"It is Levy's light touch in tense situations—when a white friend's father calls a black girl 'darkie' and 'coon' in Faith's presence, when she interacts with villagers in the English countryside—that allows us to experience rather than merely watch Faith's growing disillusionment . . . At times, you might even be tempted to read bits and pieces aloud, just to hear the lyrical quality of the Jamaican-accented English. Though Levy writes specifically about black Jamaican Britons and their struggles to be acknowledged as full members of the larger society, her novel illuminates the general situation facing all children of postcolonial immigrants across the West, from the banlieue of France to the Islamic neighborhoods of New York to the Hispanic ghettos of Los Angeles."—Uzodinma Iweala, The New York Times Book Review

"Takes the traditional pattern of a picaresque novel—an episodic recounting of roguish schemes gone awry—and decorates it with a richly textured overlay of embroidery, applique, collage and found art . . . Mda writes about hardscrabble lives without dwelling on the hardscrabble . . . Mda's elegant patchwork of clever storytelling, wry characterization and good-natured humor is more than enough."—John R. Alden, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

"Ms. McDermott gives us an affecting meditation on the consolations and discontents of family life—the centripetal and centrifugal forces that bind husbands and wives, parents and children together and fling them ineluctably apart . . . [She] has returned to the territory she knows best: the family (specifically, the Irish middle-class family, around the 1960's). And her easy authority with this material, combined with her clear-eyed sympathy for her characters, results in a moving, old-fashioned story about longing and loss and sorrow."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"The main pleasure of reading [Now You See It . . . ] resides in its steadily accruing portrait of a sensibility—how it feels to be from Cokesville, how being from Cokesville shapes thought and perception. Local mentality can be a greased pig of a literary objective, typically slathered as it is with layers of sentiment and convention, but Monk's relatively minimalist approach gets a grip on her subject with a certain businesslike lack of fuss that is itself exemplary of the regional style. Monk's confident, knowing voice makes a strong debut in Now You See It . . . establishing Cokesville and its people in our imaginary geography."—Chicago Tribune

"Yamanaka's tortured characters take us through poles of illness and health, damnation and redemption, curses and prayers, and life and death in a dazzling display of language that reveals the author's roots as a poet . . . Yamanaka's dogged attention to details—particularly shards of beauty in the midst of terrible events—makes this novel wondrous and life-affirming even as it guides readers through the difficult territories of sickness, loss and death . . . Anah suffers many devastating words and events in the course of this novel. But in Behold the Many, one of our nation's most dynamic literary stylists forces us to stare wide-eyed into the pain until we can see the healing beauty hidden in its folds."—Tananarive Due, The Washington Post Book World

"Dancing to 'Almendra,' [Mayra Montero's] ninth novel, [is] lovingly translated by Edith Grossman: a flawless little book with a deceptively light touch . . . I devoured [the book] with absolute delight, and I'm looking forward to reading it again, and to reading anything Montero might come up with next. It's tempting to think in categories . . . but a good novel denies them, nimbly and without visible effort. This novel is great fun to read, and a paradoxical thing to contemplate. When I was done, I wasn't sure if it was an especially well-written genre story, or a literary book based upon an especially raffish plot. Perhaps there's no difference between the two, after all."—Jim Lewis, The New York Times Book Review