Archives of "The BookBrowse Review": Reviews, previews, back-stories, news

Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we highlight three powerful debuts, each of which offers a blistering take on racism. Assembly by Natasha Brown is a quietly incendiary novel about a British Jamaican woman living in London whose daily experience with microaggressions and outright racial hostility contributes to a decline in both her physical and mental health.

In the titular novella featured in Jocelyn Nicole Johnson's debut collection My Monticello, civil unrest provoked by a violent group of white supremacists drives a mixed-race group of neighbors to take shelter at Thomas Jefferson's plantation, now preserved as a museum. The story's narrator is a descendant of Jefferson and the enslaved woman Sally Hemings, creating an intersection of past and present and an intelligent discussion of how racism is ingrained in the foundation of America.

Chasing Me to My Grave is the posthumous memoir of Black artist Winfred Rembert, whose early life in the Jim Crow South included a childhood on a cotton plantation and a stint on a prison chain gang. The book, like his art, showcases racial trauma, but it also features powerful moments of hope and grace.

In addition to these debuts, we review Harrow, Joy Williams' first novel in 20 years, Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads, and more.

If you're a member of a book club, or thinking of starting one in the new year, make sure to check out our blog post on the Best Books for Book Clubs in 2022 for some inspiration. We also have a particularly strong batch of upcoming release previews in this issue to round out the end of the fall publishing season.

As always, thank you for supporting BookBrowse.

Davina Morgan-Witts,
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we review some highly anticipated new releases by very popular authors, all of which feature a historical angle along with some exceptionally memorable characters. Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land spans millennia, from the Fall of Constantinople to the 22nd century, the disparate threads linked together by an ancient Greek tome that might be the key to a better world.

Pat Barker returns with the second book in her planned trilogy imagining the inner lives of Greek mythological heroines. In The Women of Troy, the reader follows Briseis as she grapples with the destruction of her city in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Our "beyond the book" article explores the legendary life of the woman who will be the focus of the third book in this trilogy, the prophetess Cassandra of Troy.

We also look at Colm Tóibín's The Magician, a fictionalized biography of Thomas Mann, which juxtaposes the German author's internal struggle with his sexuality with the external turbulence of the second World War. In the accompanying "beyond the book," our reviewer compares Mann's brilliant novella Death in Venice to the 1971 film adaptation by Italian director Luchino Visconti.

This issue also features a new Wordplay and a Giveaway, so make sure to enter for your chance to win a copy of Suzanne Feldman's World War I historical novel Sisters of the Great War.

As always, thank you for being a part of BookBrowse.

Davina Morgan-Witts,
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

Last week, Richard Powers' just published novel, Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Powers won the Pulitzer in 2019 for The Overstory, a sprawling, epic love letter to trees and their significance in our world and lives. Bewilderment too has an ecological focus, and Powers explained the thematic connection between the two books to the New York Times, "I wrote a book that asked a very hard question, which is, why are we so lost and how can we possibly get back? I thought, now you've asked the question, why not write a story about what that change would look like?" Our "beyond the book" article for this review looks at how young people are fighting for their futures via Youth Environmental Activism.

Ash Davidson's powerful debut novel Damnation Spring takes place in a California redwood town in the 1970s, where residents rely on the timber industry for their livelihoods but discover that the herbicides used to protect the trees are a serious health hazard. Where Powers' Bewilderment shows us where we might be headed in the future, Damnation Spring shows us warnings from the past that we did not heed.

Much like her debut novel Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy's Once There Were Wolves explores the repercussions of species endangerment and extinction. This book focuses on a woman attempting to "rewild" the Scottish Highlands by reintroducing wolves to the area. McConaghy's protagonist must fight to protect her efforts after a man is found dead and the community believes the wolves are to blame.

We also review Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle, Lauren Groff's Matrix, and more in this issue.

Also, don't miss the bumper crop of new books publishing over the next two weeks under Publishing Soon, including new novels from Anthony Doerr, Jonathan Franzen, Miriam Toews and Amor Towles.

As always, thank you for being a part of BookBrowse.

Davina Morgan-Witts,
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we have some great "beyond the book" articles for literature lovers. We highlight two books that were popular with our First Impressions readers, Emily Spurr's A Million Things and Freya Sampson's The Last Chance Library, both of which are debuts. With these reviews, we look at the cultural significance of Roald Dahl's beloved young adult novel Matilda (1988), and trace the history of the story of Sleeping Beauty.

Accompanying the review for Sally Rooney's much-anticipated Beautiful World, Where Are You, we take you on a tour through Literary Dublin, checking out the city's bookshops and landmarks made famous through references in literature.

