5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week

Book Marks logo Our feast of fabulous reviews this week includes Sam Sacks on Colm Tóibín’s Long Island , Maggie Shipstead on Elizabeth O’Connor’s Whale Fall , Lara Feigel on Maggie Nelson’s Like Love , Jennifer Wilson on This Strange Eventful History , and Lauren LeBlanc on Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time . Brought to you by Book Marks , Lit Hub’s home for book reviews. * Colm Toibin_Long Island Cover “The plot may sound like the stuff of soap operas, but Mr. Tóibín is essentially a dramatist of repression. Exposing their feelings, openly acting on their desires, committing their hearts in one direction or another—such decisions are torments to this author’s characters and only come about awkwardly, when their longings or hurts overwhelm them. Irish Enniscorthy, much like Italian Lindenhurst, is an insular, gossipy place where every secret is eventually known by all yet might never be spoken out loud. The exceptionally acute feeling of suspense in Long Island comes not just from waiting to see what will become of Jim, Eilis and Nancy, but from the characters’ struggle to finally express themselves, despite the pain or regret it might bring them. It’s a tricky thing, producing a novel from a style this muted and undemonstrative … Yet the writing perfectly suits Brooklyn and Long Island , helping to capture the decency and ordinariness of the characters as well as the deep emotional ruptures that drive them toward disorder. The confrontations between these people, so long delayed, feel momentous and hugely affecting. These pendant novels, I think, will be the fiction for which this wonderful writer is best remembered.” –Sam Sacks on Colm Tóibín’s Long Island ( The Wall Street Journal ) Elizabeth O’Connor_Whale Fall Cover “Can a novel be both blunt and exquisite? I’m not sure I would have known how to imagine such a work before reading Whale Fall , Elizabeth O’Connor’s excellent debut. Brief but complete, the book is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character’s specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude … the novel does an exceptional job of getting at […]

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