A reverence for the victims can be detected in this refusal to sensationalize their suffering … Whitehead has written novels of horror and apocalypse nothing touches the grimness of the real stories he conveys here, of a cinder-block building that still stands, a school that was closed only eight years ago. The ordinary language, the clear pane of his prose, lets the stories speak for themselves … while Whitehead is frank about the barbarity his characters endure, there are few scenes of explicit violence-most of it happens offstage. Whitehead comports himself with gravity and care, the steward of painful, suppressed histories his choices on the page can feel as much ethical as aesthetic.
Even if your prose taste runs to curlicue and adornment (mine does), the restraint feels significant. The narration is disciplined and the sentences plain and sturdy, oars cutting into water. “ The Nickel Boys-a tense, nervy performance-is even more rigorously controlled than its predecessor.
–Luis Alberto Urrea ( The New York Times Book Review) A banquet prepared for us by hungry people.” In this era of modern termination assailing us, the book feels like a call to arms. For 450 pages, we are grateful to be allowed into this world … I walked away from the Turtle Mountain clan feeling deeply moved, missing these characters as if they were real people known to me. High drama, low comedy, ghost stories, mystical visions, family and tribal lore - wed to a surprising outbreak of enthusiasm for boxing matches - mix with political fervor and a terrifying undercurrent of predation and violence against women. The author…delivers a magisterial epic that brings her power of witness to every page.
Erdrich retakes the lead by offering the reader the gifts of love and richness that only a deeply connected writer can provide. “In this season of literary wildfires, when cultural borrowings have unleashed protests that have shaken the publishing industry, the issue of authenticity is paramount. It is a tour de force: compact, laugh-out-loud funny, the best new novel I’ve read this year … Among its other merits, then, The Netanyahus can claim the distinction of being probably the funniest novel ever written about contending historiographies … Cohen writes with humour and wit…but comedy is a way of seeing things, as well as describing them … Cohen’s lesson, in this determinedly comic novel, is that history happens as farce and tragedy simultaneously the side you see depends, in part, on where you happen to be standing.” “ The Netanyahus is Cohen’s sixth novel, his most conventional and his best to date. Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
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