Book Reviews

Our critic likens reading Marlon James' new epic fantasy to being slowly eaten by a bear that occasionally cracks jokes — painful and strange, but upsettingly beautiful for all that.

In a new book, Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code joins a chorus of voices warning of devastating consequences if girls don't partake in tech — and suggesting girls should be encouraged to take risks.

In her new book of riveting, honest, courageous essays, Esmé Weijun Wang provides a series of lenses through which to observe schizophrenic disorders and, by extension, our (mis)understanding of them.

Author Briallen Hopper takes us into her unusually expansive love life, complete with knotty familial relationships, deep friendships, and emotional investment in the fictional and material worlds.

Yiyun Li wrote her devastating, brilliant new novel after the suicide of her son — in it, the unnamed narrator confronts the same situation, holding an extended conversation with her own dead son.

The former New York Times editor's examination of four news outlets pits new against old, mercenary versus honorable — and is unlikely to inspire the next generation of journalists.

Author Hanif Abdurraqib has a seemingly limitless capacity to share what moves him and to invite the reader in: His love for these music-makers is contagious, even when it breaks his heart.

At her best, Nomi Stone is able to make an anthropological excavation into something beautiful and haunting, laced with double meanings. But at times she stands in her own way, obscuring our view.

Comics creator Farel Dalrymple returns to the world of his 2014 book The Wrenchies for a story about a teen genius stuck — in more ways than one — on a space station light years away from Earth.