The Last Secret
by Mary McGarry Morris
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How refreshing it is to lose yourself in a skillfully made story “where big, elemental feelings are coming at you all the time,” said Sophie Gee in The New York Times. National Book Award finalist Mary McGarry Morris is aiming for an Oprah audience with her new tale about a New England mother with a dark secret in her past and a husband who’s just made a shocking confession. But why has this sharp, observant writer saddled herself with a clichéd plot and contrived ending?
The Family Man
by Elinor Lipman
(Houghton Mifflin, $25)
“Just because something is ‘light’ doesn’t mean it’s not masterful,” said Carolyn See in The Washington Post. The primary love story in Elinor Lipman’s latest concerns a gay New York lawyer’s paternal love for an actress-stepdaughter with whom he’s reconnected after 25 years. Around them swirls a likable cast and a variety of minor troubles and romances. But who needs more? “There’s no way I can explain to you” just how “utterly perfect” Lipman’s delivery can be. Her novel “mesmerized me.”
The Scenic Route
by Binnie Kirshenbaum
(Harper, $14)
When is a novel about a European road trip that a divorcée takes with a man from Tuscany not escapist fantasy? asked Taylor Antrim in The Dailybeast.com. Binnie Kirshenbaum has turned a familiar midlife-crisis plot into “a reality check.” Narrator Sylvia Landsman is a chatterbox; most of the book consists of her “enjoyably rambling” family anecdotes and encyclopedic non sequiturs. Yet The Scenic Route isn’t about smelling the roses. Rather, it’s about carrying on when “the best is behind us.” Its ending “packs an unexpectedly emotional wallop.”
The Act of Love
by Howard Jacobson
(Simon & Schuster, $25)
Howard Jacobson’s portrait of a snobbish masochist offers “a fascinating sneak into love’s darkest alleys,” said Cynthia MacDonald in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The narrator, an antiquarian bookseller, “seeks out women who will cheat on him,” and eventually finds one to marry, whom he rightly adores. As our antihero labors to arrange for his own abasement, this “wickedly terrific” novel proves to be, like love itself, “funny, cruel, sick—and always worth one’s while.”
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Weapons: Julia Garner stars in 'hyper-eerie' psychological thrillerThe Week Recommends Zach Cregger's 'top notch' new film opens with 17 children disappearing at exactly the same time
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Freakier Friday: Lohan and Curtis reunite for 'uneven' but 'endearing' sequelThe Week Recommends Mother-and-daughter comedy returns with four characters switching bodies
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Al fresco art: the UK's best sculpture parksThe Week Recommends Soak up the scenery with a stroll through these open-air galleries
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”