Deceit and Other Possibilities, by Vanessa Hua
by Carolyn Gan
“Family, loyalty, love, lust: Vanessa Hua does justice to the big themes in this noteworthy debut.”
“Family, loyalty, love, lust: Vanessa Hua does justice to the big themes in this noteworthy debut.”
“Haigh presents no over-simplified white hats and black hats in her story. Instead, Haigh gets inside frackers, locals, and activists alike, finding flawed, warm individuals in all camps.”
“There is knowledge in this book that seems bigger than MFA fodder, a living-out of the truths that the writing life uncovers and details that cannot be arrived at via Google”: Nathan Poole on Robin MacArthur’s debut collection, Half Wild.
“Should we fear these women or sympathize with them, or—somehow—manage to do both?”: Mary Stewart Atwell reviews Emma Cline’s debut novel, The Girls, out this month from Random House.
“Most salient, however, is the way in which Veá inhabits his characters to evince what is clearly a deeply felt responsibility toward the victims of wrongful death”: Julian Anderson on Alfredo Veá’s new novel, The Mexican Flyboy.
“And what a fun read this is”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s debut novel about family and money, The Nest.
“Indeed, the Keatings’ struggles take on a historical and even mythic dimension that gives them significance beyond the merely personal”: Mary Stewart Atwell on Ausbel’s latest novel, Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty.
“Amend does a remarkable job making Frances’s story feels less like a novel and more like a real life”: Tyler McMahon on Allison Amend’s new novel, Enchanted Islands.
“Thank you, Louise Erdrich, for heartbreak mitigation”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell on Erdrich’s latest novel, LaRose.
“This astonishing flip–that human perception is the world’s foundation–comes to the fore again and again in the bright worlds of Cooper’s meditations on care”: Denise Dooley on Desiree Cooper’s debut collection, Know the Mother.
“While Pendarvis acknowledges that it’s tragic to dream big about lost causes, his work also insists that doomed dreams are human and, while they still seem possible, necessary to our survival.”
“There’s also story-telling magic at work in this incantatory book; it sparks resonant memories of stories heard and internalized: once-upon-a-time-stories, fables, fairy tales, and myths, as well as those from Shakespeare and the Bible.”
