Bérubé has crafted an accessible if still rigorous study of the way fiction grapples with intellectual disability.
The breeziness of the plot has the effect of keeping one from pausing too long on its suspect cultural politics.
Throughout, it often feels like a political thriller, a martial drama, and a magical-realist fable are duking it out for the reader’s attention.
Isabel Allende’s lyrical use of language, kept intact in Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson’s translation, alone makes this melancholy novel a treat to read.
That the novel feels as fresh as it does is partly due to the thrill of rediscovery.
Smith’s dreamlike tome feels like having unfettered access to the punk poet laureate’s innermost workings.
Valeria Luiselli’s novel is a meditation on the arbitrary nature of language and the commodification of art.
It comes to life as a touching portrait of storytelling’s way of restoring (and creating) fully-fleshed family units.
Each chapter is a testament to Mitchell’s ability to call forth an entire character’s life with an economy of language that’s beguiling.
Rushdie bellows A Thousand and One Nights’s narrative influence in a sprawling novel that’s an ode to storytelling.