Reviews – Page 3 – Ring Reads

In ‘Universes,’ Characterization is Constant Throughout Many Worlds

Though the universes are a little uneven in their execution, the book’s greatest weakness is giving us ten versions of Raffi’s life and finding our main character happy in none of them. Perhaps this is intentional commentary from North on how no singular choice in our lives can take us from sad to happy, or that our essence doesn’t change whether we live in a post-apocalyptic world or one in which our partner is pregnant with an octopus.

‘Sounds’ a Captivating Journey of Music and Devotion

The cover of Between Two Sounds, featuring a simply drawn adult Arvo leaping from a precipice, implying that he is jumping to the next sound. Arvo and the precipice are in black, while the background is in simple strokes of tan and brown. The title is in the upper left-hand corner, with the author in the lower-left corner.

This is not a story of the Soviet Union versus Arvo Pärt, but about an authoritarian regime demanding performative patriotism against those who have far more interesting things to think about.

‘Call Me Emma’ a Journey of Self-Discovery Amid Tougher Teenage Years

Call Me Emma is ultimately a story about identity, both who we choose to be and who the world will supposedly accept. It’s one of those apparently universal parts of growing up, but here, it’s more obvious than most.

‘Bat Eater’ Brings New Fears to Pandemic Lockdown

A realistic-looking bat with flowers on its back and its wings outstretched flies diagonally across a black backdrop. The title, Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, is in large white font in front of the image. Smaller and at the bottom in green text is the author, Kylie Lee Baker.

Bat Eater is a marvelous friendship bracelet of plot threads that sometimes take turns and sometimes work in tandem but are always engrossing, and all feel like facets of a terrifying and claustrophobic world.

‘Perspective(s)’ Gives Gossip Without the Guilt

A shadowy detail from a Renaissance-looking painting of a young woman's unsmiling face.

The epistolary nature of Perspective(s), along with the framing of the letters as centuries-old discoveries, blunt the unfolding of the unhappier plot elements, letting us sit back and relish the political intrigue.

‘Birth Canal’ a Kaleidoscopic View of Obsession, Trauma

The cover of Birth Canal, which features an untidy rectangular border of vines and flowers entangled around the title and author at the bottom of the cover on a background of orange in the center and purple at the edges.

The most fascinating thing with Birth Canal as a whole is its dizzying range of vibes that can be pulled out of a narrow cast of characters in a handful of places and only a couple of eras in history.

‘Heartwood’ Explores Questions Behind Headline

This is not a story of tricky plot devices and big reveals. Instead, it’s a portrait of a search for a missing person, and how it takes a community of professionals and amateurs, friends and strangers, to locate them.

‘Antidote’ Offers Dreamlike Path to Cure for Hard Times

A rainbow gradient cascades over a black-and-white photograph of an old farmhouse with a weather vane and farming equipment. The image is fuzzy, as though in the middle of a dust storm. The title and author (The Antidote, Karen Russell) are superimposed upon it.

As The Antidote reminds us, there’s no understanding a place, or its people, if there is no reconciliation with the most difficult parts of that person or place.

‘Grief’ a Multifaceted Examination of Sorrow

Upon a light orange background, the title and author are in underlined purple all-caps text that looks as though it has crumbled all to one corner.

Crosley’s writing brings the events, and her emotions, to life, and helps make her every action and reaction reasonable, even, and especially, when she knows they’re not. It is that prose-level finesse, not the subject matter, that helps keep this slim volume feeling relevant even when it occasionally strays into self-indulgence.

The Apocalypse Grows Strangely in ‘The Garden’

Flowers and greenery splay across a bubbled surface of glass or thin ice as a background to the title and author of Nick Newman's novel The Garden.

The Garden is as much about the testing, and mending, of a sisterly relationship as anything else. The apocalypse is merely a reason for their cloistering, and the reckoning they face with each other.