The 5 Best Novels of Summer 2013 (Chosen by Karen Russell)
Five flights of fancy recommended by a writer who knows a thing or two about literary pyrotechnics.
Photo: Martha Pavlidou
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All Decent Animals
By Oonya Kempadoo
272 pages;
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
How am I only now finding out about this writer? It's as if she's inventing her own language, which is incantatory, dense, and lush. The authority and blood pulse of it seduced me. The novel is set in Trinidad, amid the circus-like world of Carnival. You're a hostage in that island world—there's nowhere to go, but you're happy about it.
— Karen Russell
Published 06/13/2013
