Featuring 364 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfictionand Children's & Teen KIRKUSVOL. LXXXIII, NO. 3 | 1 FEBruARY 2015 REVIEWS FICTION NONFICTION The American The Intimate Bond People by Brian Fagan by Larry Kramer The author brings The writer and activist's consummate skill to this long-awaited fictional frequently horrifying study history of the AIDS era of humanity's interaction p. 22 with animals. p. 60 INDIE CHILDREN'S & TEEN Brian Kiley goes from Gone Crazy in Alabama late night to the by Rita Williams-Garcia printed page. Delphine and her sisters make a p. 146 welcome return to spend an eye-opening summer in Alabama with Big Ma. p. 135 on the cover David Duchovny may play cool characters on screen, but his debut novel, Holy Cow, reveals that he can also write like a sassy teenage girl (in the voice of a cow, no less). p. 14 from the editor’s desk: Chairman What to Watch for in February HERBERT SIMON BY ClaiBorne Smith # President & Publisher MARC WINKELMAN Chief Operating Officer MEG LABORDE KUEHN Photo courtesy Michael Thad Carter courtesy Photo Editors love to make neat lists of 10s: the 10 best books of the year, the 10 great- [email protected] est movies of all time. There are more than 10 notable books being published Editor in Chief CLAIBORNE SMITH this month (and more than the 16 I mention below), but these are the titles that [email protected] stand out to me. Included are the final lines of our reviews of these books. Managing/Nonfiction Editor ERIC LIEBETRAU Asali Solomon (Disgruntled, fiction, Feb. 3): “Blackness, feminism and the [email protected] loss of virginity have never been analyzed by a more astute and witty main Fiction Editor character.” Laurie MUCHNICK [email protected] Kenny Porpora (The Autumn Balloon, nonfiction, Feb. 3): “As one teacher Children’s & Teen Editor exulted after his acceptance to the Columbia Journalism School, ‘[p]eople VICKY SMITH with stories like yours don’t end up in the Ivy League.’ And yet Porpora did, [email protected] Claiborne Smith and now his stories have become the material for his piercing first book.” Mysteries Editor M.O. Walsh (My Sunshine Away, fiction, Feb. 10): “Celebrate, fiction lovers: THOMAS LEITCH The gods of Southern gothic storytelling have inducted a junior member.” Contributing Editor GREGORY McNAMEE Rachel Holmes (Eleanor Marx: A Life, nonfiction, Feb. 24): “A full-fleshed, thrilling portrait, troubling and full of family secrets.” Senior Indie Editor KAREN SCHECHNER Anne Tyler (A Spool of Blue Thread, fiction, Feb. 10): “The texture of everyday experience transmuted [email protected] into art.” Indie Editor Charles Baxter (There’s Something I Want You to Do: Stories, fiction, Feb. 3): “Nearly as organic as a novel, RYAN LEAHEY this is more intriguing, more fun in disclosing its connective tissues through tales that stand well on [email protected] their own.” Indie Editor Nick Hornby ( , fiction, Feb. 3): “Years later, Sophie is getting ready to star in a play that’s David RApp Funny Girl [email protected] intended to revive her career. ‘The play is much better than I thought it was going to be,’ she thinks. Assistant Indie Editor ‘It’s funny, and sad—like life.’ And like this novel.” MATT DOMINO Carole Boston Weatherford (Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America, [email protected] illustrated by Jamey Christoph, picture book, Feb. 1): “Parks’ photography gave a powerful and mem- Assistant Editor orable face to racism in America; this book gives him to young readers.” CHELSEA LANGFORD [email protected] Reif Larsen (I Am Radar, fiction, Feb. 24): “Imaginative, original, nicely surreal—and hyperpigmen- Copy Editor tarily so.” BETSY JUDKINS Pam Muñoz Ryan (Echo, middle grade, Feb. 24): “A grand narrative that examines the power of music Director of Kirkus Editorial to inspire beauty in a world overrun with fear and intolerance, it’s worth every moment of readers’ CARISSA BLUESTONE time.” [email protected] James McGrath Morris (Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, First Lady of the Black Press, nonfiction, Feb. Associate Production Editor 17): “A deeply researched, skillfully written biography about a previously underappreciated individual.” SARAH RODRIGUEz Pratt [email protected] Richard Price (writing as Harry Brandt) (The Whites, fiction, Feb. 17): “In the wake of rage and sor- Director of Technology row, ordinary people respond by going crazy and screwing up. In this far-from-ordinary novel, Price/ ERIK SMARTT Brandt explores the hows and whys. Fasten your seat belt.” [email protected] Arthur Bradford (Turtleface and Beyond: Stories, fiction, Feb. 3): “A jazzy, anarchic collection.” Director of Marketing Philip Connors (All the Wrong Places: A Life Lost and Found, nonfiction, Feb. 16): “Unlike other, neater SARAH KALINA narratives of being lost and