Featuring 301 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children'sand YA books KIRKUSVOL. LXXXVIII, NO. 11 | 1 JUNE 2020 REVIEWS Bakari Sellers The activist and CNN commentator reflects on his journey in My Vanishing Country. p. 58 Also in the issue: Brit Bennett, Connie Schultz, Samira Ahmed, and more from the editor’s desk: Delayed Gratification Chairman BY TOM BEER HERBERT SIMON President & Publisher MARC WINKELMAN John Paraskevas # Is there a book you’ve been meaning to read for ages? It’s time to finally check Chief Executive Officer it off your list. MEG LABORDE KUEHN [email protected] That was the case for me with The Beginning of Spring, the 1988 novel by Editor-in-Chief Penelope Fitzgerald, which has intrigued me for more than a decade now. I’ve TOM BEER [email protected] read and loved other Fitzgerald novels— (1979), (1995)— Offshore The Blue Flower Vice President of Marketing and the chapter about in Hermione Lee’s superb biogra- SARAH KALINA The Beginning of Spring [email protected] phy of Fitzgerald made it sound awfully enticing: the story of an English family Managing/Nonfiction Editor in Moscow in 1913 trying to carry on after the mother unexpectedly decamps ERIC LIEBETRAU [email protected] back to England. Lee details how Fitzgerald’s careful research—on Russian Fiction Editor LAURIE MUCHNICK “merchants, railway stations, ministries, churches, birch trees, dachas, and [email protected] Tom Beer mushrooms”—is miraculously transmuted into a complete fictional world. Plus, Young Readers’ Editor VICKY SMITH there was Fitzgerald’s characteristic wry humor. How could I resist? [email protected] Apparently, I could. The Beginning of Spring was never finished. Or started. Young Readers’ Editor LAURA SIMEON Then, after a couple of weeks of sheltering in place, I saw Adam Morgan, editor-in-chief of the [email protected] Southern Review of Books, proselytizing for the book on Twitter. (“I used to be a book critic, but now Editor at Large MEGAN LABRISE all I do is reply ‘Penelope Fitzgerald’s THE BEGINNING OF SPRING’ to literary question threads,” [email protected] he wrote.) I confessed that I hadn’t read it and, after a friendly admonishment from Adam, agreed to Vice President of Kirkus Indie KAREN SCHECHNER finally remedy that. [email protected] First, I had to obtain a copy—a real paperback, thank you very much— Senior Indie Editor DAVID RAPP from a local indie: Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. When my package [email protected] arrived in the mail, it felt like Christmas morning. I spent the next few days Indie Editor MYRA FORSBERG transfixed by the novel—its comedy, its wistfulness, its strangeness—and [email protected] finished with an exhalation, as though I’d been holding my breath while Associate Manager of Indie KATERINA PAPPAS reading it. Why had I procrastinated so long? [email protected] Editorial Assistant Others are clearly feeling the same now-or-never resolve. In March, JOHANNA ZWIRNER author Yiyun Li and publisher A Public Space launched #TolstoyTogether, [email protected] Mysteries Editor a virtual book club where members would read 12 to 15 pages of War and THOMAS LEITCH Peace every day for three months and share their observations with the Contributing Editor hashtag on Twitter. This daunting Russian classic was clearly a bucket-list GREGORY McNAMEE Copy Editor title for many readers; the club has remained popular and the online discus- BETSY JUDKINS sion lively. Designer I took to Twitter myself to ask, “During this shelter-in-place period, have you finally gotten around ALEX HEAD Director of Kirkus Editorial to reading a book you’ve always meant to read? Which one?” The response was overwhelming, and the LAUREN BAILEY [email protected] answers revealing and entertaining: Moby-Dick (“I may just be done with it when this is all over”), The Production Editor Power Broker by Robert A. Caro (“my white whale”), The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer (“after HEATHER RODINO [email protected] having owned a copy for 23 years”), The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer (“I think I’m Website and Software Developer going to enjoy the fall quite a bit more than the rise”). Some titles showed up repeatedly: Middlemarch, PERCY PEREZ [email protected] The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Hunger Games and Harry Potter books. Advertising Director A number of authors chimed in, too, with their own literary white whales: Thomas Beller (Bay MONIQUE STENSRUD [email protected] of Souls by Robert Stone), Cherise Wolas (Proust’s In Search of Lost Time), Ryan Chapman (A Heart So Advertising Associate White by Javier Marías), Peter Swanson (The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson), Sarah Weinman TATIANA ARNOLD [email protected] (George Eliot’s ). Daniel Deronda Graphic Designer Now I’m scanning my shelves