Word: riverhead
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...novel, Imperfect Birds (Riverhead; 278 pages), functions in reverse, suggesting all the terror of the big picture. It's about Elizabeth and James, liberal do-gooders from Marin County, California (and the subjects of her previous novels Rosie and Crooked Little Heart), and their daughter Rosie. At 17, Rosie is "black-haired, strapping and fabulous" and an academic high achiever, but she does every drug under the sun, including her peers' parentally dispensed Adderall. The book is a stark illustration of deception, denial and parents' desperate desire to stay loved. You emerge from its last bittersweet pages ready to drug...
...Riverhead; 320 pages...
...speak ill of two very good writers: Nick Hornby and Lorrie Moore. Hornby's new book, Juliet, Naked (Riverhead; 416 pages), is an example of what you might call iPod lit--Arthur Phillips' The Song Is You would be another--novels that meditate on the paradoxical mixture of intimacy and estrangement that arises from listening to digitally recorded music, or really from any human interaction mediated by the Internet. In the case of Juliet, Naked, the music is by Tucker Crowe, a legendary (fictional) singer-songwriter who was last heard from in 1986 but who still has rabid online followers...
...approached Meloy's new collection of stories, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (Riverhead; 219 pages), with some suspicion. The title nods to her love of duality, but how could this measure up to the quiet audacity of that novelistic one-two punch? By working in opposition, it turns out. If her paired novels demonstrate that more--e.g., a retelling--can be more, Both Ways shows how less really is too. These 11 stories are quick, powerful jabs, startling in their economy; you're propelled toward each ending, certain she won't be able to wrap...
False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World By Alan Beattie Riverhead Books; 321 pages...