Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me, Stephen Greenblatt’s Dark Renaissance, and Jill Lepore’s We the People all feature among the best reviewed books of the month.
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1. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
(Scribner)
8 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
“Roy’s stunning, dramatic, funny, far-ranging, and complexly illuminating chronicle portraying two strong-willed women fighting for justice and truth is incandescent in its fury, courage, and love.”
–Donna Seaman (Booklist)
2. Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt
(W. W. Norton & Company)
9 Rave • 2 Positive
“The book teems with the erudition and wonder that permeates Greenblatt’s Will in the World and The Swerve … Less a straightforward biography, more an evocation of Marlowe’s milieu, swimming in lush detail, immersing us in England’s social ferment at a hinge moment.”
–Hamilton Cain (The Boston Globe)
3. Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Muriel by Frances Wilson
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
6 Rave • 4 Positive • 1 Mixed
Read an excerpt from Electric Spark here
“A deeply intelligent, captivating and passionate work that reminds us of everything a literary biography can and should be … Wilson has the utmost respect for Spark, but more important for a biographer, she has fervent curiosity about her … Who was the real Muriel Spark? We may never know, and that’s the joy and delight of this book.”
–Jessica Ferri (The Washington Post)
4. We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore
(Liveright)
7 Rave • 1 Positive
“May be [Lepore’s] best yet, a capacious work that lands at the right moment, like a life buoy, as our ship of state takes on water. She’s not here to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic; she’s here to convey—in vigorous, crystal-clear sentences—what we’re losing, and why … Lepore senses peril but also a whiff of democratic revival. Asymmetries lie at the foundation of our government; as this gifted scholar reminds us, it’s our duty to tend to them.”
–Hamilton Cain (The Los Angeles Times)
5. Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner
(Simon & Schuster)
6 Rave • 1 Mixed
“Pollack-Pelzner is at his strongest when he delves into the fascinating nitty gritty of the collaborations that help productions come together … But this is not a hagiography. Pollack-Pelzner is frank about Miranda’s shortcomings … Pollack-Pelzner uses these details to treat Miranda as the creator he is—enthusiastic, vulnerable, ambitious, innovative, fallible—instead of as a mere celebrity. A different biographer might have used this as an occasion for dishy name dropping.”
–Jennifer Vanasco (NPR)