We also cover Kristen Radtke's Seek You, a graphic work of nonfiction exploring loneliness as a pervasive facet of American life. This review is paired with a reading list of other books in the Graphic Nonfiction Genre, which has grown increasingly popular in recent years.

Our paperback review of Fortune Favors the Dead features an overview of a popular archetype, the Sidekick Character in Detective Fiction.

All this and more inside, including a new Wordplay.

As always, thank you for being a part of BookBrowse.

Davina Morgan-Witts,
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

Sometimes, a work of fiction's setting can be just as important as its characters and major themes. In this issue, we review Anthony Veasna So's debut collection of stories, Afterparties. Most of the book is set in Stockton, California, a place the author knew well as a result of growing up there within the city's community of Cambodian Americans. So brings Stockton's Cambodian population to the page vividly as he reflects on the challenges of immigrant life and relating to others across generational divides.

Rupert Thomson's Barcelona Dreaming explores the city on the northeastern coast of Spain in 2008, at a time when the looming financial crisis and Brexit have not yet changed the shape and face of Europe. In three novellas, Thomson's protagonists walk the streets of Barcelona seeking love or meaning or an escape from mental demons. The three pieces are tied together by a few loose interconnecting threads, including the presence of FC Barcelona soccer phenom Ronaldinho.

We have two nonfiction reviews that conjure a distinct sense of place as well: our First Impressions reader favorite At the Chinese Table, a combination memoir and cookbook about author Carolyn Phillips' experience in Taiwan, and The Brilliant Abyss, in which marine biologist Helen Scales takes readers to the deepest recesses of the ocean to meet the fascinating creatures that live there, in a habitat imperiled by human enterprise.

You'll find these and many more reviews and "beyond the book" articles in this issue, along with previews of upcoming releases, a new Wordplay and more.

Also, our Book Club recently opened discussions of Ava Homa's Daughters of Smoke & Fire and Charlotte McConaghy's Migrations, so if you've read either of these books, please join us.

As always, thank you for being a part of BookBrowse.

Davina Morgan-Witts,
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we cover two captivating nonfiction books about racial injustice. The readers in our First Impressions program were fascinated by Caseen Gaines' account of the first major all-Black Broadway production in Footnotes. The musical was called Shuffle Along, and our Beyond the Book article covers two of its creators, the multi-talented musicians Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle.

All That She Carried by Harvard historian Tiya Miles presents the moving story of a slavery artifact — a sack given by an enslaved mother, Rose, to her daughter, Ashley, who was sold away from Rose at age nine. In the accompanying Beyond the Book, our reviewer recalls her trip to the National African American Museum of History and Culture in Washington, D.C., describing some of its artifacts and exhibits.

We have three debuts in this issue that earned 5-star ratings from our reviewers: Claire Boyles' environmentally conscious short story collection Site Fidelity; Suburban Dicks, a snarky mystery novel by Fabian Nicieza, creator of the Marvel comic hero Deadpool; and the slow-burn historical thriller An Unlikely Spy by Rebecca Starford.

We have a new Book Club discussion of All the Little Hopes by Leah Weiss, and one for Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy starting next week. If you've read either or both, do drop by and join the conversation.

All this, plus more reviews, previews, and a new Wordplay inside.

As always, thank you for being a part of BookBrowse.

Davina Morgan-Witts,
BookBrowse Publisher

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Dear BookBrowsers,

In this issue, we bring you multiple reviews and Beyond the Book articles that feature women pushing back against the societal strictures that tried to contain them. Samantha Silva's Love and Fury is a sensitive and inspiring work of historical fiction about the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). In our Beyond the Book article, we look at Wollstonecraft's legacy in the almost 225 years following her death.

In The Woman They Could Not Silence, Kate Moore explores the life of Elizabeth Packard, a woman who was forcibly committed to a mental institution by her husband in 1860 because of her "impassioned eloquence." Packard fought for her freedom at trial and won, and she also launched a public awareness campaign about the mistreatment of women and the mentally ill, seeking to protect others from being similarly abused.

Walking on Cowrie Shells, the phenomenal debut short story collection by Nana Nkweti, features a range of female characters, many of whom face challenges related to societal expectations. In our Beyond the Book article, we cover the 1929 Women's War in Nigeria, a series of protests against the oppression of British colonial rule.

We also have two recently opened Book Club discussions on books about strong women breaking through boundaries, so if you have read The War Nurse by Tracey Enerson Wood or Yale Needs Women by Anne Gardiner Perkins, make sure to stop by and join the conversation.

The next issue of The BookBrowse Review will be out in three weeks instead of the usual two, but this issue is larger than most with 20 reviews total, so hopefully you will have plenty to read between now and then. Enjoy!

Your editor,
Davina

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