Publishers Weekly
09/14/2020
Fans of Pulitzer winner Smiley (A Thousand Acres) won’t be surprised to find a horse in her fanciful latest; this time out it’s a talking racehorse named Perestroika. Paras, as the horse is known, wanders out of her stable and finds herself in Paris’s Place du Trocadéro, where she meets Frida, a shorthaired German pointer who understands money and uses it to buy food for Paras and herself. There are no yellow vest protestors in Smiley’s idyllic Paris, where shopkeepers know all their customers and happily make change for well-behaved Frida. Paras was happy at the track, but she’s too curious to stay there (as Smiley indicates perhaps too often), and in her fable-like travels around Paris she encounters a wise raven who dispenses advice, an eight-year-old orphan who can hide a horse, and plenty of happy endings—not just for the animals, but for the people they encounter, especially if they, like Paras, are open to seeing the wonders of the world. As relationships deepen between animals and humans in their exploration of where to call home, Smiley steers them toward a satisfying feel-good ending. Relentlessly upbeat—there are no villains here, and even dogs and rats cooperate—this is the perfect book for those for whom the real world, wracked with pandemic and politics, has become something to avoid. (Dec.)
Library Journal
07/01/2020
A nurse at Evelina London Children's Hospital, Glass follows up Dylan Thomas Prize long-listee Peach with Rest and Be Thankful, a timely if sometimes eerie tale of a pediatric nurse suffering burnout as her life shifts uncertainly and a mysterious figure dances at the edge of her vision (30,000-copy first printing). Surfacing every six or seven years with titles that earn superlatives, the Alex Award-winning Maltman (Night Birds) here offers The Land, a literary-noir crossover featuring dropout/programmer/caretaker Lucien Swenson, recovering from a car accident in the last months of the 20th century. His search for a former lover leads him to a white supremacist church and strange encounters with wolves, angry ravens, and a shadowy woman. In Tell Me How To Be, Patel's follow-up to the NPR best-booked If You See Me, Don't Say Hi, Los Angeles-based songwriter Akash leaves Los Angeles (and the boyfriend he keeps secret from his family) and returns home to Illinois when his widowed mother sells the family home. He plans to pack his things, mourn his father, and mend family ties, but he didn't anticipate meeting his first romantic interest and falling in love again. (35,000-copy first printing). The heroine of Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley's Perestroika in Paris is a high-spirited filly who wanders from her stall at the racetrack and makes her way to the heart of glorious Paris, befriending a venturesome German Shepherd, a gaggle of ornery birds, and a boy named Etienne who lives in the ivy-clad seclusion of his great-grandmother's home. But how long can a horse named Paras (short for Perestroika) remain at liberty in the big city? By Spanish author Vilas, the No. 1 internationally best-selling autobiographical novel Ordesa features a schoolteacher who has returned to his hometown in the Pyrenees to reassess his life. Retired, divorced, and mourning his deceased parents, he looks honestly at loss and the meaning of life now defined mostly by memory.
