Lucky Dogs

January 1, 2023

In The Wind Knows My Name, the celebrated Allende blends two bitter tales of separation: in 1938 Vienna, Samuel Adler is placed on a Kindertransport train by his mother so that he can escape the Nazis, while in 2019 Arizona, Anita D�az is pulled from her mother at the U.S. border after they have fled El Salvador for safety. In the latest from multi-award-winning Israeli author Appelfeld, Tel Aviv shopkeeper Yaakov Fine decides to travel to Poland, A Green Land, to visit his parents' ancestral village and is delighted by all he sees until he tries to purchase the tombstones from the Jewish cemetery desecrated during the Holocaust. With Be Mine, Pulitzer Prize winner Ford offers his final Frank Bascombe novel, with Frank in his twilight years facing the heart-shredding task of tending a son diagnosed with ALS (100,000-copy first printing). Following the Reese's Book Club Pick His Only Wife, Medie's Nightbloom features Selasi and Akorfa, cousins and best female friends in Ghana until Selasi becomes angry and withdrawn for reasons that take decades to emerge. In I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, her first novel in over a decade, PEN/Malamud and Rea Award winner Moore plumbs love and mortality in a tale interweaving vanished journals, a visit to a dying brother, and the questionable death of a therapy clown and an assassin. A novel-in-stories like Rachman's 500,000-copy best-selling debut, The Imperfectionists, The Impostors sets end-of-rope novelist Dora Frenhofer the task of completing her final book in pandemic lockdown, as she comes to understand her own life by contemplating her missing brother, estranged daughter, lost lover, and one enduring friend (40,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling Schulman's Lucky Dogs, two women (one a U.S. television star seeking anonymity) forge a friendship while waiting on an ice cream line in Paris, but despite a shared history of having experienced male violence, one will betray the other. From Slimani, author of the New York Times best-booked The Perfect Nanny, Watch Us Dance portrays biracial siblings in late 1960s Morocco (their father is Moroccan, their mother French) who deal differently with the era's uncertainties; tough-minded Aicha wants to study medicine in France, while her rebellious younger brother Selim would rather hang out with the hippies converging on his country.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 24, 2023
Schulman (Come with Me) delivers an incisive and thrilling account of women who are hounded by powerful men. Meredith Montgomery, a famous young actor, is keeping a low profile in Paris, subsisting on Xanax and ice cream as she works on the tell-all memoir that will unmask “the Rug,” her nickname for the Weinsteinesque producer who assaulted her, then had her blacklisted after she tried to speak out. One day, while being harassed by a pair of sleazy tourists, she is saved by the switchblade-wielding Nina, who offers Merry the help of her organization, W2, which is dedicated to lifting up the voices of women. Turns out Nina’s story is too good to be true—Nina is actually an ex-Mossad spy on the Rug’s payroll, charged with stealing Merry’s manuscript and discrediting her in the eyes of the public. Schulman then shifts perspective to flashbacks of Nina’s war-torn childhood in Bosnia with her family, and shows how hindrances to Nina’s ambitions to become an actor run parallel to Merry’s own hurdles in her career. Though the diptych structure can sap momentum, Meredith and Nina’s intriguing relationship will keep readers on the hook as it evolves and leads to a surprising outcome. This packs plenty of punch.

May 15, 2023
The lives of two women collide in Schulman's (Come with Me, 2018) brash, audacious latest. Self-described "starlet" Meredith Montgomery, whose life has been on a downward track since she was raped by the film producer she calls "the Rug," has been hiding out in disguise in Paris and attempting to write a memoir, with scant success. Standing in line for ice cream one evening, she is hassled by some young men and then rescued by the mysterious Nina, who pulls out a knife to threaten them. Meredith and Nina, who also goes by several other names, become fast friends, until one betrays the other. Part noir thriller, part antic comedy, and part nuanced feminist credo, the novel takes big and occasionally bewildering leaps through space and time, moving from historic wartime Sarajevo to peacetime Jerusalem and, in the present, from Venice Beach to a surreal retirement community in Florida. Readers willing to go along for this wild ride will find their assumptions challenged and their emotions ricocheting from horror to delight.

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Starred review from April 15, 2023
Two women--between them, survivors of the Bosnian genocide, a Hollywood rape, the American media, and a career with the Mossad--face off. You might think that a book inspired by the role of Rose McGowan in the fall of Harvey Weinstein would have a fairly predictable story arc, but this barn burner of a novel handily incinerates that assumption. With an ambitious story structure recalling the work of Anthony Marra, Schulman has engineered a series of breathtaking aha moments, set to go off like timed explosives located in Paris, Sarajevo, Tel Aviv, Los Angeles, and a retirement community in Florida. It begins on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where a violet-eyed 24-year-old fugitive named Meredith Montgomery has come to hide from a media shitstorm and career implosion she incited by complaining on Twitter about her rape by a Hollywood mega-creep she calls the Rug--to hide from it, but also to write a memoir about it, nondisclosure agreement be damned. Schulman's creation of Meredith is perfect. For example, describing her flight to Europe: "For exercise and to prevent blood clots, occasionally I'd prop up on an elbow to flag down a flight attendant so I could order additional mini-bottles of whiskey--waving an arm in the air burns more calories than not waving an arm in the air--and when I actually stood, I swayed (that does, too). Whether the oscillation was from an inborn sense of rhythm, turbulence, or a history of drug abuse, it's hard to tell--time is running out now, and I have more existential problems than the fact that maybe I shouldn't have done so much ayahuasca." When a lawyer tells her she can't bring charges against the Rug--"Way too late for that. His word against yours, you lose. Forget about it"--her first thought is: a haiku! Before we meet her counterpart, a woman of many names and careers (including a humorously evoked stint with Birthright), the second section opens with an extended guessing game, a bravura tactic introducing a city and a character whose relevance is not immediately clear. It's like Meredith, the novice memoirist, says: "That's what I like about book writing, you can play around with time, find its most meaningful iteration." Schulman has certainly done that here, in her finest work to date. In a word: Wow.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from June 2, 2023

Meredith Montgomery is a young actress in Hollywood, set up by a female colleague to have a "date" with a famous film producer who savagely rapes her. Meredith is not his first victim, and she decides to write the story of her encounters with "The Rug," her nickname for the producer. Through social media, word gets out about her proposed tell-all book. Traveling to Paris to escape, she meets Nina and Jean Pierre, with whom she strikes up a superficial friendship. Eventually, she discovers that they are not who they seem to be, and her entire project is jeopardized. Meanwhile, readers discover Nina's intriguing backstory, beginning with her childhood in war-torn Sarajevo and eventual employment with the Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel. VERDICT With vivid and realistic characterizations, Schulman (This Beautiful Life) has written a work of fiction that should be read and discussed widely. Part mystery, part thriller, and at its heart an examination of why and how women can treat each other so callously and despicably, it's tough to set down. Ironically, it would make a tremendous movie.--Lisa Rohrbaugh

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.