Michael Chabon is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. His other books include Wonder Boys and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his novelist wife Ayelet Waldman, and their three children.
Farrell Covington and the Limits of Style (2023) Paul Rudnick "Rudnick writes with such engaging wit, side-eyed perceptiveness, and barbed elan, with such irrepressible life, that before you quite notice the shadings of loss, mortality and poignant retrospection in his new novel, they have already touched you with their power."
The Unfolding (2022) A M Homes "From her first book onward, A. M. Holmes has been challenging us to look at fiction, the world, and one another as we haven't done-because we haven't had the nerve, the eyes, the dire and dispassionate imagination. Gripping, sad, funny, by turns aching and antic and, as always, exceedingly well-observed and written, The Unfolding opens up another one of her jagged windows, at times indistinguishable from a crack, in the world that is always unfolding, and always vanishing, around us."
This Time Tomorrow (2022) Emma Straub "This Time Tomorrow is a beautifully made, elegant music box of a novel that sets in motion its clever clockwork of delight-then breaks your heart with its bittersweet, lingering song."
All the Seas of the World (2022) (Children of Earth and Sky) Guy Gavriel Kay "Tragic, stirring, romantic, meticulous, comic, rueful, worldly-wise, and written in the intimate, deceptively nonchalant voice of a storyteller offering up his great gift, All the Seas of the World is classic Kay, and to this reader, at least, there can be no higher praise."
Fan Fiction (2021) Brent Spiner "Of all the pleasures Fan Fiction affords the reader - a gripping plot, deftly and delightfully twisted; an insider’s slant on a pop culture mega-phenomenon; an affecting personal narrative of childhood trauma overcome; an insightful meditation on the ambiguities of fandom - the greatest and most singular is Brent Spiner’s prose style. Dry, urbane, acerbic, self-deprecating and gently absurdist, it evokes a lost age of Hollywood autobiography. If Groucho Marx had played Commander Data, this is the kind of memoir he might have written."
An American Marriage (2018) Tayari Jones "Tayari Jones is blessed with vision to see through to the surprising and devastating truths at the heart of ordinary lives, strength to wrest those truths free, and a gift of language to lay it all out, compelling and clear. That has been true from her very first book, but with An American Marriage that vision, that strength, and that truth-telling voice have found a new level of artistry and power."
Heather, the Totality (2017) Matthew Weiner "Heather, The Totality is a tour de force of control, tone and razor-slash insight. In its clear-eyed anatomist's gaze and its remarkable combination of empathy and pitilessness I hear echoes of Flaubert and Richard Yates, with a deeply twisted twist of Muriel Spark at her darkest. I could not put it down."
Winter Warning (2017) (Isaac Sidel, book 12) Jerome Charyn "One of the most important writers in American literature."
Less (2017) (Arthur Less, book 1) Andrew Sean Greer "Andrew Sean Greer is one of the most talented writers around, feeling and funny, with a genuinely fine prose style and a sensibility to match."
Modern Gods (2017) Nick Laird "Modern Gods has realer-than-real characters, unexpected turns of plot into unknown corners of the world, and language that finds its way through the darkest moments and states of mind to shine its clear bright light, revelatory and unforgiving. And it encompasses deep–the deepest, thorniest–questions of faith and redemption, fate and forgiveness."
The Dakota Winters (2016) Tom Barbash "Deft, funny, touching, and sharply observed, a marvel of tone, and a skillful evocation of a dark passage in the history of New York City, when all the fearful ironies of the world we live in now first came stalking into view."
Any Day Now (2012) Terry Bisson "An unsettling, funny, freaky reimagining of America, impeccably written, by one of our most consistantly interesting transgressors of literary boundaries."
Yarn (2010) (Grey, book 2) Jon Armstrong "Jon Armstrong is a genius, with an umlaut, to the fifth power."
What I Didn't See (2010) Karen Joy Fowler "No contemporary writer creates characters more appealing, or examines them with greater acuity and forgiveness."
The Long Man (2010) (Max August Magikal Thrillers , book 2) Steve Englehart "The Long Man adds another dazzling burst of storytelling power to Englehart's ongoing display of his brilliance."
Lisey's Story (2006) Stephen King "Stephen king makes bold, brilliant use of his satanic storytelling gift, his angelic ear for language, and above all his incomparable ability to find the epic in the ordinary."
U.S.! (2006) Chris Bachelder "We need novelists like Chris Bachelder who can, with a microfine sense of humor and a tragic sense of history, almost make it all make sense. We're lucky to have him."
The Fortress of Solitude (2003) Jonathan Lethem "Lethem has done a number of things here, any one of which is impossible for any but the very finest novelists. He has vividly and lovingly and truthfully, through thrilling evocation of its music, its popular culture, its street games, argot, pharmacology, social mores and racial politics, recreated a world, a moment in history that I would have thought lost and irrecoverable. He has created, in young Dylan, a genuine literary hero. He has reinvented and reinvigorated the myths of the superhero, of black-white relations, of New York City itself. But most of all, from my point of view, he captures precisely - as only a great novelist can - how it feels to love the world that is, on a daily basis, kicking your ass."
The Lovely Bones (2002) Alice Sebold "Painfully funny, bracingly tough, terribly sad, it is a feat of imagination and a tribute to the healing power of grief."
American Gods (2000) (American Gods, book 1) Neil Gaiman "American Gods manages to reinvent, and to reassert, the enduring importance of fantastic literature in this late age of the world. Dark fun, and nourishing to the soul."
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