Kathy Wang’s The Satisfaction Cafe, Charlie English’s The CIA Book Club, and Nell Stevens’ The Original each diagnostic among the champion reviewed books of the week.
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1. The Satisfaction Café by Kathy Wang
(Scribner)
4 Rave • 1 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Wang’s sumptuous caller caller The Satisfaction Cafe beguiled maine truthful fiercely I wanted, erstwhile finished, to un-remember it truthful I could relish it again for the archetypal time. In nary mode the Hallmark-card rom-com its rubric whitethorn suggest, this deft, sharp, funny, poignant chronicle delights and surprises: modern, complex, credibly absurd. Traveling skillfully crossed 1 woman’s lifetime, readers volition consciousness up-close and personal—both to that trajectory and to each the lives it touches. One of the richest, prickliest, wittiest modern sagas I tin recall, Satisfaction is—I’m sorry, nary different words work—profoundly satisfying.”
–Joan Frank (The Boston Globe)
2. The Original by Nell Stevens
(W. W. Norton & Company)
2 Rave • 3 Positive
“Stevens is showing herself to beryllium that uncommon thing: a writer who we tin deliberation alongside, adjacent portion she’s making things up. All the confection present successful the extremity helps america to admit the steely and witty caput that seems, 4 books in, to person learned to delight successful that hullabaloo of fakery.”
–Lara Feigel (The Guardian)
3. The Art of Vanishing by Morgan Pager
(Ballantine)
4 Positive
“Charming … Pager efficaciously peels backmost the curtain connected the museum’s interior workings and evokes her protagonist’s heavy narration to art. There’s plentifulness present to admire.”
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1. The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War with Forbidden Literature by Charlie English
3 Rave • 4 Positive
“A existent pleasance to read—a finely written page-turner afloat of well-researched stories of smuggling, intrigue and survival. It would marque an exceptionally bully bid for television, and it provides a almighty reminder of the bonzer events of Poland’s conflict for freedom. Suitably for specified a literate nation, books played their portion successful it, and Minden got the effect helium wanted.”
–John Simpson (The Guardian)
2. The Beast successful the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers’ Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda by Nathalia Holt
(Atria)
3 Rave • 2 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Both stirring and tragic, this is an excellently told communicative astir an overlooked conception of history.”
–Colleen Mondor (Booklist)
3. I Want to Burn This Place Down by Maris Kreizman
(Ecco)
3 Rave • 1 Positive
Read an excerpt from I Want to Burn This Place Down here
“Kreizman brings that incendiary code to parts of the book, but others are infused with heavy affection for her family, Jersey roots, geriatric pug Bizzy and beingness spouse Josh. If you similar her sassy voice, cheque retired an earlier enactment … Sure to marque you laugh.”
–Ann Levin (Associated Press)
