Review by New York Times Review
THE MASTER OF CONFESSIONS: The Making of a Khmer Rouge Torturer, by Thierry Cruvellier. Translated by Alex Gilly. (Ecco/Harper-Collins, $16.99.) Cruvellier, who has reported on some of the world's most notorious war crimes, recounts the trial of Duch, the director of the Khmer Rouge's S-21 prison, where thousands of people were killed. His exhaustive account includes a sly commentary on the whims and limits of the international justice system. AN UNNECESSARY WOMAN, by Rabih Alameddine. (Grove, $16.) Divorced and childless, 72-year-old Aaliya lives in her Beirut apartment alone, deemed "unnecessary" by the rest of her family. Her life may appear solitary, but she is kept company by stacks of favorite books, one of which she chooses to translate into Arabic every year. Though her life is physically grounded in her home, Aaliya's memories roam through chapters of Beirut's history and span decades of literature. ON LEAVE, by Daniel Anselme. Translated by David Bellos. (Faber & Faber, $14.) First published in 1957 during the Algerian War, "On Leave" follows three French soldiers who return from North Africa to a society coolly uninterested in their wartime experiences. Bellos's translation gives new life to the book, which was never reprinted and largely disappeared from the French literary landscape. MY SALINGER YEAR, by Joanna Rakoff. (Vintage, $15.95.) After leaving graduate school, Rakoff found a job as an assistant in a stubbornly anachronistic literary agency whose most celebrated client was J. D. Salinger. Tasked with responding to Salinger's fans with an outdated form letter (Salinger himself had stopped responding decades earlier), Rakoff chose to write back herself. SPOILED BRATS: Stories, by Simon Rich. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $15.) Often based on surreal premises (the opening story is narrated by a traumatized classroom hamster), the tales in Rich's latest collection add up to a hilarious portrait of the millennial generation. Rich, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and a millennial himself, makes occasional cameo appearances here, too. INFINITESIMAL: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World, by Amir Alexander. (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.) Alexander, who studies mathematical theory in a cultural context, offers an overview of infinitesimals, a reflection of the idea that a continuous line is composed of an infinite number of small, distinct parts. The math is settled now, but in the 16th and 17th centuries, the concept pitted Jesuits against Protestants and was the subject of a decades-long debate between Thomas Hobbes and his mathematical adversaries. Alexander's book shows how something infinitely small by definition can have profound effects on history. FRIENDSWOOD, by René Steinke. (Riverhead, $16.) A small Texas community, modeled on Steinke's hometown, suffers collective amnesia about its toxic waste, in a novel that abounds with questions of moral responsibility.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 21, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
When a book opens with a story narrated by a classroom hamster desperate to protect his family from a gang of second-graders, the reader knows to expect something unusual between the covers. Other stories in Rich's (Elliot Allagash, 2010) collection feature a self-absorbed college student spending her semester abroad on Saturn, a pushy mom in denial about her son's monstrousness (he is an actual monster), and a chimp who dreams of a career in sign language. In the longest story, Selling Out, Herschel Rich, a Jewish immigrant, falls into a vat of brine in a pickle factory and wakes up 100 years later, perfectly preserved. He moves in with his great-great grandson (named Simon Rich) and finds little to like about modern-day Brooklyn until he starts pickling cucumbers salvaged from a dumpster behind Whole Foods and realizes his own version of the American dream. Rich takes on many of the preoccupations of contemporary culture with sly wit and a wacky sensibility.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In his newest story collection, humorist and screenwriter Rich (The Last Girlfriend on Earth) uses space travel, weird science, and talking animals to knock narcissistic millennials and New York high society down to size. In the futuristic "Semester Abroad," a college student studying on Saturn (where the food "tastes like straight ass") obsesses about her boyfriend while an interplanetary war decimates her host society. In "Rip," a brilliant retelling of the Rip Van Winkle fable, a 27-year-old low-life and aspiring blogger falls asleep for three years and wakes to find that his friends have become sashimi-eating yuppies. Two of the best entries feature a character named Simon Rich, usually in the role of brat-villain. "Animals" centers on a hamster whose family Rich, the "class clown" at a hoity-toity New York elementary school, has neglected to feed. And the novella-length "Sell Out" tells the story of a Polish immigrant who, after being preserved in brining fluid for a century, wakes in present-day Brooklyn and, with no help from his self-obsessed great-great-grandson Simon, becomes an overnight hipster celebrity. Throughout the collection, Rich skewers helicopter parenting, Gen-Me technophilia, and late-capitalist malaise with cruel precision. His occasionally stereotypical female characters and hackneyed resolutions are counterbalanced by on-point details-a club used to maul unhip elders, a post-genocide round of "Never Have I Ever"-that pierce the heart. Agent: Daniel Greenberg, Levine Greenberg Literary Agency. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
Rich, former Harvard Lampoon president and former Saturday Night Live staffer, as well as an established author (Last Girlfriend on Earth) and New Yorker contributor, has penned a collection of stories about the narcissistic millennial generation and how they got that way. His hilarious characters include a family of hamsters trying to survive in the fifth-grade classroom of a private school, a chimp who longs to see the world, a demon who just wants to be himself, a pickle maker who is revived after fermenting for 100 years in brine, and the devil himself. Settings vary from Saturn to sewers to the North Pole. Yet every story rings true and provides a rueful reminder of how helicopter moms and conservative dads contribute to the success of their children. The stories parody life in the 21st century and clearly explain where we all went wrong. VERDICT Recommended as funny and insightful reading. [See Prepub Alert, 5/6/14.]-Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Humorist Rich's (The Last Girlfriend on Earth, 2013, etc.) latest collection is predictably funny, though sometimes digs deeper. Imagine a petty, oft-rejected writer complaining to his girlfriend about the "literary establishment": "They hate that I'm trying to do something newit terrifies them!" It's a familiar rant to the girlfriend, who leaves, feigning frustration, only to place a call as soon as she hits the sidewalk, whispering, "He's onto us," and thenwell, never mind. This review shouldn't ruin the punch line of Rich's "Distractions," for the pleasure of this and other pieces comes from watching each joke unfold. Unfortunately, this also suggests the book's larger hindrance: There's not much here besides the jokes. The result is amusing, sure, but slight, like watching an uneven episode of Saturday Night Live (where Rich once worked as a writer) in which some skits stick the landing, some provoke mild chuckles, and some offer the opportunity to use the bathroom or play with your phone. The nearly 80-page novella Sell Out suggests something much different, however. In it, a hardworking immigrant in early-20th-century Brooklyn is accidentally preserved in pickle brine, only to awaken 100 years later. He tracks down his great-great-grandson, the author himself, a self-absorbed, neurotic disappointment. This story is funny, but it gestures toward something deeper about the dreams we foist upon our family members and icons and also the ensuing disappointments. Elsewhere, Rich puts his jokes first, but in Sell Out, the characters are paramount, and readers ought to return to this story. Otherwise, once is the right amount of times to read most of these piecesand given Rich's breezy style, once won't be a chore at all. Humor comes easily to Rich, but he's at his best when he pushes against the boundaries of his jokes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
