War

A short list on war in new novels for the NYT. I was really interested in the narrative technique of the Hernandez novel. By avoiding proper names, we begin to lose track of the actors. In the focal family, this is manageable, but to my eye, the greatest use of this technique comes half-way through the book, when Hernandez moves to examining the after-effects of war on women only loosely connected to the core family. You really do lose track of which woman is being discussed, and then you feel gob-smacked about the rhizomatic reach of living inside war.