On this New Year’s Eve, I send out huge thanks to the publications, critics, booksellers, libraries, and bloggers who included A Reunion of Ghosts in their Best of 2015 lists. Today, there’s one more: the Jewish Book Council, where Reunion is named one of the 15 novels that shaped Jewish literature this year.
Here’s a quickly put together (because we’re heading out to see Star Wars!) compilation of those kind of enough to include my book on their best of lists (this is a work in progress; links to come):
Kirkus Best Books of 2015
The Guardian (UK)
The Jewish Book Council
NPR’s To the Best of Our Knowledge
The Columbus Dispatch
The Cedar Rapids Gazette
The Strait Times (Singapore)
The Philippines Online Chronicle
The Seattle Library System
The Halifax Library System (Canada)
Library Thing
Do I wish the New York Times was on the list? Yes. I absolutely do. But the perspicacity and depth of these reviews give lie to the belief that there are no serious book critics outside of the big publications, which is very heartening. That some of these critics found Reunion in the overwhelming pile of galleys they receive on a weekly basis, chose to read it, and then wrote about it analytically and with beautiful prose, means everything to me as the novel’s author, as an educator of young writers, and as a reader.