Featuring 328 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children'sand YA books KIRKUSVOL. LXXXVIII, NO. 23 | 1 DECEMBER 2020 REVIEWS THE BEST BOOKS OF 2020 SPECIAL ISSUE BONUS: Kirkus & Rolling Stone’s Top Music Books of 2020 The 100 Best Nonfiction and 100 Best YA Books of the Year + Our Regular December 1 Issue from the editor’s desk: Books That Deserved More Buzz Chairman HERBERT SIMON President & Publisher BY TOM BEER MARC WINKELMAN # Chief Executive Officer MEG LABORDE KUEHN [email protected] John Paraskevas Editor-in-Chief Every December, I look back on the year past and give a shoutout to those TOM BEER books that deserved more buzz—more reviews, more word-of-mouth [email protected] Vice President of Marketing promotion, more book-club love, more Twitter excitement. It’s a subjec- SARAH KALINA tive assessment—how exactly do you measure buzz? And how much is not [email protected] Managing/Nonfiction Editor enough?—but I relish the exercise because it lets me revisit some titles ERIC LIEBETRAU that merit a second look. [email protected] Fiction Editor Of course, in 2020 every book deserved more buzz. Between the pan- LAURIE MUCHNICK demic and the presidential election, it was hard for many titles, deprived [email protected] Young Readers’ Editor of their traditional publicity campaigns, to get the attention they needed. VICKY SMITH A few lucky titles came out early in the year, disappeared when coronavi- [email protected] Tom Beer Young Readers’ Editor rus turned our world upside down, and then managed to rebound; Douglas LAURA SIMEON [email protected] Stuart’s Shuggie Bain (Grove, Feb. 11), for instance, caught a second wind after being shortlisted Editor at Large for the Kirkus Prize, the National Book Award, and the Booker Prize in the fall, making it “this MEGAN LABRISE [email protected] year’s breakout debut,” according to the New York Times. Many more books earned respectful Vice President of Kirkus Indie reviews then sank without a trace. So herewith, a short list of books that have earned another KAREN SCHECHNER [email protected] moment in the spotlight: Senior Indie Editor With (Scribner, Feb. 18), Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga ( DAVID RAPP Amnesty The [email protected] , ) may have written his best novel yet—the shrewd White Tiger Selec tion Day Indie Editor portrait of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant keeping his head down MYRA FORSBERG [email protected] and making ends meet as a housecleaner in Sydney, Australia, when he stum- Associate Manager of Indie bles upon the murder of one of his clients. It’s part social novel, part thriller, KATERINA PAPPAS [email protected] and entirely captivating. Editorial Assistant JOHANNA ZWIRNER Daniel Mason, known for superb historical novels [email protected] such as The Winter Sol dier, proved he is just as good work- Mysteries Editor ing with a smaller canvas. The nine stories in A Registry of THOMAS LEITCH Contributing Editor My Passage Upon the Earth (Little, Brown, May 5) transport GREGORY McNAMEE readers to an 1824 English boxing match, a remote tele- Copy Editor graph station in the Amazon rainforest, and a hot air balloon floating above BETSY JUDKINS Designer 18th-century France, among other memorable locales. For sheer imaginative- ALEX HEAD ness—and formal playfulness—this collection is a winner. Kirkus Editorial Production Editor ROBIN O’DELL Another of the year’s great story collections—If I Had Two Wings (Nor- [email protected] ton, Aug. 4)—was author Randall Kenan’s long-awaited return to the fictional Kirkus Editorial Associate Production Editor town of Tims Creek, North Carolina, last visited in his 1992 collection, Let STEPHANIE SUMMERHAYS . Sadly, Kenan died just a few weeks after the collection was published— [email protected] the Dead Bury Their Dead Website and Software Developer making this unpredictable portrait of small-town Southern life especially precious. PERCY PEREZ [email protected] Many thousands of pages have been written about Emily Dickinson, but few capture the Advertising Director elusive Belle of Amherst as succinctly and vividly as Martha Ackmann’s MONIQUE STENSRUD These Fevered Days: Ten [email protected] (Norton, Feb. 25), a slim volume structured Piv otal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson Advertising Associate around key turning points in the poet’s life. Ackmann teaches a seminar on Dickinson at Mount TATIANA ARNOLD [email protected] Holyoke College, and her firsthand knowledge of the local area and insightful readings of poems Graphic Designer and letters make this portrait intimate and powerful. In a year that saw great hulking biogra- KYLA NOVAK [email protected] phies of Andy Warhol and Sylvia Plath (both excellent), These Fevered Days is a reminder that less Controller MICHELLE GONZALES is sometimes more. [email protected] We have 30 more days of reading