James McBride, who won the National Book Award for his 2013 novel, The Good Lord Bird, is unique among contemporary writers of fiction for the singular humanity he brings to his characters. In this newest novel, built around Sportcoat, a beloved figure in a New York City housing project, McBride tours a landscape of race, politics, class, ethnicity, and social change with such acute sensibility that the reader feels thoroughly absorbed in the complications and contradictions inherent in the story’s place and time. Just as comedians are often the best truth-tellers, McBride edges close to farce in Deacon King Kong, using humor as he often does to expose deeper, painful realities about a world in transition. Bottom line: McBride does not disappoint.
Anyone can write a dark take on the King Arthur mythos, but only
Lavie Tidhar would do so while including legendary martial artist
Lancelot, a Holy Grail sequence that riffs on STALKER, and a vision of
kingship that's less noblesse oblige than perpetual grifting. The result
is a resolutely 2020 version of well-trodden territory: a cold-eyed
assessment of the realities of power that is nevertheless a lot of fun
to read.
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Wetmore’s strong debut novel opens with a brutal crime committed against a young Mexican American girl in the small West Texas town of Odessa. From that powerful opening, I was immediately sucked into the story of how the community reacts to the incident, the imagery, and the lives of the women in a place centered on hardship, friendships, raising children, and being fiercely independent. Rarely have I read fiction so beautifully written. |
