Review by New York Times Review
RED CLOCKS, by Leni Zumas. (Little, Brown, $26.) This highly absorbing novel imagines a near future of America in which abortion is illegal in all 50 states. Zumas has a perfectly tuned ear for the way society relies on a moralizing sentimentalism to restrict women's lives and enforce conformity. HERE IN BERLIN, by Cristina Garcia. (Counterpoint, $26.) In a series of short quasi-fictional encounters, the Cuban-American novelist uses a chorus of voices to explore the long, ghostly reach of Germany's history, in which the remembered or purposefully forgotten past seems as alive as the present. THE NEWCOMERS: Finding Refuge, Friendship, and Hope in an American Classroom, by Helen Thorpe. (Scribner, $28.) Thorpe spent a year with teenage refugees in a Denver school's "newcomer class," documenting their lives as the presidential campaign stirred up nativist resentment. Partly a story of assimilation, it also details her growing awareness of other cultures. THE LARGESSE OF THE SEA MAIDEN: Stories, by Denis Johnson. (Random House, $27.) Johnson's long preoccupation with mortality culminates in a posthumous collection. "It's plain to you that at the time I wrote this, I'm not dead," one character says. "But maybe by the time you read it." TRUMPOCRACY: The Corruption of the American Republic, by David Frum. (HarperCollins, $25.99.) Frum argues that the Trump presidency is not only about Donald Trump but also about the deeper structural problems of America in general, and conservative America in particular. He thinks that what the country faces is nothing less than a threat to the democratic order. THE YEARS, MONTHS, DAYS, by Yan Lianke. Translated by Carlos Rojas. (Black Cat, paper, $16.) A pair of novellas in which the noted Chinese novelist (and frequent target of government censorship) paints a darkly satirical portrait of stranded characters adrift in a depraved society. BIRDING WITHOUT BORDERS: An Obsession, a Quest and the Biggest Year in the World, by Noah Strycker. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27.) Follow one young birder as he spends an entire year traveling the world to see as many species of birds as he can - a number that ends up being a record-breaking 6,042. JEFFERSON'S DAUGHTERS: Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America, by Catherine Kerrison. (Ballantine, $28.) Kerrison follows the lives of the third president's three daughters, including Harriet Hernings, born to his slave Sally Hernings. GORILLA AND THE BIRD: A Memoir of Madness and a Mother's Love, by Zack McDermott. (Little, Brown, $27.) McDermott spent years battling bipolar disorder with the support of his Midwestern mother, who didn't quit even when he was in a psych ward. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 6, 2019]
Review by Kirkus Book Review
"I am a bipolar gorilla": a tale of madness, self-destruction, and the stalwart presence of a family that, while not exactly the Waltons, is always there.You've got to like a book that opens with a Granny who prays the rosary, digs the Stones, and calls the police "pigs," as in, "Zachariah, look out the window. Is that the pigs?" If Granny is a person not to mess with, Grandpa is a whiskey-soaked philosopher, and Birdwell, that would be Zachariah's mom, who is the toughest and most reliable of them all, a rock on whom whole cities could be founded. McDermott's memoir is decidedly offbeat, unfolding like a country song. There's the law, some good jokes, substance abuse, and love lost and found, but there's also a keenly felt sense of justice for the people who can't catch a break in this world, "the dregs, the castoffs, the addicts, and the Uncle Eddies," the latter a relative who pioneered the author's path into the mental health system all those years ago. It's a system that McDermott describes from two vantage points, one as a public defender who represents emotionally disturbed persons and one as someone who has spent time on the other side of the door, committed for clearly valid reasons even as we come to understand that mental health is not likely to be encountered in mental health institutionsor, as he writes, "regaining sanity at a mental hospital is like treating a migraine at a rave." That makes sense, for who could be healed in a place, as he writes, where the air is a fetid assault, inasmuch as "90 percent of our prescribed medications came with rancid and constant dog farts as side effects"? If the Joads were tanked up on Bud Light and Haldol and Steinbeck were under Hunter S. Thompson's influence, this might be the resultrueful, funny, and utterly authentic. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
