Book Reviews

2017 is turning out to be a year of big change. Critic Craig Teicher highlights some of the poetry that can help guide readers through it.

Giorgio De Maria's cult novel was first published in Italy in 1977. It's a spooky piece of magical realism that captures a chaotic time in Italian history, starting gently and getting seriously weird.

Min Jin Lee's sprawling family epic spans decades and two clashing cultures — Korea and Japan. It's honest, unadorned writing that acknowledges horror but ultimately carries a message of hope.

In Pretending is Lying, Dominique Goblet takes a scruffy, postmodern approach to autobiography, with photographic images and wildly morphing character depictions that question our ideas of truth.

Nnedi Okorafor's Binti: Home is the second installment in her series following a young woman with grand interstellar dreams, who now must reconcile her university experiences with her home culture.

Artist Joe Ollman's new The Abominable Mr. Seabrook is a biography of the Lost Generation travel writer (and sadist, alcoholic and cannibal) William Seabrook. But how much Seabrook can you stand?

Paul Auster's new novel is a departure for the author — 880 pages of flowing prose about four versions of one character, living four mostly-parallel lives. It's sometimes confusing, but never boring.

In Mur Lafferty's latest, six crewmembers wake up to horror on a malfunctioning spaceship — the artificial gravity is gone, and blood floats in the air. It's up to them to find out what happened.

Kevin Wilson's new novel follows a pregnant teen who joins an experimental commune — but the characters in Perfect Little World never come alive, and the book suffers from an overdose of whimsy.