Weekend picks for book lovers
What should you read this weekend? Paste BN’s picks for book lovers include Michael Chabon's latest novel, and a new biography of comedian Joan Rivers.
Moonglow by Michael Chabon; Harper, 448 pp.; fiction
Michael Chabon, perhaps the most accessible of the nation’s great literary novelists since the death of John Updike, has never been much noted for his way with a plot.
Moonglow is Chabon’s least linear, most fragmentary novel, achieving its considerable effects by means of an accumulation of layers of feeling rather than from any sense of one incident leading to another.
It’s ingeniously constructed as a memoir, told by the narrator based on his grandfather’s presumably disjointed deathbed confessions.
These include the grandfather’s roles as a Jewish-American soldier in Europe during World War II, where he first encounters and develops an obsession with the work of the German aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun; as the husband of a theatrical Frenchwoman haunted by her experiences during the Holocaust; and, much later, as an elderly swain in Florida.
Paste BN says ***½ out of four stars. “A meditation on the Jewish-American experience in the 20th century.”
Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life, Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers by Leslie Bennetts; Little, Brown, 400 pp.; non-fiction
Tells the life story of the groundbreaking comedian, who was as busy as ever before she died at age 81 in 2014.
Paste BN says *** stars. “Highly readable…(a) clear-eyed biography.”
Swing Time by Zadie Smith; Penguin Press, 453 pp.; fiction
In her new novel, Smith (White Teeth) follows the friendship of two female friends over decades and across continents.
Paste BN says ***½ stars. “Smith is a master stylist… but always game for a pulpy plot turn.”
News of the World by Paulette Jiles; William Morrow, 209 pp.; fiction
In 1870s Texas, Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd accepts a perilous job — to return a 10-year-old girl, kidnapped by Indians who slaughtered her parents, to her aunt and uncle.
Paste BN says **** stars. “Surprisingly tender but never soft… lovely.”
A Truck Full of Money: One Man’s Quest to Recover from Great Success by Tracy Kidder; Random House, 288 pp.; non-fiction
Biographic tale of the inspirational life of maverick software pioneer and entrepreneur Paul English, co-founder of the travel website Kayak.
Paste BN says *** stars. “A powerful and insightful tale that makes the Internet era entertaining.”
Contributing reviewers: Kevin Nance, Jocelyn McClurg, Eliot Schrefer, Don Oldenburg