This year we’ve changed how we’ll choose the winner of the John Leonard Prize,  and since NBCC members have been asking how the process will work, let me take a moment here to lay it out. 

As ever, the Leonard prize is for the best first book in any genre. As in years past, we’re using SurveyMonkey to enable any NBCC member to nominate eligible books. That survey just went out; nominations will close at 10 a.m. EST on Nov. 28, so please get going and make your picks!

Once the survey is closed, the half dozen or so books with the most nominations will be designated as finalists (the actual number of finalists may vary a bit based on ties etc). Here’s where the new part comes in: At this point NBCC members who’ve volunteered for our new Leonard voting committee will have four to six weeks to read those books and vote on a winner. Members of this panel have solemnly pledged to read all the books, and we look forward to their informed judgement. 

The panel is open to any full voting member of the NBCC who is willing to make the commitment. I’m pleased to report that nearly 50 members have signed up for this committee, which will remain open to new volunteers until 10 a.m. EST this Friday, Nov. 18. 
 

It's been a week, hasn't it? Books keep us going. Here are your reviews for the last week. And some good news: voting for the #NBCCLeonard award for best first book begins today. Watch for SurveyMonkey ballot in your in-box. Here are some of the candidates, in our #NBCCLeonard blog series. Shout out others to @bookcritics on Twitter or on our Facebook page.

NBCC vp/online Jane Ciabattari's Lit Hub column features Zadie, Elena, and Eleanor, plus NBCC award winner David Hajdu's latest and shoutouts to Kirkus Prize winners & Radhika Jones:

NBCC Board member and past Balakian winner Katherine A. Powers reviewed John Pipkin's "The Blind Astronomer's Daughter" for the New York Times, Candice Millard's "Hero of the Empire" for Barnes & Noble.com, and Eileen Battersby's "Teethmarks on My Tongue" for the Irish Times.

For the Minneapolis Star Tribune, NBCC board member Laurie Hertzel wrote about how the modernization of libraries has meant the loss of a little bit of history. She also reviewed "Schoolhouse," by Marc Nieson, and "Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores," by Bob Eckstein.

Michael Magras reviewed "The Terranauts," by T.C. Boyle for the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Hag-Seed" by Margaret Atwood for Shelf Awareness, and "Thus Bad Begins" by Javier Marías for BookPage.

Fred Volkmer reviewed "The Violet Hour" by Katie Roiphe and "Clamour of Crows," by Ray Merritt, both for the Southampton Press and 27East.com.

For The Practicing Writer newsletter, Erika Dreifus recently interviewed Alexandra Zapruder, author of "Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film."

Brendan Driscoll reviews Maja Haderlap's "Angel of Oblivion" for The Millions, writing that the book "deserves praise for breaking the silence to bring the stories of Slovenian-speaking Austrians to a much broader audience".

For the Washington Independent Review of Books, Jenny Yacovissi has reviewed "The Most Famous Writer Who Ever Lived," by Tom Shroder, and "Mary Astor's Purple Diary," by Edward Sorel.

Joan Silverman interviewed Susan Faludi for the Portland Press-Herald.

Rochelle Spencer interviewed MK Chavez for Cosmonauts Avenue and Janice Lowe for the Chicago Review of Books.

Carl Rollyson reviewed "Anything that Burns You," by Terese Svoboda for The New Criterion.

David Cooper reviewed "Judas," by Amos Oz, in New York Journal of Books.

Lanie Tankard  reviewed "Losing Helen," by Carol Becker, for Woven Tale Press

Laverne Frith  reviewed "The Last Shift" by Philip Levine, for the New York Journal of Books.

Frank Freeman published a blog entitled "The Bully" in the Dublin Review of Books.   

Diane Scharper's review of "The High Places," short stories by Fiona McFarlane, was published in America magazine.

Karen R. Long reviewed "Swing Time," by Zadie Smith, for the Los Angeles Times.

Amy Brady reviewed "Nicotine" by Nell Zink for the Dallas Morning News.

Your reviews seed this roundup; please send items, including new about your new publications and recent honors, to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. Make sure to send links that do not require a subscription or username and password. Please send dedicated URLs rather than hotlinks, and include the title and author of the book, as well as the name of the publication.

Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor for books at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and a member of the NBCC board.

Greetings to all on a week that's beginning tensely for our nation's politics; check out a few of the assembled reviews to remember that many thinking people make up our great country: Authors, writers, critics, reviewers, readers, more. 

