Washington Review of Books: “Gripping”

Every review Tracks has garnered has been a positive one. The one exception is a mixed review that came from Washington Independent Review of Books.

The reviewer compares Tracks to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer-prize winning Olive Kitteridge, and Jennifer Eagen’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won every literary prize from the Pulitzer to the National Book Critics Circle Award. Some tough comparables.

Although she has a bone to pick with what she considers to be one story’s “happy ending” (most readers and reviewers considered it sad and bittersweet), she had a number of good things to say about the book.

“Goodman writes with an appealing directness and attention to detail. The strongest vignettes drew me into the characters’ experiences even when they happened long in the past. In one, an elderly woman is overwhelmed by memories of an earlier train ride when, as a child, she was taken in a packed boxcar, fouled by human waste, to a Nazi prison camp. Goodman brings the boxcar scene to vivid and horrifying life …”

“The best vignette … is that of a young soldier on leave from fighting in Afghanistan. He has just lost his girlfriend because he refused her pleas to leave the Army and repudiate the war. Now he is filled with sadness and confusion about the country and the cause for which he is fighting. Goodman’s war scenes, including the deaths of the soldier’s two closest friends, are gripping …”

Read more at Washington Independent Review of Books:

http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/bookreview/tracks-a-novel-in-stories/