the Smithsonian and the long, troubled history of the study of birds…to put Laybourne in context, but he never overwhelms her compelling story.”
–Chris Hewitt (The Star Tribune)