Dan Cryer reviews The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars of the American West by Peter Cozzens in The San Francisco Chronicle.

For The San Francisco Gate, Gerald Bartell reviews Martin Cruz Smith's The Girl From Venice, saying it is "tale of the losses and gains of war with tender moments, affecting characters and sage observations."

Annie DeWitt's debut novel, White Nights in Split Town City, illuminates "an entire sick society" in 1990s Massachusetts says John Domini in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

At NPR Books, Bethanne Patrick writes Pull Me Under by Kelly Luce "is a suspense novel with a female protagonist that gets more right about women than so many others I've read in the past few years."

Game Changers: The Unsung Heroes in Sports History by Molly Schiot "is an eye-opening introduction to female sports achievements that too often are forgotten too quickly or barely recognized" according to Grace Lichtenstein at The New York Journal of Books.

Anjali Enjeti reviewed Hidden Figures:  The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Jane Ciabattari's Lit Hub column includes an NBCC shoutout this week!

Julia M. Klein reviewed Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 3 by Blanche Wiesen Cook for The Chicago Tribune, writing that Mrs. Roosevelt emerges as "a surprisingly contemporary figure" and "One of the through lines of the book is about refugees."

Over at the Times Literary Supplement, Cynthia Haven discusses Robert Conquest, the historian who exposed Stalin's atrocities to the West – but in his role as a poet of note who wrote verse that is lyrical, sensual, and exactingly observed.

Michael Magras says of Everything I Found on the Beach by Cynan Jones that the novel is "subtle and introspective" in The Kenyon Review.

Judy Krueger reviews Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood at Litbreak.

Peter Orner's Am I Alone Here? is reviewed by Paul Wilner for The San Francisco Chronicle.

Also for The San Francisco Chronicle, Anita Felicelli reviews The Trespasser by Tana French, writing that the novel "shouldn't be missed."

The War of the Worlds: From H. G. Wells to Orson Welles to Jeff Wayne, Steven Spielberg and Beyond by Peter J. Beck makes it into The University Bookman, reviewed by Carl Rollyson.

Your reviews seed this roundup; please send items, including new about your new publications and recent honors, to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. Make sure to send links that do not require a subscription or username and password.

Your reviews seed this roundup. Please send items, including news about recent publications and honors, to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. (Current members only.) Please send links that do not require a subscription or a username and password. Please follow this format: Jane Dow reviewed “The Tempest,” by William Shakespeare, for the New York Times. URL here.

NBCC VP/Online Jane Ciabattari recommends new novels from Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon, and Amos Oz, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter's portrait of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, plus a first novel by  Peruvian author Claudia Salazar Jimenez set during the Shining Path insurgency and Philip Levine's plainspoken and eloquent last collection in her November Between the Lines column for BBC Culture. Over on Lit Hub, her column features Ursula Le Guin, Caroline Leavitt, Nell Zink and Melanie Finn

NBCC Board member and past Balakian winner Katherine A. Powers reviewed Ruth Franklin's "Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life" for the Chicago Tribune, and Philip Eade's "Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited" for Barnes & Noble.com

NBCC Board Member Mary Ann Gwinn reviewed “Something in the Blood” by David J. Skal for the Seattle Times.

NBCC board member Laurie Hertzel interviewed Ann Patchett (above, at bookshelf) and reviewed Tana French’s mystery, “The Trespasser,” both for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The #NBCCLeonard Picks blog series wraps up this week, with voting by members for the best first book in any genre beginning soon.

Michael Berry reviewed T.C. Boyle’s “The Terranauts” for the San Francisco Chronicle, “The Starlit Wood,” edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe, for the Portland Press Herald, and profiled Jonathan Lethem for the East Bay Express. 

Lori Feathers reviewed Lidija Dimkovska’s “A Spare Life” in World Literature Today. and picks some early gems in the hunt for the Best Translated Book of 2016 

Ilana Masad reviewed Annie DeWitt’s “White Nights in Split Town City,” Zachary Tyler Vickers 'Congratulations on Your Martyrdom'  and “Intimations” by Alexandra Kleeman, all for Electric Literature.

Priscilla Gilman reviewed “The Fall Guy” by James Lasdun for the Boston Globe.

Elizabeth Rosner reviewed “Mischling,” by Affinity Konar, for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Amy Brady reviewed Richard Kluger’s “Indelible Ink” for the LA Review of Books.

Ellen Akins reviewed “Hag-Seed” by Margaret Atwood for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and “Today Will Be Different” by Maria Semple for Newsday.