before 2020 is (finally, blessedly) behind us. Maybe your for customer service or subscription questions, favorite, unheralded read of the year is still to come. please call 1-800-316-9361 for more reviews and features, Cover design by visit us online at kirkus.com. Kyla Novak 2 | 1 december 2020 | from the editor’s desk | kirkus.com | you can now purchase books online at kirkus.com contents special issue: best books of 2020 1 december 2020 issue COVERAGE OF THE 2020 KIRKUS PRIZE CEREMONY ...............4 fiction KIRKUS & ROLLING STONE’S BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF 2020 ....6 INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS .....................................................99 REVIEWS ..........................................................................................99 best nonfiction books of 2020 EDITOR’S NOTE ............................................................................. 100 REVIEWS .......................................................................................... 10 INTERVIEW: MICHELLE GALLEN ................................................110 EDITOR’S NOTE ............................................................................... 12 MYSTERY........................................................................................ 134 INTERVIEW: AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL .................................. 16 ROMANCE .....................................................................................142 BEST MEMOIRS ...............................................................................20 nonfiction BEST BOOKS ABOUT WILDLIFE ...................................................24 INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ...................................................144 BEST PROGRESSIVE VISIONS FOR AMERICA ...........................28 REVIEWS ........................................................................................144 children’s best ya books of 2020 INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ...................................................184 REVIEWS .......................................................................................... 59 REVIEWS ........................................................................................184 EDITOR’S NOTE ...............................................................................60 EDITOR’S NOTE ............................................................................. 186 INTERVIEW: LIZ HYDER ................................................................64 INTERVIEW: RAYMOND ANTROBUS & POLLY DUNBAR ........ 192 BEST BOOKS FOR UNDERSTANDING THE U.S. TODAY ........... 72 BLACK HISTORY MONTH PICTURE BOOKS .............................. 225 BEST BOOKS ON MENTAL HEALTH ............................................. 76 young adult BEST ROMANCE NOVELS..............................................................80 INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ...................................................229 REVIEWS ........................................................................................229 indie INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ...................................................241 REVIEWS ........................................................................................241 | kirkus.com | contents | 1 december 2020 | 3 the 2020 kirkus prizes By Michael Schaub Raven Leilani, Mychal Denzel Smith, Derrick for the award called their latest book “a bold, loving Barnes, and Gordon C. James were named the winners proclamation that stirs the heart with the power of its of the seventh annual Kirkus Prizes at an online cer- message and masterful delivery.” emony on Nov. 5. James, accompanied by his family, said, “I just want The awards in fiction, nonfiction, and young read- this book to be out there in the world so that our boys, ers’ literature are given annually by Kirkus Reviews, all the people who love them, and the people who and each award comes with a $50,000 cash prize, don’t even know them can know that they are impor- making the Kirkus Prize among the most lucrative in tant and worthy and valued.” the world. Barnes, with his wife by his side, said, “You want to The ceremony was livestreamed on YouTube and create something that makes people feel good about hosted by Kirkus CEO Meg LaBorde Kuehn from themselves. You want to create something that allows the Austin Central Library in Austin, Texas, where the folks to see the humanity in others, and I think Gor- event is usually held in person. Twenty of the finalists don and I did that with this book.” joined the event live on Zoom. Barnes added, “I think we’re going to keep making books together, brother, if you don’t mind.” Meg LaBorde Kuehn Derrick Barnes and his wife Author Derrick Barnes and illustrator Gordon C. James