Also of interest...in award winners and contenders

The Lowland; The Panopticon; The Internal Enemy; Someone

The Lowland

by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf, $28)

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The Panopticon

by Jenni Fagan (Hogarth, $22)

The “rousing voice” of a 15-year-old Scottish delinquent carries this novel even when the plot disappoints, said Ron Charles in The Washington Post. Jenni Fagan’s heroine is an orphan who’s just been locked up in an ominous, century-old prison, and this “witty, crude, and often tender girl” becomes our guide to a system that chews up kids like her every day. The book’s a bit preachy, considering that it won Fagan a spot on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list, but it’s potent in its small moments.

The Internal Enemy

by Alan Taylor (Norton, $35)

During the War of 1812, at least one group of Americans saw the British as liberators, said Mark M. Smith in The Wall Street Journal. In this “beautifully crafted” work, historian Alan Taylor focuses on the 2,000-plus Virginia slaves who escaped bondage amid the fighting and often proved themselves invaluable to the British cause. This National Book Award nominee makes certain Founding Fathers look “appallingly self-absorbed,” but it’s about time a historian shed light on post-1776 slavery conditions.

Someone

by Alice McDermott (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25)

“Ordinary life is made extraordinary” in Alice McDermott’s “quiet tour de force,” said Elaina Smith in The Kansas City Star. Marie, the narrator of this National Book Award–nominated novel, is a Brooklyn-born Irish-American who’s looking back on the vicissitudes of her 20th-century life. Despite her subdued tone, “heartache, joy, and beauty” all simmer beneath the language’s surface. Marie and her loved ones seem “so true to life that their struggles hurt like they’re your own.”

Explore More