Julia M. Klein reviewed Ha Jin's "The Boat Rocker" for the Chicago Tribune.

Sara Elaine Tankard reviewed “One of Us is Sleeping” by Josefine Klougart for World Literature Today.

C.M. Mayo reviewed "In Plain Sight: Felix A. Sommerfeld, Spymaster in Mexico, 1908-1914," by Heribert von Feilitzsch for Literal Magazine

 Natalie Bakopoulos interviewed novelist Alexander Maksik for Tin House, and reviewed Marcy Dermansky’s “The Red Car” for the San Francisco Chronicle.  

Paul Wilner wrote about Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize for Zyzzyva.

Diane Scharper's roundup review of "Living With a Dead Language," "In The Country We Love," and "Lab Girl" appeared National Catholic Reporter.

David Cooper reviewed “A Greater Music” by Bae Suah for New York Journal of Books. New York Journal of Books.

Heller McAlpin reviewed John Kaag’s “American Philosophy” and Francine Prose’s “Mister Monkey” for NPR.

Matthew Jakubowski reviewed Caren Beilin's experimental novel, "The University of Pennsylvania" for The Kenyon Review Online.

Chris Barsanti reviewed "Strangers in Their Own Land" by Arlie Russell Hochschild for PopMatters.

Nathaniel Popkin reviewed "33 Revolutions"  by Canek Sanchez Guevara for Cleaver Magazine. 

Joe Peschel reviewed Jonathan Lethem's novel  "A Gambler's Anatomy” in the Houston Chronicle.

Over on Literary Hub, Erika Dreifus contests claims that Jewish writing is "over." And for her own newsletter and website, Erika recently interviewed Rachel Hall, whose newly published collection of linked stories, Heirlooms, was selected by Marge Piercy as winner of the BkMk Press G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction.

Norman Rusin reviewed "When We Are No More: How Digital Memory Is Shaping Our Future," by Abby Smith Rumsey for the website Got Science.org.

Anjali Enjeti reviewed Jennifer Weiner's "Hungry Heart" for Rewire News.

Steven G. Kellman interviewed Antonio Ruiz-Camacho for Translation Review.

Christopher Shade interviewed Peter Ho Davies on the publication of his new novel “The Fortunes” for the Brooklyn Rail.

Karl Wolff reviewed “The Great Ordeal (The Aspect-Emperor, Book Three)” by R. Scott Bakker for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. He also reviewed “The German War,” by Nicholas Stargardt and “Black Beauties: Iconic Cars Photographed by Rene Staud” by Rene Staud, both for the New York Journal of Books.

Elizabeth Lund reviewed Mary Oliver's “Upstream: Selected Essays,” for the Washington Post.

Julia M. Klein reviewed Nina Willner's "Forty Autumns" for the Chicago Tribune.

Susan Comninos wrote about "Treyf" by Elissa Altman for Haaretz, and published poems in Rattle and Matter Press.

John Domini wrote about two books by Kim Addonizio for the LA Review of Books, Annie Dewitt’s “White Nights,” for the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Good Little Virgin,” by Amara Lakhous for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and "If Venice Dies" by Salvatore Settis for the Washington Post.

Lanie Tankert wrote about "Body of Water" by Chris Dombrowski for the Woven Tale Press.

Roxana Robinson wrote about the exposure of Elena Ferrante for the Washington Post.

Rayyan Al-Shawaf reviewed “The Return,” by Hisham Matar for Truthdig and “The Boat Rocker,” by Ha Jin, for the Christian Science Monitor.

Michael Magras reviewed Rabih Alameddine’s “The Angel of History” for the Houston Chronicle, and David Szalay’s “All That Man Is,” for Northwest Review of Books.

Mike Lindgren reviewed Homeward Bound,” a biography of Paul Simon by Peter Ames Carlin, and “Crime Plus Music,” an anthology edited by Jim Fusilli, both for the Washington Post.

 Lisa Russ Spaar wrote about books by poets R.T. Smith and Mark Wagenaar in her Seconds Acts column for the Los Angeles Review.

Laurie Hertzel is the books editor of the MInneapolis Star Tribune and a member of the NBCC board.

In November, National Book Critics Circle members will begin nominating and voting for the fourth John Leonard award for first book in any genre. In the run-up to the first round of voting, we'll be posting a series of #NBCCLeonard blog essays on promising first books. The nineteenth in our series is NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari on Nicole Dennis-Benn's Here Comes the Sun (Norton).

