Monster Portraits in the New York Times Book Review

Many thanks to Amal El-Mohtar for her rave review of Del and Sofia Samatar’s Monster Portraits in her “Otherworldly” column for the New York Times Book Review! What a thrill to see a Rose Metal book in the Sunday NYT (and online here)!

The last paragraph of the review is a stunner:
“Monster Portraits resists review and anticipates and complicates any attempt at an adjective. I reached for “mesmerizing,” and found that the publisher’s ad copy contained it. I tried “magnificent,” and imagined the text raising a cool eyebrow at unseemly hyperbole. Finally I turned to other languages: In French one says of a moving work that it puts la vague à l’âme, a wave on the soul, and if a wave sank sharp salt teeth into one’s heart this phrase might be accurate here. Every sentence that doesn’t cut is a handle wielding the blade of the rest. Reading this was like wandering out of a dream and into an awareness of something with claws sitting on my chest.”

And double thanks to the NYTBR for covering Monster Portraits for a second week in a row in their Editors’ Choice column “7 New Books We Recommend This Week”! Exciting to see this fabulous book getting so much love!