Known for his well-researched works of nonfiction, Lawrence Wright applies his talent for expert detail and storytelling to a novel about a pandemic. The result is a medical thriller that, while written before the emergence of covid-19, contains lots of similarities with the current public health crisis. The End of October begins with the outbreak abroad of a mysterious, deadly disease and centers on an American microbiologist who races to understand and combat the spreading virus. To say the book is timely just doesn’t do justice to how eerily prophetic it is.
James McBride, who won the National Book Award for his 2013 novel, The Good Lord Bird, is unique among contemporary writers of fiction for the singular humanity he brings to his characters. In this newest novel, built around Sportcoat, a beloved figure in a New York City housing project, McBride tours a landscape of race, politics, class, ethnicity, and social change with such acute sensibility that the reader feels thoroughly absorbed in the complications and contradictions inherent in the story’s place and time. Just as comedians are often the best truth-tellers, McBride edges close to farce in Deacon King Kong, using humor as he often does to expose deeper, painful realities about a world in transition. Bottom line: McBride does not disappoint.
Anyone can write a dark take on the King Arthur mythos, but only
Lavie Tidhar would do so while including legendary martial artist
Lancelot, a Holy Grail sequence that riffs on STALKER, and a vision of
kingship that's less noblesse oblige than perpetual grifting. The result
is a resolutely 2020 version of well-trodden territory: a cold-eyed
assessment of the realities of power that is nevertheless a lot of fun
to read.