for other books I’ve foolishly put off reading and ordered two more LIANA WALKER [email protected] Fitzgeralds, (1986) and (1992); I want to hold on to that feeling of a reading Innocence The Gate of Angels Controller experience that is every bit as rewarding as I’d hoped it would be. There’s something about the moment MICHELLE GONZALES [email protected] we’re living in—the long hours at home, the awareness of mortality—that leaves so many of us thinking: for customer service What am I waiting for? or subscription questions, please call 1-800-316-9361 Print indexes: www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/print-indexes Submission Guidelines: www.kirkusreviews.com/about/submission-guidlines Kirkus Blog: www.kirkusreviews.com/blog Subscriptions: www.kirkusreviews.com/subscription Advertising Opportunities: www.kirkusreviews.com/about/advertising- Newsletters: www.kirkusreviews.com/subscription/newsletter/add Cover photo by opportunities John R. Walder 2 | 1 june 2020 | from the editor’s desk | kirkus.com | you can now purchase books online at kirkus.com contents fiction INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ...........................................................4 The Kirkus Star is awarded REVIEWS ...............................................................................................4 to books of remarkable EDITOR’S NOTE.....................................................................................6 merit, as determined by the INTERVIEW: CONNIE SCHULTZ ....................................................... 14 INTERVIEW: BRIT BENNETT ............................................................ 22 impartial editors of Kirkus. MYSTERY ............................................................................................. 38 SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY .........................................................48 ROMANCE ........................................................................................... 50 nonfiction adult young INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ..........................................................51 REVIEWS ..............................................................................................51 EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................... 52 ON THE COVER: BAKARI SELLERS ..................................................58 INTERVIEW: MOLLY MCCULLY BROWN .........................................64 children’s INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS .........................................................99 REVIEWS .............................................................................................99 EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................. 100 INTERVIEW: LINDSAY LESLIE & ELLEN ROONEY .......................106 BACK-TO-SCHOOL PICTURE BOOKS .............................................134 young adult INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ....................................................... 145 REVIEWS ........................................................................................... 145 EDITOR’S NOTE.................................................................................146 Most readers who are active on social media INTERVIEW: SAMIRA AHMED ........................................................150 are aware of Duchess Goldblatt, the acerbic indie yet warmhearted doyenne of Twitter. Now her INDEX TO STARRED REVIEWS ........................................................159 admirers can get to know her still-anonymous REVIEWS ............................................................................................159 creator. Read the review on p. 51. EDITOR’S NOTE................................................................................. 160 SEEN & HEARD ................................................................................. 182 Don’t wait on the mail for reviews! You can read pre-publication reviews as they are released on kirkus.com—even before they are published in the magazine. APPRECIATIONS: ANTHONY BOURDAIN’S You can also access the current issue and back issues of Kirkus Reviews on our KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL ................................................................183 website by logging in as a subscriber. If you do not have a username or password, please contact customer care to set up your account by calling 1.800.316.9361 or emailing [email protected]. | kirkus.com | contents | 1 june 2020 | 3 fiction These titles earned the Kirkus Star: TENDER IS THE FLESH Bazterrica, Agustina Trans. by Moses, Sarah THE NEW WILDERNESS by Diane Cook ..........................................11 Scribner (224 pp.) $16.00 paper | Aug. 4, 2020 THE PULL OF THE STARS by Emma Donoghue ................................12