“Faithful and Virtuous Night,” by Louise Glück (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
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Molly Antopol, author of “The UnAmericans” (W.W. And the book manages to achieve all that it does by putting the hardcore issues of felt life at its narrative center-namely, the universal longing for love, our desire to be, our need to belong. The novel is the literary equivalent of “Citizen Kane” in the way that it evokes a time and place that is both real and imagined, familiar and strange, every day yet magical. I am all the better for having read David Grand’s masterful novel “Mount Terminus,” which is a reimagining of the origins of Hollywood. “Mount Terminus,” by David Grand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
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Jeffery Renard Allen, author of “Song of the Shank” (Graywolf Press) But then I read Claudia Rankine's “Citizen,” which I found to be moving, stunning, and formally innovative-in short, a masterwork. Had you asked me before November, I would have said my favorite book was “Fourth of July Creek” by Smith Henderson. “Citizen,” by Claudia Rankine (Graywolf Press) Rabih Alameddine, author of “An Unnecessary Woman” (Grove Press) It’s a vivid gem of a book, with a devastating denouement that haunted me long after I turned the final page.
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King evocatively reimagines a love triangle between Mead and two colleagues (one her current, second husband and the other her eventual third) as they grapple with jealousy, greed, loneliness, fame, resentment, sexual tension, and an increasing sense of foreboding. I was wholly captivated by Lily King’s “Euphoria,” drawn from the life of Margaret Mead, specifically a few fraught months in 1933 when she worked with indigenous tribes in the jungles of New Guinea. “Euphoria,” by Lily King (Atlantic Monthly Press) Karen Abbott, author of “Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy” (Harper)