Critical Mass

Roundup: 2014 NBCC finalists, George Pelecanos, Peter Carey, Marilynne Robinson and more

By Eric Liebetrau

Your reviews seed this roundup; please send items, including new about your new publications and recent honors, to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. Make sure to send links that do not require a subscription or username and password.

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Press Coverage for NBCC Award Finalists

Critical Mass; Associated PressWashington PostNew York TimesLos Angeles TimesSan Francisco ChronicleThe MillionsShelf AwarenessPublisher's Lunch; finalist Hector Tobar's “Deep Down Dark,” a selection of the NPR Book Club; Electric LiteraturePBS NewsHourNewsdaySeattle TimesClaudia Rankine in Triquarterly; Jonathon Sturgeon in Flavorwire on Rankine's poetry; the Houston Chronicle on Lacy M. JohnsonCleveland Plain Dealer; Galleycat; New Yorker

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Julia M. Klein reviews Michael Mewshaw's “Sympathy for the Devil” for the Boston Globe. 2013 Balakian winner Katherine A. Powers reviews also reviews the Mewshaw book.

NBCC board member Steven Kellman reviews Peter Carey's “Amnesia.”

David Duhr reviews ‘See How Small.’ by Scott Blackwood.

“Cosby,” and Other Cautionary Tales, from Gayle Feldman.

Heather Scott Partington reviews Sarah Gerard's “Binary Star.” Partington also reviews Paula Hawkins' “The Girl on The Train.”

Gerald Bartell reviews ‘White Plague,’ a thriller by James Abel. 

Clea Simon reviews “Descent” by Tim Johnston. Simon also reviews ‘Mort(e)’ by Robert Repino.

Michael Broida reviews Jose Saramago's “new” novel, “Skylight.”

NBCC board member Mark Athitakis reviews “The Martini Shot,” by George Pelecanos.

Gregory Wilkin reviews Paul Strohm's “Chaucer's Tale.”

NBCC board member Eric Liebetrau reviews ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Stop’ by David Adam.

John Domini reviews “Sympathy for the Devil” by Michael Mewshaw. Domini also reviews the fiction of Laura Van den Berg and Jenny Erpenbeck.

Micah McCrary reviews the multimedia edition of Eric LeMay's “In Praise of Nothing: Essays, Memoir, and Experiments.” He also interviews finalist Eula Biss.

Megan O'Grady interviews Rachel Cusk for Vogue.

Priscilla Gilman reviews Nicholas Delbanco's “The Year.”

NBCC board member Colette Bancroft reviews Edith Pearlman's new book.

Christi Clancy reviews Melissa Falcon Field's debut novel.

George De Stefano reviews “Cairo Pop” by Daniel J. Gilman.

“Reading Security,” by Randon Billings Noble.

Susan Froetschel's fifth mystery novel, “Allure of Deceit,” will be released in February by Seventh Street Books. Her previous book, “Fear of Beauty,” received the Youth Literature Award from the Middle East Outreach Council.

Philip Belcher reviews “Broken Hierarchies” by Geoffrey Hill.

Marion Winik on Kevin Deutsch's “The Triangle” in Newsday. Winik also reviews “The Girl on the Train” and “Her.”

“A Japanese Novelist Takes on the Dominance of English,” by Chuck Twardy.

Eileen Weiner reviews “West of Sunset” by Stewart O'Nan.

From Woody Brown: “Miranda July: Friends Become Enemies? Enemies Become Friends?”

Grace Bello interviews Nellie Hermann, author of the new novel about Vincent van Gogh “The Season of Migration” for Columbia University.

Jacob Siefring reviews Marie NDiaye’s latest two books in English translation, “All My Friends” and “Self-Portrait in Green.”

NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari's @BBCCulture column offers 10 “Classics to worth reading in 2015, from Proust to Doris Lessing to Trollope to Virginia Woolf's “The Waves.”

Roxana Robinson reviews Marilynne Robinson’s “Lila.”

Carl Rollyson reviews “Selected Letters of Norman Mailer.”

Andrew Cleary reviews Andrew Keen's “The Internet Is Not The Answer.”

Lori Feathers reviews “Self Portrait in Green” by Marie NDiaye. Feathers also reviews “Jerusalem” by Gonçalo M. Tavares.