Lily Meyer
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Bruce Holsinger's new novel — about overprivileged parents cheating to get their kids into a magnet school — is very topical, but the characters are too flat to hook readers' attention for long.
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Taffy Brodesser-Akner's debut novel seems like a Portnoy-esque tale of a lovable lout, but halfway through, the story shakes itself up and reorients itself in a completely different direction.
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Emiliano Monge's prose is brilliant, but that often obscures the moral questions around his protagonists, both human traffickers who transport their cargo while worrying about their relationship.
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Newly reissued, the intellectual heft of Françoise Gilot's now classic memoir is in its art criticism, even as its emotional arc lies in Picasso and Gilot's unequal romance.
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If Melinda Gates had fully owned her goal — writing a book that would strengthen some readers' abortion-rights convictions and open others' minds — she would have called for greater advocacy.
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María Gainza's protagonist — also named María — combines the her experiences of art with her personal experiences for an unpretentious, imaginative and compelling account of her life.
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Erin Lee Carr's memoir about her relationship with her dad, David Carr, provokes gratitude and empathy — but she fails to investigate herself with the rigor she brings to her own journalism.
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Sara Gran's first novel, now reissued, takes an astrological concept as the jumping-off point for a messy, prickly, realistic depiction of a difficult year in a young woman's life.
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Akiko Busch sets out to argue against visibility, "the common currency of our time." But she neglects to expose why she dislikes social media and networked culture.
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Author Hanif Abdurraqib has a seemingly limitless capacity to share what moves him and to invite the reader in: His love for these music-makers is contagious, even when it breaks his heart.