Date: 2006 Author: Walter Kirn Kirn peddles 21st-century Gonzo, which he calls “revolutionary incoherence.” He succeeds well enough, but the…

Date: 2006 Author: Kevin Brockmeier Brockmeier wrote children’s fables before turning to novels, which may account for his tender, unintimidating…

Date: 1995 (2004) Author: Lydia Davis Davis works backwards. Is this a novel about a failed romance or about writing…

Date: 2006 Author: Rachel Sherman Acne is a metaphor in Sherman’s delicate first collection. Her female characters come of age…

Date: 2001 Author: Steve Martin Steve Martin’s literary agility is simplicity. Plain Mirabelle Buttersfield, 28, works as a shop girl…

Date: 2005 (1999) Author: Mari Akasaka, translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich Appealing entry into the Japanese fiction of…

Date: 2006 Author: Vendela Vida A 100 years ago, a publisher might have titled this “Clarissa Iverton Goes to Lapland”…

Date: 1995 Author: Chang-Rae Lee Lee’s first novel (he was 28 at the time) is a moral tuning fork. Early…

Date: 2006 Author: Andrea Lee This strained chronicle of marriages and infidelity over two Italian decades is populated by juvenile…

Date: 2005 Author: Hitomi Kanehara, translated from the Japanese by James David Karashima What a delicious paper cut! The place…

Date: 1995 (1986) Author: Denis Johnson An inferior companion to Joan Didion’s “The Last Thing He Wanted,” but generated a…

Date: 2006 Author: Michel Faber Worth it for a bevy of reasons, but unmissable for the story “Tabitha Warren.” In…