Kathy Wang’s The Satisfaction Cafe, Charlie English’s The CIA Book Club, and Nell Stevens’ The Original all feature among the best 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 new novel The Satisfaction Cafe beguiled me so fiercely I wanted, once finished, to un-remember it so I could relish it again for the first time. In no way the Hallmark-card rom-com its title may suggest, this deft, sharp, funny, poignant chronicle delights and surprises: modern, complex, credibly absurd. Traveling skillfully across one woman’s lifetime, readers will feel up-close and personal—both to that trajectory and to all the lives it touches. One of the richest, prickliest, wittiest contemporary sagas I can recall, Satisfaction is—I’m sorry, no other 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 be that rare thing: a writer who we can think alongside, even while she’s making things up. All the confection here in the end helps us to appreciate the steely and witty mind that seems, four books in, to have learned to delight in that hullabaloo of fakery.”
–Lara Feigel (The Guardian)
3. The Art of Vanishing by Morgan Pager
(Ballantine)
4 Positive
“Charming … Pager effectively peels back the curtain on the museum’s inner workings and evokes her protagonist’s deep relationship to art. There’s plenty here 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 real pleasure to read—a finely written page-turner full of well-researched stories of smuggling, intrigue and survival. It would make an exceptionally good series for television, and it provides a powerful reminder of the extraordinary events of Poland’s struggle for freedom. Suitably for such a literate nation, books played their part in it, and Minden got the result he wanted.”
–John Simpson (The Guardian)
2. The Beast in 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 story about an overlooked segment 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 tone to parts of the book, but others are infused with deep affection for her family, Jersey roots, geriatric pug Bizzy and life partner Josh. If you like her sassy voice, check out an earlier work … Sure to make you laugh.”
–Ann Levin (Associated Press)