Лучшие книги 2014 года по версии Publishers Weekly — 86 книг — стр. 2

Fiction

This first collection by an accomplished novelist moves across continents to explore relationships between men and women, the lure of fame, and the desire to escape one’s life. It’s both telling and amusing, peopled with charming protagonists and set in enticing places.

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:33

Fiction

The dual narrators of Mengestu’s novel tell two sides of the same story: a 25-year-old aspiring writer leaves his village in Uganda and becomes a revolutionary; an American social worker falls in love with an African refugee in the Midwest. Mengestu depicts the immigrant experience with unsettling perception, in a story of shifting and renewed identity.

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:33

Fiction

Mukasonga’s debut novel uses the titular girls boarding school, perched on a ridge near the source of the Nile, as a lens through which to examine the Hutu and Tutsi conflict in Rwanda. Mainly setting her story 15 years before the 1994 genocide, Mukasonga, through the girls’ daily experiences at the school, sheds light on the growing political, ethnic, and social hostility of a country moving toward disaster.

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:35

Fiction

The second-person narrator of Murphy’s novel faces the fear, hysteria, and mundane suburban problems of a middle-aged woman whose daughters are on the swim team, which happens to be the target of a serial killer. Murphy brilliantly inverts the “whodunit” into a “whogotit”: by revealing the killer early, the question becomes who will uncover him.

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:37

Fiction

The cutting, destructive stories in Nors’s slim book tackle violence, sex, daydreams, obsessions, delusions, and compulsions. At three or four pages each, there’s just enough time to catch your breath before the next one hits.

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:40

Fiction

Oyeyemi continues to weave fairy tales, myth, and folklore together in this stellar reimagining of the Snow White tale, which also deftly handles themes of race, “otherness,” and beauty. Boy, a woman who flees her abusive father and ends up in 1950s Massachusetts, becomes stepmother to her husband’s daughter, Snow, then has a child of her own, Bird.

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:40

Fiction

This deviously dark and fun literary mystery finds a buttoned-up psycholinguist following clues fed to him by an old friend who has been locked up for murdering his fiancée. A rare-book-dealer network that’s actually a front for human organ traffickers, as well as some grotesque and macabre fables, complete this stellar debut.

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:43

Fiction

In her third novel set in Gilead, Iowa, Robinson focuses on Lila and her husband, the elderly Reverend Ames. The courtship and subsequent marriage of Lila and Ames is destined to be a classic—but who would expect anything less from Robinson?

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:44

Fiction

Six decades in the life of Eileen Tumulty begins in Woodside, Queens, in the 1940s and traces her lifelong pursuit of a better social station. She marries, becomes a mother, has a career—the life portrayed by Thomas is not spectacular, and that’s what makes it so memorable.

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:44

Fiction

A young couple hits a bird while driving; the wife miscarries. This is the first page of Zink’s weird, funny, and sad debut. What follows is the on-and-off again marriage between Tiffany and Stephen, a dazzling depiction of the slippery nature of human intimacy.

Seterwind 6 декабря 2014 г., 06:45

Non-fiction

An unsparing look at the U.S. network of detention centers for juvenile offenders, in which more than 66,000 youths are currently confined. Journalist Bernstein shows both abuse-ridden institutions and those dedicated to reform, but concludes that the system as a whole seems impervious to positive change.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:16

Non-fiction

In this brave and affecting memoir, New York Times columnist Blow describes growing up poor, African-American, and sexually conflicted in the 1970s Deep South, and of overcoming the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of an older cousin.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:16

Non-fiction

Writing closely with Lewis, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bragg (All Over but the Shouting) offers this rollicking, incendiary tale of the man who kick-started rock and roll and blazed a fiery trail strewn with heartache, happiness, regret, and music.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:18

Non-fiction

New York Times reporter Branch’s chronicle of Derek Boogaard’s winning but tragic life as hockey’s greatest enforcer is as tense and exciting as a hockey game. Branch captures the sorrow and anguish of a young athlete’s career collapsing due to the combination of drugs and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and asks piercing questions about violence in sports.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:19

Non-fiction

In the magisterial conclusion to his trilogy, Davis examines the end of the institution of slavery, the unintended consequences of its abolition, and the tragic legacies of its existence—primarily racism—that remains today. It’s a difficult and complex book, with lessons to be learned.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:20

Non-fiction

Drawing deeply on interviews with family and friends, biographer Eyman (Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford) chronicles Wayne’s life and work from his birth in Winterset, Iowa, to his football hero college days at USC; his slow rise to stardom; his marriages; and his enduring screen presence.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:22

Non-fiction

Competing visions of the American Dream clash in this rich account of a hate crime and its unlikely reverberations. Giridharadas follows the encounter between Mark Stroman, a racist ex-con in Dallas who went on a killing spree targeting men he wrongly thought were Arabs after 9/11, and Raisuddin Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi-born convenience-store clerk who was shot but survived, and went on to campaign to spare Stroman the death penalty.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:22

Non-fiction

Sociologist Goffman, who spent six years living in a low-income Philadelphia neighborhood, looks at the world of fugitives in America. She considers the frayed relationships, limited opportunities, and ingenious coping methods common in lives spent in “fear of capture and confinement”—in a country where nearly five million are on probation or parole.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:22

Non-fiction

Writing with novelistic detail, Hobbs narrates the life of Robert Peace, his college roommate at Yale, from a Newark, N.J., ghetto, born to an impoverished single mom and a father who went to prison for murder. After getting a biology degree, Peace returned to Newark to became a drug dealer and was eventually shot to death by rivals.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:22

Non-fiction

Many archaeologists credit Indiana Jones with sparking their passion, but Johnson may well inspire a new generation to take up this calling with her latest book, in which she travels the world, getting her hands dirty as she studies archaeologists in their natural habitats.

Seterwind 7 декабря 2014 г., 05:24