Review by New York Times Review
LIONESS: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel, by Francine Klagsbrun. (Schocken, $40.) Meir has often been as reviled in Israel as she is admired in the United States, but perspectives are shifting. Klagsbrun's absorbing biography suggests this woman politician made history in more ways than one. AN ODYSSEY: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, by Daniel Mendelsohn. (Knopf, $26.95.) A distinguished critic and classicist, Mendelsohn uses Homer's epic as a vehicle for telling his own intricately constructed story of a father and son and their travails through life and love. PRESIDENT MCKINLEY: Architect of the American Century, by Robert W. Merry. (Simon & Schuster, $35.) McKinley tends to be forgotten among American presidents, overshadowed by his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, but he was largely responsible for America's 20th-century role in the world. Merry's measured, insightful biography seeks to set the record straight. THE COLLECTED ESSAYS OF ELIZABETH HARDWICK, edited by Darryl Pinckney. (New York Review, paper, $19.95.) These impeccably economical essays, collected here with a wise introduction by Pinckney, offer a rich immersion in Hardwick's brilliant mind and the minds of the writers she read so well. NOMADLAND: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, by Jessica Bruder. (Norton, $26.95.) In this brilliant and compassionate book, Bruder documents how a growing number of older people, post-recession refugees from the middle and working class, cross the land in their vans and R.V.s in search of work. THE SHADOW DISTRICT, by Arnaldur Indridason. (Thomas Dunne/ Minotaur, $25.99.) In this moody Icelandic mystery, a retired police officer investigates a present-day murder with apparent links to another crime, committed during the waning days of World War II, when the neutral nation was occupied by Allied troops. A BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYONE WHO EVER LIVED: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes, by Adam Rutherford. (The Experiment, $25.95.) With a heady amalgam of science, history and a bit of anthropology, Rutherford offers a captivating primer on genetics and human evolution as told through our DNA. THE LAST BALLAD, by Wiley Cash. (Morrow/HarperCollins, $26.99.) Cash's novel revisits a 1929 textile union strike that turned deadly; his heroine is based on a real-life union organizer and folk singer now mostly lost to history. CATAPULT: Stories, by Emily Fridlund. (Sarabande, paper, $16.95.) This powerhouse of a first collection - by an author whose debut novel, "History of Wolves," was a finalist for this year's Man Booker Prize - is notable for its deft mix of humor and insight. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Fridlund's focus in Catapult, her second book (following History of Wolves, 2016) and first collection of short stories, can be characterized by the deceptive nature of appearances. Eleven brilliant stories showcase childhood, adolescence, marriage, and families and how the appearances of these events and relationships in life can hide the strangeness and emptiness that pervade beneath the surface. Fridlund tells stories of an eccentric family seeking to survive, a teenage couple endeavoring to veil their raw desires with words, two siblings who have completely different perceptions of the same reality, and the loneliness within the friendship of two women, among others. She unpacks these situations with thoughtful diction and complex characters, and her subdued and controlled language sets what is unsaid at the fore, unveiling hope, despair, and the paradoxes that are often ignored in such close relationships. Fridlund's intelligent and conversational voice impressively manipulates the emotional atmosphere of her stories and will draw readers deep into exploring these seemingly commonplace topics even after they've put the book down.--Park, Emily Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Fridlund (History of Wolves) centers her sharp and startling collection around characters who face acute but everyday struggles in relationships that feel stifling and realistic. In the title story, a teenage girl and her Christian boyfriend become fixated on researching time travel while his parents erroneously assume they are sexually active. In "Marco Polo," a wife's irregular sleeping pattern gnaws at her husband's trust despite all signs that her late-night activities are innocuous. "Gimme Shelter" touches on pivotal moments of three siblings' upbringing, carefully building to the regrets that haunt them as adults. Like many of Fridlund's couples, the protagonists of "Old House" don't realize they are in the tail end of their relationship; they gleefully mock their aging landlady's sincere Swedenborgian theology of love, with no awareness that their own intense but hollow infatuation will soon be over. Fridlund's ability to conjure humor in the darkest moments is clear in her blending of sitcom set-ups with bleak undercurrents. Her breathtaking prose and sly expressions make for compulsive reading. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The stories in this collection are magical, not because they're otherworldly-most are set in Fridlund's former home state of Minnesota-but because you can't see how she does it. Does she charm with the casually mentioned strange artifacts, such as the pterodactyl-shaped slippers or the birthday candles lit in a loaf of bread? How does the narrator sound so distantly authoritative, yet stay inside the protagonist's head? Sometimes a story's premise is amusing, as in "Expecting," in which the baby is far wiser than the slacker father and son who are trying to raise her. The stories with adult characters are edgy and wise, but sometimes a sense of ill will passes for tension. Fridlund is strongest in developing her teenage protagonists, who wrestle with maturity yet are reluctant to leave childhood behind. The title story is one of the best: a boy and girl fritter away their summer constructing catapults and nearly having sex. VERDICT So much happens in these stories that they are hard to summarize; the prose is deadpan and spare, but the imagery can be breathtaking and the insights startling. Memorable and a joy to read.-Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA © Copyright 2017. 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
Eleven stories of misshapen families and broken friendships disturb and unsettle. Fridlund follows History of Wolves (2017), her marvelous and preternaturally accomplished first novel, with a collection of jarring and polished short fiction. The craft is evident in the perfect titles and the observational acuity of the sentences. In a story called "One You Run From, the Other You Fight," a childless woman trespasses into a boy's room: "Teenage boys always unnerved her, with their dramatic bodies and bad skin, their needy flirtation. They couldn't decide if they wanted to be liked or hated." In quick phrases, Fridlund's characters are vividly embodied, such as Lora, 34, "with her lavish red nails, fingering the dry skin on her elbows." The narrator of this story, "Here, Still," begins with the ambiguous "I do not like her much, Lora, my best friend." Neither will the reader. Fridlund writes about lives that feel, to their owners, "fundamentally unreal and insubstantial." In "Marco Polo," a young man describes his marriage slipping away like the child's game. He ends his tale by donning his ex's earplugs and mask for sleep, "faceless, pitiless, and perfect." The only narrator with much agency is Katie, who remembers being an alpha girl of 14. She begins that summer reading vampire stories and ends it sexually mounting a boy her age who tells her "No, wait" in the unnerving title story, "Catapult." It captures Katie's intelligence and heedless insistence on launching from childhood. This is darker, thornier terrain than Mattie Furston navigated in History of Wolves, but the geography is similar: the Upper Midwest, the Iron Range, existentially lonely rural and suburban outposts. Each story mixes its humans with other mammalsrabbits, mice, bears, and especially dogs. Fridlund insists on functions primal and rude. She likes the color yellow for teeth and toenails, linoleum, rabbit fur, and toothpicks. Her stories evoke Flannery O'Connor's masterly way with grotesquery but deviate in Fridlund's contempt for faith. Bracing, often brilliant stories deliver a shock to the routine narratives we tell. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
