Brutal, incisive, a battering ram of a book calling for clarity on the Middle East situation which was tough to read, but essential to hear.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Akkad Omar El, (List Price: $28, Knopf, 9780593804148, February 2025)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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A 32-year-old with a disappointing job, a newly absent “life” partner, and a lake house filled with memories…and neighbours who have grown up a lot since they were 17: “I think the older we get, the scarier shit becomes…” One Golden Summer is a simple, yet affecting story of one Canadian summer by the lake where frustrated photographer, Alice, looking after her grandmother, finds the cock-sure tease with a heart of gold handyman, Charlie, and learns to start thinking more about herself for once.Sweet,. wry, an astute meditation on second chances, this is a summer breeze of a book with a twist straight out of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.
One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune, (List Price: $19, Berkley, 9780593638910, May 2025)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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“I had to learn how to visit the Louvre” goes an early line in this exceptional book, and I wish I’d had it with me when I visited the overwhelming museum-palace years ago. Simply and personally written, in short, punchy chapters, liberally sprinkled with excellent reproductions of some of the most important works, Sciolino blends access to everyone from curators, directors, guards, and fire fighters with history and (very) personal reflection. Brutally, amusingly blunt at times (“…the subsequent history of France in the nineteenth century is both incoherent and confusing….”!), Adventures in the Louvre is composed of bite-sized chapters on the history, architecture, pop culture, and even global significance, which makes it much more manageable than the museum itself, and will be in my luggage next time I travel to Paris. There’s even a chapter on ghosts, as well as a fascinating aside on things to do around the museum when it is closed on Tuesdays, a fact which would make this book worth its cover price alone!) It’s also filled with fascinating trivia: who knew the museum was once named the Museé Napoléon, or that the Mona Lisa is behind bulletproof glass, or that Beyoncé recently made it cool?) I’m already salivating at the thought of a fully illustrated version showing every piece mentioned – and there are a lot! A masterpiece worthy of its subject!
Adventures in the Louvre by Elaine Sciolino, (List Price: $29.99, W. W. Norton, 9781324021407, April 2025)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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Everything Jon Klassen writes has me hypnotized (not to mention my 4-year-old). This one has even more eyes in it than usual!
Your Forest by Jon Klassen, (List Price: $8.99, Candlewick, 9781536230833, February 2025)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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This book is a delight, both as a tale and physically, a palm-sized treat with gorgeous, subtle decorations flowing through it like the river of its title. El-Mohtar employs wordplay of the most sumptuous variety from page one, in a world where grammar is magic and nature, from trees to storms to the very people, are always more than they appear. “That is the nature of grammar – it is always tense…” A faerytale of delicious tropes, from magic to riddles to metamorphoses, whose narrator doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as knock it down, sweep it aside, and come and sit in your lap in a brief but delightfully deep look at love, sisterhood, and what we would sacrifice for them both.
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar, (List Price: $24.99, Tordotcom, 9781250341082, March 2025)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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This novel is uber-Murakami, the author back to the magical best of his earlier novels such as Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (note: this makes sense, as the author writes in an afterword that this novel was a second attempt at reworking a novella, the first attempt being Hardboiled Wonderland). You don’t read a Murakami novel; you live it, holding on for dear life until it lets you off at the end, slightly confused but highly entertained. A magical world slowly unravels through an unnamed girl, while everyday life interweaves with it, featuring all the traditional Murakami Bingo tropes (loneliness, high school, jazz, pasta recipes, The Beatles, wells, libraries, cats…all the greatest hits!) There were a few minor logical bugbears, but plot logic was never Murakami’s strong suit. The simplicity of his language has long been a feature, but lately has felt more like a bug at times, with the repetition of banal thoughts (‘it was just my conjecture, but I was sure of it’; I nodded vaguely’ etc.) – perhaps as one of my all-time favourite authors I have come to expect more, but it was still great to be back in Murakami world.
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, (List Price: $35, Knopf, 9780593801970, November 2024)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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The latest graphic novel from Charles Burns is as visually stunning as ever, in his inimitable style. In this tale, we are presented with a melancholy, teenage angst story that verges on horror by the end. as a group of friends attempt to make a home movie. The autobiographical aspects may not be subtle, as one of the protagonists struggles with the difficulties of turning the images in his head into reality, but as we flit from the tortured artist to the girl he has become fixated on, taking in their mutual friends and his situation at home, Final Cut presents us with a moving, layered tale of creation and destruction.
Final Cut by Charles Burns, (List Price: $34, Pantheon, 9780593701706, September 2024)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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This was my first Olga Tokarczuk, and I’m still not sure what to make of it: a slow, coiling narrative set in the early 1900s follows a group of men thrown together in a sanitarium to cure their tuberculosis. At turns creepy (the gothic of the subtitle refers to mysterious disappearances, and talking walls, which are glossed over for most of the book), and philosophical (the characters spend their time getting high on a mysterious drink and setting the world to rights, mainly at the expense of women), there’s plenty to get your teeth into, and even a twist at the end. Intriguing.
The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk, (List Price: $30, Riverhead Books, 9780593712948, October 2024)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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It would be easy to use boxing similes or metaphors to describe how good this book is (as many a blurb has already done), but to me Headshot is a stunning cubist novel, weaving in and out of the minds of eight young women in a boxing tournament in Reno. In prose as taut as their muscles, we are shown almost simultaneously the fighters’ pasts, presents, and futures, via subtle commentary on social expectations, childhood, and how to hit the person in front of you. Rita Bullwinkel has written a book on boxing as vital as Bryce Courtney or Norman Mailer, because it’s not (just) about the boxing, but about who and what and how to be. Headshot‘s fractured viewpoint reflects and refracts the characters making the fights themselves almost incidental, leaving a short, sharp novel of brutal beauty.
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel, (List Price: $28, Viking, 9780593654101, March 2024)
Reviewed by Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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Little Shrew is a quiet and sweet story of life and friends told in three chapters. Its quietness makes it a great bedtime story or a lovely moment to sit and ponder.
Little Shrew by Akiko Miyakoshi, (List Price: $19.99, Kids Can Press, 9781525313035, June 2024)
Reviewed by Judith Lafitte, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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A lovely story of a grandfather and his grandson who go searching for Faraway Valley; a place that his grandfather visited when he was younger. This is a sensitive story of the connection they share in order to find this most amazing location.
Finding the Way to Faraway Valley by Cecilia Heikkila, (List Price: $17.95, Floris Books, 9781782508540, May 2024)
Reviewed by Judith Lafitte, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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For anyone who wants to experience the mystery and suspense of an escape room, this book is for them. I was on the edge of my seat rooting for the “Deltas” to figure out clues as they frantically searched for a treasure in the funhouse.
The Mystery of Locked Rooms by Lindsay Currie, (List Price: $16.99, Sourcebooks Young Readers, 9781728259536, April 2024)
Reviewed by Judith Lafitte, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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A truer than most story written in verse like it should be. Tony relates how he became the first person in his family to become openly gay and a university graduate. It is a moving story of his trials and tribulations.
How the Boogeyman Became a Poet by Tony Keith, Jr., (List Price: $19.99, Katherine Tegen Books, 9780063296008, February 2024)
Reviewed by Judith Lafitte, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
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