Siân Hughes Leads the Week's Best Reviewed Books

Siân Hughes's debut near the top of the week's most praised fiction — No Such Thing As Monday collected 5 Rave, 2 Positive and 1 Mixed reviews, according to Book Marks, Lit Hub's review-aggregating service. The novel, published by Henry Holt, leads the fiction list ahead of new collections from Annie Proulx and works by Xita Rubert, Niall Williams and Gabriel Bump.

The New York Times critic Leah Greenblatt praised Hughes's protagonist Steffie: "on the page, she's a pretty great hang: spiky, sharp-witted, blazingly self-aware." Greenblatt wrote that Hughes "has a canny, lyrical ear for her misfits and underdogs, and a touch tender enough to nudge their fate toward better things."

Which fiction titles followed?

2. The Key Biscayne Affair by Xita Rubert (Ecco) — 3 Rave, 2 Positive. Michael Shorris, writing in The Brooklyn Rail, called the novel "sly, rewarding" and praised Rubert's audacious, reaching sentences as "a welcome respite from the minimalism which attenuates so much contemporary fiction."

3. Annie Proulx Stories: New & Selected (Scribner) — 4 Rave. Dwight Garner's New York Times review was the week's most quoted: "Reading it is like opening the hall closet and having the contents of an antique junk shop, laced with spiky and rusted farm implements, spill out and maim your dog. I mean this as praise." Garner called Proulx's short stories "her thorniest and most essential work" and likened her chaotic style to "the caller of a cosmic hoedown."

4. O Now! by Niall Williams (Bloomsbury) — 3 Rave, 1 Positive. Booklist's Carol Haggas described the novella as "a quiet, lyrical, deeply satisfying contemplation of life's deepest riddles."

5. Don't Stop Snowing by Gabriel Bump (Algonquin) — 1 Rave, 4 Positive. Rob Franklin, in The New York Times Book Review, noted Bump "paints with the novel's primary hue: melancholy, which, like a blizzard, can be desolate and romantic at once," adding the narration's elegance "sneaks up on readers."

Who leads nonfiction?

James Gleick's The Telephone: A New History (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) tops the nonfiction list with 4 Rave and 3 Positive reviews. The New York Times's Alexandra Jacobs wrote that Gleick "restores the old instrument to its rightful place in history" and called the book "required reading for digital natives."

Nick Paumgarten's The Intangibles: Friendship, Fatherhood, and the Love of the Game (Penguin) follows with 5 Rave and 1 Positive — the week's strongest raw reception in nonfiction. Publishers Weekly verdicted: "Hockey fans will adore this, and more casual readers will be charmed by Paumgarten's thoughtful examinations of manhood. It's a winner."

Two titles tie at number three with identical 3 Rave, 2 Positive scores:

• Lauren Elkin, Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power (FSG). The Guardian's Fiona Sturges found "not just sharp analysis but a deep appreciation for singing and how it represents expression and freedom" at the book's core.
• Nancy Isenberg, Aristocracy, American Style (Viking). Kirkus called it "a richly detailed analysis of class systems with as much relevance to today as at the time of our nation's founding."

Mona Chalabi's Ten Lives: How What We Have Shapes Who We Are (Random House) closes the list at 1 Rave and 3 Positive. The Guardian's Rachel Clarke praised its blend of journalism, data visualization and memoir as "both a joy to read and a serious provocation," noting how its subjects' stories show "how easily systemic problems such as lack of affordable healthcare or childcare can overturn lives in modern America."

The roundup signals a strong season for story collections and essayistic nonfiction, with Proulx's selected stories and Elkin's study of the female voice drawing the most consistently enthusiastic critical notices.