The Week in Books

A tour of this week’s Book Review

We really look forward to putting certain issues out into the world, and here’s one we’ve been excited about for months. The Furies, this week’s theme package, looks at books about women fighting for their rights and fighting back, from a variety of angles and across genres.

We have reviews of “See Jane Win,” about how women are changing politics, and of Angie Cruz’s new novel, “Dominicana,” about a young woman finding her path in America.

Also in this issue: “She Said,” by my colleagues Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who won a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting about Harvey Weinstein and others. Our review is by Susan Faludi, author of “Backlash” and “In the Darkroom,” one of our 10 best books of 2016.

Two other reporters from The Times, Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, expand on their reporting for the paper in “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh.” Our review is by Hanna Rosin, author of “The End of Men.” Robin and Kate also join this week’s episode of the podcast.

The critics

Dwight Garner reviews Ta-Nehisi Coates’s debut novel, “The Water Dancer,” about a slave with supernatural powers escaping his circumstances. “Coates writes as if he’s thrown his readers into a carriage and is hurtling them through the woods,” Garner says. “The ride is bracing, even if one sometimes misses the grainy and intense intellection of his nonfiction writing.”

Benjamin Moser’s new landmark biography of Susan Sontag is a book “as handsome, provocative and troubled as its subject,” according to our critic Parul Sehgal.

Sehgal also writes about “The Dutch House,” the new novel by Ann Patchett about two siblings cast out of their family home by their loathsome stepmother. Sehgal calls the book a novel “with a clarity and transparency of purpose and method, a refusal of narrative tricksiness.”

Don’t miss our profile of Patchett, in which she describes the process of writing “The Dutch House.” “It was horrible to write,” she told our reporter, cheerfully. “It was like Thelma and Louise going over a cliff. I made so many errors in judgment.”

In other news

Congratulations to the authors whose work was longlisted for the National Book Award, including Colson Whitehead, Patrick Radden Keefe and Julia Phillips. The shortlist of finalists in each category are scheduled to be announced on Oct. 8, and the winners on Nov. 20 at an awards ceremony in New York City.

The comedian Chris Rock will release a new essay collection, “My First Black Boyfriend,” focusing on race and relationships, next year. It’s a familiar subject for Rock, who has been talking about these issues since he began doing standup in the ’80s; the collection is slated to be published in fall 2020.

From page to screen

The film adaptation of “The Goldfinch,” Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, has been receiving lackluster reviews, but plenty more adaptations are headed to the screens. With “Little Women,” “Watchmen” and others on the way, here are nine titles worth curling up with first.

Looking for your next read?

Here are 11 new books we recommend this week, and 17 of the most anticipated titles of September.

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