Critical Notes

Roundup: Tom McCarthy, Elif Shafak, Richard Price, Alan Cheuse, Kim Gordon, 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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Countdown to March 12 announcement of NBCC winners, our 30 Books in 30 Days series of reviews of all the finalists continues.

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Jeff Turrentine reviews Tom McCarthy's “Satin Island.”

Laura Collins-Hughes also reviews McCarthy's new novel.

NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari's top 10 books for March for her BBC Culture book column include new novels from T.C. Boyle, Mario Vargas Llosa, Kazuo Ishiguru, David Vann and Cara Black.

Leora Skolkin-Smith reviews Beverly Gologorsky’s “Stop Here.”

Philip Belcher reviews Steve Scafidi's “The Cabinetmaker's Window” and “To the Bramble and the Briar” in Southern Humanities Review.

NBCC board member Steven Kellman reviews Mohsin Hamid's “Discontent and Its Civilizations.”

Michael Lindgren reviews Kim Gordon's “Girl in a Band.”

Kai Maristed reviews “Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry” by Paul Celan.

Michelle Schingler reviews “Prayers for the Living” by Alan Cheuse.

Lori Feathers reviews “The Architect’s Apprentice” by Elif Shafak. Feathers also reviews “When the Doves Disappeared” by Sofi Oksanen.

“The Whites” by Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt, reviewed by Paul Wilner.

Michelle Lancaster reviews “The Shipwrecked: Contemporary Stories by Women from Iran.” She also reviews Rashid al-Daif's “Who's Afraid of Meryl Streep?”

Sebastian Stockman reviews David Graeber's “Utopia of Rules.”

Ellen Akins reviews “She Weeps Each Time You're Born,” by Quan Barry.

Martin Riker examines some experimental fiction.

Janette Currie reviews “The Lovers of Amherst” by William Nicholson.