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Griffin Dunne’s The Friday Afternoon Club, Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, Questlove’s Hip-Hop is History, and Paul Tremblay’s Horror Movie all feature among the best reviewed books of the week.
Brought to you by Book Marks, Lit Hub’s home for book reviews.
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Fiction
=1. Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe
(William Morrow)
3 Rave • 2 Positive
Read an essay by Rufi Thorpe here
“The writer has both control of the material and a loving eye, and the warmth of Thorpe’s tone, together with the thoroughness of her imagination and the artfulness of her pacing, means that skepticism is kept at bay. She sells us on both the characters and the plot, and her refusal to moralize, her ability to get behind her characters despite their mess and fecklessness.”
–Nick Hornby (The New York Times Book Review)
=1. One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon
(Knopf)
3 Rave • 2 Positive
“Yoon presents a riveting tale spiked with surprises, laced with compassion, and designed for discussion as it raises unsettling questions about class, Blackness, parenthood, social responsibility, justice, and the hidden repercussions of deep, centuries-spanning trauma.”
–Donna Seaman (Booklist)
3. Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
(William Morrow)
4 Rave
“Dark, surprisingly violent, and incredibly multilayered, this narrative is a superb addition to Tremblay’s already impressive oeuvre that shows he can deliver the elements fans love from him—while also constantly pushing the envelope and exploring new ways to tell stories … There are several unsettling moments in this novel, and at the core of each of them are people acting horribly just because they can. Tremblay’s work has often interrogated the nature of horror and bad behavior, but never as clearly and he does here … strange and unsettling in the best way possible. This is a novel that’s also a screenplay, but the story all blends together perfectly. Tremblay’s unique voice and chameleonic style have made him one of the leading voices in speculative fiction, and this is one of his best novels so far.”
–Gabino Iglesias (NPR)
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Nonfiction
1. The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne
(Penguin)
5 Rave • 5 Positive
Read an interview with Griffin Dunne here
“Dunne largely bears…slings and arrows with good humor and equanimity, conscious, perhaps, that in retelling them he becomes the hero of the joke. He gets terrific mileage from his own bad luck … What makes these unimaginable events so readable, and allows Dunne to find a kind of grace even amid tragedy, are his unshakable black humor and unfailing nose for a good story.”
–Charles Arrowsmith (The Los Angeles Times)
2. Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell by Ann Powers
(Day Street Books)
6 Rave
“Remarkably insightful … Keeping a distance pays great dividends here. Powers proves an adroit codebreaker for the uniquely complex cross-pollination of romantic ennui, class consciousness, spiritual striving and occasional narcissism that characterizes the full sweep of the Joni Mitchell enterprise … Astute … It is a great compliment to Powers’s ebullient style that her accruing sense of fatigue and wonder around her subject never reads as less than fascinating. Visceral prose, pure fusion.”
–Elizabeth Nelson (The Washington Post)
3. Hip-Hop is History by Questlove
(Auwa)
4 Rave • 1 Positive • 2 Mixed
“Questlove, writing with Ben Greenman, is attentive to the genre’s splendor as well as its stumbles. He’s sympathetic to the aspirational and at times gleefully materialistic ethos of rap’s most mainstream figures … The book’s very project acts as an advertisement for elastic fandom. It’s fondness without fanaticism; ardor with secure attachment steez … Questlove dares us to choose, for once, to love Black people over Black culture.”
–G’ra Asim (The Washington Post)
