Delivery: A Novel by Christopher Hebert (Regal House Publishing). Reviewed by Randy Cepuch. “Somehow, his detours include visits with the girlfriend he seems to be losing, as well as with teammates eager to talk him out of skipping tomorrow’s game. He also spends time with a few quirky customers; provides dating advice and a set-up for a shy friend; argues with a vegan about pepperoni; manages to put in an important appearance at a parents-are-away party; convinces a cop not to give him a ticket; and even squeezes in a trip to the gym. It’s no wonder, he observes, that ‘the pizzas were getting cold. The pizzas were always getting cold.’”

In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man: A Memoir by Tom Junod (Doubleday). Reviewed by Jennifer Bort Yacovissi. “Here was a man who preened in his black bikini underwear in front of a full-length mirror, needed his own bathroom to store all the unguents he slathered on each day, and spent hours lying out in the sun with a reflector to keep his perpetual tan. ‘He was a scrupulously superficial man,’ writes Junod, ‘believing so fervently in the magic of surfaces that his fervor almost passed for profundity and he was able to wear his soul quite literally on his sleeve, like cuff links.’ He pursued women, women threw themselves at him, men sometimes threw their women at him (cue the still-repressed homosexuality of the 1970s), and his arms were open to receive them all.”

Go Gentle: A Novel by Maria Semple (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). Reviewed by Heidi Mastrogiovanni. “There are quirks with this novel, as there always are in tales written by human hands. Characters disappear and then reappear. The tone of the storytelling shifts. But who cares? This is a book about second chances! And female friendships! And hot romances! And secret finances! And art theft! Wait, is that character with Interpol?”

From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan by Suzy Hansen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Reviewed by Michael Bobelian. “From Life Itself shines when contextualizing Erdoğan’s reign within the broader historical currents overshadowing Turkish society. When the Turkish Republic emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1920s, it had lost its status as a leading global power for the first time in five centuries. Under his leadership, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, popularly seen as Turkey’s founding father, injected a new sense of honor and pride while refashioning his country into a Western-oriented, secular state.”

John of John: A Novel by Douglas Stuart (Grove Press). Reviewed by Ryan Davison. “The Macleods are complicated. Cal’s mother, Grace, walked out when he was only 9, settling across the island with John’s older brother. This created a deep source of betrayal, but we learn that Grace’s departure didn’t occur without reason. Stuart sets up a family dynamic that’s fascinating in its instability. He has every pin wobbling before a ball is rolled, and it’s in this environment that father and son engage in a soul-wrenching search for identity. They each in their own way experience the consequences of honesty and the significance of rejection.”

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