Jamaican-born Dennis-Benn highlights the complex social stratification in Montego Bay in her finely orchestrated first novel. She sets up a mother-daughter duo--Delores, a single mother, who sells souvenirs to tourists, and eldest daughter, Margot, who works long hours at a luxury hotel (and provides foreigners who pay her well “to be their personal tour guide to the island of her body” in her after hours). Delores and Margot have set their hopes on the youngest daughter, Thandi, and are putting their earnings into her education at a Catholic school because they believe one day she will “make everything better”.  Margot is ambitious--and easily manipulated by her boss, the resort's white owner. While she is climbing the ladder, acquiring power and a new lover, young Thandi falls in love, a disaster for her family's dreams for her. Dennis-Benn captures the fragile hopes and dreams of her characters while making clear the hard-edged stigmas and class distinctions that limit their possibilities. Here Comes the Sun is a rich, exuberant, sophisticated novel-- an ideal candidate for the John Leonard award.

Jane Ciabattari writes the Between the Lines column for BBC.com and contributes regularly to LitHub, NPR.org, the Boston Globe and others. She is vice president/online and a former president of the National Book Critics Circle, serves on the advisory board of The Story Prize and is a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto and a founder of the [Flash Fiction Collective]. Her articles and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Guardian, Bookforum, Salon.com, the Paris Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, Ms., Poets & Writers Magazine, among others. She is the author of two story collections, Stealing the Fire (Dzanc Books, 2013) and California Tales (Shebooks 2014). She can be found on Twitter @janeciab.

In November, National Book Critics Circle members will begin nominating and voting for the fourth John Leonard award for first book in any genre. In the run-up to the first round of voting, we'll be posting a series of #NBCCLeonard blog essays on promising first books. The eighteenth in our series is NBCC member Yahdon Israel on Jade Chang’s The Wang’s Vs. The World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Every novel is governed by an emotional logic that provides a profound insight into the interior lives of the characters being brought to life on the page. A good novel allows these insights to approximate us to the characters; make us feel like we know them, like they’re real. A great novel takes these insights and gives us the impression that it’s not the characters we know, but the writer who created them. Then there’s the exceptional novel that turns these insights on themselves, allowing us to see what we seldom admit we’re looking for every time we open a book: ourselves.

To not make us feel guilty, or aware, of the impulse is an act of empathy. A quality many writers pontificate about needing but very few have. When you read Jade Chang’s The Wang’s Vs. The World you’ll see that Chang is of a silent minority of writers who understand that empathy is more than a watchword; it’s a lighthouse.

Empathy is what guides Charles Wang, a Chinese-American businessman whose cosmetic empire collapses during the 2008 recession, on a trip across America to in order to reclaim his family’s ancestral land back in China for him and his three children—Saina, Andrew, and Grace. Land that was taken by China’s Communist government. How a man comes to convince himself that this mission is possible gives us a glimpse as to how he lost his money in the first place. But it also makes us want to know what type of man Charles is:

“Artifice, thought Charles, was the real honesty. Confessing your desire to change, being willing to strive, those were things that made sense. The real fakers were the ones who denied those true impulses. . . Everyone must want to be beautiful. . . And for a time, a long and lucrative time, the good people of America had agreed.”

Understanding a character is a matter of figuring out what motivates them; what they think they want; and what they’re afraid of losing. Long before Charles Wang arrived on the shores of America you can see that Charles is motivated by the trauma of having what he felt was rightfully his taken from him and his family back in China. He attempts to enact his vengeance on China by becoming successful in America, reminding me of what James Baldwin said in regards to his self-imposed exile to Paris; about it never being about where he was going but what he was attempting to get away from.

In more ways than we can express, home hurts. It’s why none of the Wangs live at home with their father. Saina, the oldest, lives in upstate New York after torrid love affair with the art world. Andrew, his only son, attends college in Arizona. And his youngest, Grace, is in boarding school. Charles’s wife Barbra lives with him, but only in the flesh. Charles’s heart, mind and soul has been everywhere but with her. This all changes when Charles loses nearly all of his material possessions. It’s no longer about selling dreams to people who lose sleep trying to achieve them. Charles just wants to go home, and he wants his family to go with him. It’s at a price he can barely afford—beyond any monetary costs—but Charles foots the bill. To him it’s worth it:

“As Grace and Barbra weep and Andrew clutches his hand and Saina gestures at the doctor to hurry, he smiles at them and watches their faces bloom with relief. He smiles again and pings back their love as hard as he can while also focusing on speaking the truth he has known for so long, the truth that will make the whole world theirs.

