Book Reviews

Can't see The Boss in concert? Pick up his new memoir, which begins with 7-year-old Springsteen watching Elvis on TV. From $3-a-night shows to swooning stadiums, it's a wild and well-written ride.

Emma Donoghue's latest follows a nurse in 19th century Ireland who agrees to monitor a famed fasting girl. But both the unsympathetic nurse and the credulous villagers are hard to like or understand.

Eimear McBride's latest follows a young drama student who goes to London and falls for an older man. Her live, wriggling language makes a beautiful account of the ways the self is built and rebuilt.

Cartoonist Riad Sattouf continues his scathing memoir of his childhood in Syria and Libya. Just as in the first volume, his disgust for the oddities and outrages around him is palpable on the page.

If you're tired of political competition, there's always athletic competition. And if your team stinks, we can offer sympathy and a selection of the year's best books about sports to ease the sting.

Ordinary family life provides all the tension and attraction in Ann Patchett's new book. The story of two families and a fateful party that upends both, it draws on Patchett's own life experiences.

When New Yorker writer and native North Carolinian Lauren Collins married a French man, she set herself to the task of learning French. Her new memoir is a meditation on language and identity.

The legendary comics creator spent 10 years on his latest work, a 1,200-page-plus epic about everything, nothing and Northampton, his home town and sacred ground — which serves as the main character.

Ian McEwan's fetal Hamlet is an extravagant spirit confined to the womb while his mother and uncle plot. But he is no sweet prince; the book stumbles over the unborn Dane's grumpy cultural commentary.

Teddy Wayne's new novel begins as a sharply observed novel of manners, but quickly mutates into a classic tale of obsession. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Loner a powerful suspense story.