Book Reviews

Elena Medel's novel follows two women, separated in time but facing similar class and gender dynamics. It particularly explores the challenges of motherhood.

The author offers six profiles that include a Buddhist death doula, a student of the paranormal, the staff at the Creation Museum, and a woman who was imprisoned for her abusive husband's murder.

The protagonist of Clare-Louise Bennett's novel is a determinedly unfixed and unrooted person who marks time through which writers she has read.

The character in Namrata Poddar's novel works in a call center and dreams of a new life in the U.S. but once there, she and other emigrants feel "othered" at work and in daily life.

Reading about plagues or COVID-19 over the last two years was not an entertaining idea for many. But the pandemic has had an impact on literature — and people may be ready for it to enter the canon.

Rob Hart delivers a story in which time is broken — and some crucial events that have a huge impact on the present haven't happened yet.

Julia May Jonas' debut novel centers around a women's lit professor whose feminist credentials are jeopardized because of her husband's bad behavior — and by her own relationship with a colleague.

Sarah Weinman's book excels as an in-depth exploration of how outside influence and support can affect the criminal justice system — and as the narrative of a con artist who hurt a lot of people.

The novel is simultaneously wise and silly, moving and inscrutable. It is also indisputably working hard to be new.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the first book in Marlon James' Dark Star Trilogy, systematically dismantles the known foundations of epic fantasy. This sequel once again shatters expectations.