Other Writing / Rachel Barenbaum

Other Writing

Susan Bernhard
The novel will break your heart as much as it will fill it and once you start reading, you won’t want to stop. . . Wes tries to piece together the kind of past that would make his mother want to let go and finds himself flailing until a local girl captures his heart. You won’t want to put it down.
Jenna Blum
Blum is a master at revealing the lasting effects of trauma. And her ability to place her reader on a New York City street, or a New Jersey suburb, in the ‘60s-80s is impeccable. Not to mention the fact that her three main characters are as real to me as anyone can be.
Oyinkan Braithwaite
One sister kills and the other erases her crimes. The simplicity of this description belies the complexity of the deeper narrative. In truth, one sister tries to show they are being suffocated by men while the other fights to prove her wrong.
Geraldine Brooks
On a Skeleton in the Smithsonian: A Conversation with Geraldine Brooks
Chris Castellani
While Castellani is a master at blending fact and fiction, his true achievement lies in his ability to reveal just how complex love and art can be. And he does it with searing prose forcing us to ask the hard questions that make us all uncomfortable but nevertheless need to be asked.
Steph Cha
To call it (this book) brave is an understatement. Cha’s skill lies not only in the way she uncovers unexpected emotions but also in her ability to bind these two families such that there’s more than hate between them. By twisting together diverse cultures, she reveals a connection that is fierce, heartbreaking and terrifying—and it left me reeling.
Chip Cheek
While on the surface this plot is straightforward, the questions it asks are not and that is the brilliance of this book. Cheek had me wondering when does a marriage start–or end?
Jennifer Egan
'Goon Squad’ was explicitly a book about time — the impact of time passing and its relationship to technology. In ‘Candy House’ I’m interested in doing the same thing with the notion of space.
Victoria Gosling
While Gosling’s characters are beautifully drawn, it is the undercurrent of quiet violence that is most compelling and terrifying. Not shoot-’em-up Hollywood-style violence but a more insidious domestic violence hangs in these pages — and its muted undertone is the heart of the novel.
Zakiya Dalila Harris
The Other Black Girl is a psychological thriller that twists and turns right up to the very last page. Every time I thought I knew what the book was about, I didn’t, and I loved it for that as much as I admired the way it shined a light on systemic racism and questioned how we fight against it.
Chavi Eve Karkowsky
Unlike fluffy, unsatisfying staples like WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU’RE EXPECTING, Dr. K treats her readers, and patients, with the assumption that they deserve better, deeper explanations.
Rebecca Makkai
A page turning, heart break of a novel that lays bear the devastating impact of the AIDS epidemic at its height and in its aftermath. . . Read this book. Yes, it will break your heart but we all need that once in a while.
Emily St. John Mandel
Mandel lays bare an altogether different kind of devastation, one in which she braids together a ghost story and a Ponzi scheme in order to reveal the havoc that death and financial ruin can have on disparate but interconnected characters.
Courtney Maum
Writing with humor and drawing from her own deep experience, and that of dozens of other authors and editors, Maum manages to guide writers through the tremendous/horrendous/terrifying/ mystifying/incredible process of publishing.
Imbolo Mbue
How Beautiful We Were is an epic novel that is as brutal as it is gorgeous for its prose and story, but also for the questions Mbue forces her readers to confront. Is the self greater than or more important than the larger community? Should one generation sacrifice itself for the next?
Madeline Miller
While the story is tremendous, what really got me was the way Miller brought a modern, feminist reading to so many of the ancient tales I thought I’d known, showing that women’s struggle for power and independence is as timely now as it was in the days of the Odyssey.
Erin Morgenstern
Like the master storytellers in the novel, Morgenstern weaves a brilliant tapestry of linked fables, myths and origin tales that kept me spellbound.
Tea Obreht
On the surface, it is the tale of Lurie, an orphan and murderer, and Nora, a lonely and desperate frontierswoman, but their actions have consequences that break through to far more interesting undercurrents — themes of loneliness, family, and what it means to be sated.
Helen Phillips
The real horror in The Need lies in the fact that reality isn’t clear, the narrator is unreliable, and the heart of this story is tied to motherhood. Just when you think you know what you’re reading, you realize that you don’t.
Ivy Pochoda
A vivid and terrifying serial killer story that turns the traditional narrative on its head.
Lara Prescott
This debut follows in the footsteps of classic Russian novels by being an epic love story that is both brilliant and bleak, one that is wound into the fabric of tragic, true history.
Shobha Rao
This book is a beautiful, brutal story that reveals the truth about human trafficking, both the humanity of its victims and the gore inflicted on them– a love story and a testament to the human will to survive.
Whitney Scharer
What moved me to love this book was the underlying tension of Lee’s traumatic past that sat boiling below her every decision and had her self-destructing at almost every turn. The more I read, the more I understood the truth below all the glamour was that Lee was crumbling.
Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne
On the surface, Holding On To Nothing is the simple love story of Lucy and Jeptha, but the beauty behind the writing is that Shelburne shows no love story is simple. She lays bare Lucy and Jeptha’s complexities and mistakes in a way that reveals the oversized role loneliness and fear play can play in any life.
Adeena Sussman
Packed with gorgeous photos and stories from the Carmel Market (Shuk HaCarmel) in Tel Aviv, and fantastic recipes that even the most maladroit cooks (like me) can tackle.
Alexander Tilney
Tilney presents a stunning coming of age portrait that captures a young man’s struggle for acceptance and family, and his need to figure out who he wants to be.
Rebecca Traister
Traister’s dazzling research and ideas left me breathless as she laid bare the modern and historical relationships women have had with anger and the ramifications of expressing and suppressing it.
Elizabeth Wetmore
I hope VALENTINE will have the same effect on at least a few readers that other books have had on me—that it will make them feel a little more hopeful, and a little less of a stranger. Less alone.
Lauren Wilkinson
Wilkinson has turned everything about undercover operatives upside down and made me fall in love with the gritty humanity and the sacrifices people make when they turn to this life, highlighting the fearlessness and loneliness that goes along with it.
Snowden Wright
Wright focuses on the rough flaws and ugly intricacies barely giving readers a glimpse of any polish and that is what makes this book unforgettable. It is, after all, the secrets that we crave – not the gloss.
Leni Zumas
Zumas expertly breathes life into her vision by submerging us into the lives of five seemingly disparate women. . . their lives unfold with twists leading to stunning, intimate connections that left me wanting the book to go on and on.
Crystal King
King shines with her astounding knowledge of Renaissance Italian life, submerging her readers in an expertly crafted blend of fact and fiction. Her fans will find the vibrant depictions of a chef’s life that they’ve come to crave and the mouthwatering detailed menus they love.

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