Featuring 372 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children'sand YA Books KIRKUSVOL. LXXXVII, NO. 4 | 15 FEBRUARY 2019 REVIEWS Madhuri Vijay’s vivid debut novel, The Far Field, moves from Bangalore to a Himalayan village as Shalini, haunted by memories of her restless mother, recounts her painful accumulation of wisdom. Vijay’s goal was to write an unsafe book— something that takes “readers to places that are not the usual places,” she tells us. p. 14 from the editor’s desk: Chairman Excellent February Books HERBERT SIMON President & Publisher BY CLAIBORNE SMITH MARC WINKELMAN # Chief Executive Officer MEG LABORDE KUEHN
[email protected] Photo courtesy Michael Thad Carter courtesy Photo Editor-in-Chief Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest CLAIBORNE SMITH Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham (Feb. 5): “In this vivid and
[email protected] Vice President of Marketing exhaustive account, Higginbotham…masterfully re-creates the emo- SARAH KALINA
[email protected] tions, intrigue, and denials and disbelief of Communist Party officials, Managing/Nonfiction Editor ERIC LIEBETRAU workers, engineers, and others at every stage. He takes readers directly
[email protected] Fiction Editor to the scene: the radioactive blaze, the delayed evacuation of residents LAURIE MUCHNICK from the apartment buildings in ‘workers’ paradise’ Pripyat, the treat-
[email protected] Children’s Editor ment of the injured, and the subsequent investigation and ‘show trial’ VICKY SMITH
[email protected] of scapegoats in a tragedy caused by both reactor failings and operator Young Adult Editor Claiborne Smith LAURA SIMEON errors….Written with authority, this superb book reads like a classic
[email protected] Staff Writer disaster story and reveals a Soviet empire on the brink.” MEGAN LABRISE
[email protected] Leading Men by Christopher Castellani (Feb.