found, Connors’ story—told with harrowing insight and fierce prose—is [email protected] messy and incomplete and makes no apologies for being anything but.” Marketing Associate ARDEN PiacenzA Katherine Heiny (Single, Carefree, Mellow: Stories, fiction, Feb. 2): “These young women are sympa- [email protected] thetic and slyly seductive, sometimes selfish and maddeningly un–self-aware, but they are beguilingly Advertising/Client Promotions human, and readers will yield to their charms.” ANNA COOpER [email protected] Claire North (Touch, fiction, Feb. 24): “The high stakes and breakneck pace of the plot will draw read- ers in, and the meditations on what it means to be human and to be loved will linger long after the Designer ALEX HEAD last shot is fired.” # for customer service or subscription questions, please call 1-800-316-9361 # for more reviews and features, Cover photo by visit us online at kirkus.com. Dan Terry you can now purchase books online at kirkus.com contents fiction INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ...........................................................5 The Kirkus Star is awarded REVIEWS ...............................................................................................5 to books of remarkable EDITOR’S NOTE.................................................................................... 6 merit, as determined by the ON THE COVER: DAVID DUCHOVNY ..............................................14 impartial editors of Kirkus. AMANDA EYRE WARD & THE VOICES SHE LISTENS TO ............. 24 MYSTERY .............................................................................................37 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY ........................................................48 ROMANCE ...........................................................................................50 nonfiction INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS .........................................................51 REVIEWS .............................................................................................51 EDITOR’S NOTE...................................................................................52 JAN JARBOE RUSSELL UNCOVERS A NATIONAL SCANDAL ..... 66 children’s & teen INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ........................................................ 87 REVIEWS ............................................................................................ 87 EDITOR’S NOTE..................................................................................88 FOUR CENTURIES, ONE DESSERT, ONE PICTURE BOOK .........104 EASTER & PASSOVER PICTURE BOOKS ....................................... 136 SHELF SPACE .....................................................................................138 indie INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ........................................................139 REVIEWS ............................................................................................139 EDITOR’S NOTE.................................................................................140 Mary Costello has written a darkly BRIAN KILEY GOES FROM LATE NIGHT TO PRINTED PAGE .....146 beautiful first novel. Read the review on p. 10. APPRECIATIONS: MANCHILD IN THE PROMISED LAND At 50 .................................................................................................. 159 | kirkus.com | contents | 1 february 2015 | 3 sign up for the free kirkus reviews newsletter and get weekly book recommendations, author interviews, lists and more. kirkusreviews.com/ newsletter on the web www.kirkus.com Lou Berney’s The Long and Faraway Gone is a crime novel that explores the myster- ies of memory and the impact of violence on survivors—in this case, dating back to Check out these highlights from Kirkus’ online coverage at 1986 in Oklahoma City. That summer, six www.kirkus.com movie-theater employees were killed in an 9 armed robbery, while one inexplicably sur- vived. Then, a teenage girl vanished from Photo courtesy Ron Nichols Ron courtesy Photo In Asali Solomon’s coming-of-age novel the annual state fair. Neither crime was Disgruntled, Kenya Curtis is only 8 years ever solved. Twenty-five years later, the old, but she already knows that she’s reverberations of those unsolved cases somehow different. It’s not because she’s continue to impact the survivors’ lives. black—most of the other students in the One is Wyatt, a private investigator in Vegas, whose latest inquiry fourth-grade class at her West Philadel- takes him back to a past he’s tried to escape—and drags him deeper phia elementary school are too. Maybe it’s into the mystery of the movie-house robbery that left six of his because she celebrates Kwanzaa or friends dead. Like Wyatt, Julianna struggles with the past—with