‘Daddy discovered America!’

He leans back, triumphant, exhausted. Later, they will learn how to rule the new world but for now, this is enough. This is everything.”

Just as funerals have their way of bringing the estranged family back from the dead, financial ruin as well as the moral bankruptcy of the American Dream becomes Chang’s way of showing, “In the end, all we had were the people to whom we are beholden.” Money, power and fame, for all they’re worth, will never change that. 

Yahdon Israel is a 26 year-old writer from Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, who writes about race, class, gender and culture in America. He has written for Avidly, The New Inquiry, ESPNW and Brooklyn Magazine. He's a contributing editor at LitHub; recently graduated with his MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from the New School, and runs a popular Instagram page which promotes literature and fashion under the hashtag, #literaryswag. Above all else: he keeps it lit.

In November, National Book Critics Circle members will begin nominating and voting for the fourth John Leonard award for first book in any genre. In the run-up to the first round of voting, we'll be posting a series of #NBCCLeonard blog essays on promising first books. The seventeenth in our series is NBCC member Frank Freeman on Eric Fair's Consequence: A Memoir (Henry Holt and Co.).

Consequence: A Memoir is a hard book to read, hard in T. S. Eliot’s sense of humankind’s not being able to bear very much reality. The reality in Eric Fair’s case is his experiences in Iraq as an interrogator working for a private contractor at Abu Grahib and Falllujah. He admits—confesses is a better word—that he tortured detainees. What he did is less reprehensible than what he saw being done in the “hard site” of Abu Grahib but he remained silent about both until his life fell apart under the stress of memories and a diseased heart.

Fair grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in a solid Presbyterian family, admiring those who helped others. He decided to become a policeman. But first he had to join the army—recruiters, shown to be consummate liars, do not come out looking very good in this book—wherein he learns Arabic, fighting skills, etc., and eventually that he has a heart that will someday kill him.

He works for the NSA for a while but is still driven to help on the ground. He keeps quiet about his heart and joins a private contractor, CACI, one of the many such that sprang up in the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror. You get the impression CACI was run by greedy war-feeding corporate sharks that promised body armor, weapons, and guidance but just pocketed the money. Fair’s memoir skewers CACI and its ethos and undermines the idea that private contractors do anything more than make the hell of war even more hellish.

The main story, however, is of Fair and his wrestling with what he does, sees, and remains silent about. When he comes home he becomes an alcoholic, yells at his wife, tries to become a Presbyterian minister, as some of his ancestors were, fails, almost kills himself, gets a heart transplant, and finally faces his demons with the help of a gay rabbi. (One of the sub-themes of the book is the acceptance and non-acceptance of gay ministers within the Presbyterian Church.)

Seth and I study Maimonides, taking turns to read aloud and share our thoughts. Seth chose Maimonides because he lays out one of the most extensive processes in the Jewish tradition for atonement. Maimonides says the transgressor is required to engage with the aggrieved persons, actively seek their forgiveness, and make restitution for harms done. God has a role to play, but largely for sins against God. The emphasis is on human-to-human interaction. The remedies are often described as lifelong pursuits.

Fair’s book, then, is the beginning of his lifelong pursuit of atonement and forgiveness. The story is told in the present tense in a laconic and sometimes dryly humorous style that threatens to become monotonous but ends up being hypnotic. The book is a blistering indictment of the way the Iraq war was conducted and a confession of complicity. Fair ends it by saying he no longer prays, he has no right to, but to my mind, in its facing of reality both public and private, physical and spiritual, it is a prayer.

Frank Freeman’s poetry has been published in The Aroostook Review, The Axe Factory,  The New York Quarterly, SN Review, and Tiger’s Eye. His book reviews have appeared in America Magazine, Bloomsbury Review, Commonweal, Open Letters Monthly, The Dublin Review of Books, The Hedgehog Review, The Literary Review, The Rumpus, Touchstone, The University Bookman, Washington Free Beacon, and The Weekly Standard, among others. Amarillo Bay and St. Katherine’s Review have published his short stories. His published work has appeared in the aggregate web sites, Arts and Letters Daily and Prufrock. Frank lives in Saco, Maine, where he lives with his wife and four children. He grew up in Texas, Connecticut, and California, received a BA in English from Texas A&M and an MA in English from Northeastern University.