Juan Vidal
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Reviewer Juan Vidal has had the debut album by Texas soul crooner Leon Bridges on heavy rotation, and it's making him think of parallels with James Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain.
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No American writer has been able to pin down the intersection of faith, prayer and art like Flannery O'Connor. Critic Juan Vidal reflects on her Prayer Journal, and the faith that words can live.
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Argentinian novelist Alan Pauls' latest kicks off as so many good stories do: With a dead body and a disappearing briefcase full of cash. Critic Juan Vidal calls Pauls a "master builder" of fiction.
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This new volume collects some of the uncompromising writer's greatest hits, from her coverage of the march on Selma to Monica Lewinsky, and of course her famous takedown of film critic Pauline Kael.
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The multitalented Alejandro Jodorowsky turns to fiction (sort of) with a semi-autobiographical novel. Critic Juan Vidal calls it "brilliant, mad, unpredictable."
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Brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were at the heart of Soviet science fiction; reviewer Juan Vidal says The Dead Mountaineer's Inn is less edgy than some of their work, but still a must-read.
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Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra's new story collection shows off his exacting eye, comic timing and powers of description; critic Juan Vidal says the narratives flow like a glass of cool water.
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NYRB Classics has just reissued Tristana, an 1892 novel by the great Spanish author Benito Pérez Galdós. Critic Juan Vidal says Tristana's intelligence and emotional richness is comparable to Dickens.
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A Little Lumpen Novelita is an intoxicating tale of a teenage girl who struggles to stay afloat. It cements Roberto Bolaño's place as the most commanding Latin American writer of the last few decades.
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Critic Juan Vidal has an appreciation of the hymn — its rhythm, sonorous language, discipline and structure. "No matter where you stand on heaven and hell," he writes, "there is power in a hymn."