[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]

Tender Hour of Twilight, by Richard Seaver, reviewed by Michael Dirda (Washington Post)

With the modern publishing world edging ever closer to the abyss, it’s at least diverting to read about its heyday, when a young literature buff in Paris discovered and doggedly championed the work of an entirely unknown Irish writer named Samuel Beckett. Most of the rest of the memoir seems to be less historically important, but it sounds uniformly entertaining.

Agent 6, by Tom Rob Smith, reviewed by Paula Woods (L.A. Times)

Woods is disappointed with this final volume in Smith’s Leo Demidov trilogy—and it does sound like Smith keeps going back to a well that he rather expertly emptied in the trilogy’s first book, the excellent Child 44. I’ve been taking my time with the second book, and it looks like I should continue to dawdle.

Your Voice in My Head, by Emma Forrest, reviewed by Nicholas Lezard (Guardian)

This slight review—which seems to expend more effort on a (good) discussion of Voice’s cover than a discussion of the book’s real merits—sums up Lezard’s praise of Emma Forrest in a single simple phrase: “she can write.” Voice is a “memoir of madness” written by a talented young madwoman. Fair enough.

Da Vinci’s Ghost, by Toby Lester, reviewed by Jonathan Lopez (New York Times)

Another brief review, with a rather brief thesis statement: the Vitruvian Man, Leonardo da Vinci’s (or perhaps anyone’s) most famous drawing, is not the pinnacle of his career, but rather a play for respect from the patrons of his day who favored ancient, sometimes unsound texts like the one by Virtuvius which inspired the sketch. It’s difficult to see how the book would satisfy, given that the story it tells is wrapped up in the few hundred words of Lopez’s review, but that review is worth the five minutes it takes.

In brief: Reviews of a couple of Book Radar picks: Zona, by Geoff Dyer, and No One Is Here Except All of Us, by Ramona Ausubel. … Elmore Leonard’s latest Raylan Givens novel looks possibly entertaining, even if it is short and written expressly to cash in on Justified. … Should we celebrate scathing book reviews? Um, yes, probably. Here’s one. … And more on Geoff Dyer, the author of my new favorite book that I haven’t read yet: here he picks five unusual histories. … In this semi-bizarre review of a book about dust jackets, Michael Dirda says, “Nobody blithely discards dust jackets anymore.” I beg your pardon, sir. I do and will continue to do so, for the rest of my natural life.

[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]

The Flame Alphabet, by Ben Marcus, reviewed by J. Robert Lennon (New York Times)

Ben Marcus, while an excellent prose stylist, has never written a book with a “traditional narrative.” His latest, the uber-hyped Flame Alphabet, has only metaphorical plot struts (children’s voices become toxic to adults), but “It has a plot, and a protagonist, and at times it even threatens to become a thriller,” which makes it, as Lennon sees it, a hybrid of experimentation and traditional narrative. As should be expected, by virtue of Marcus’s extensive experience with experimentation, and null experience with narrative, the traditional implodes and the experimental succeeds. The implosion, says Lennon, takes with it the thrill of Marcus’s sentences, his greatest strength. I was on the fence about Flame Alphabet. Now I am not.

The Fat Years, by Chan Koonchung, reviewed by David L. Ulin (L.A. Times)

Chan Koonchung’s first novel to be translated into English imagines 2013 in China, after a devastating economic collapse has crippled the rest of the world, and the Chinese government, thriving according to the Chinese government, has loosened its grip on its people. As the narrator says, “90 percent, or even more, of all subjects can be freely discussed, and 90 percent, or even more, of all activities are no longer subject to government control. Isn’t that enough?” It’s simultaneously a satire of contemporary China, in which only being censored a little would be a big improvement, and the West, where freedoms of speech and information are fiercely protected, but most citizens are too lazy to take advantage of them. David L. Ulin sorts this all out, as well as the role of atmosphere in fiction.

The Face Thief, by Eli Gottlieb, reviewed by Anna Mundow (B&N Review)

This thriller about face-reading and con artistry appears to be brash and melodramatic, if this line—spoken by the deceptive, seductive female lead—is any indication: “The real reason we have faces is to hold back what we’re thinking from the world.” That rather soapy philosophy hints at a narrative less rigorously realistic than perhaps a novel about the quite-real science of face-reading should be. But it could also be fun.

The Flight of Gemma Hardy, by Margot Livesey, reviewed by Sarah Towers (New York Times)

Emerson’s own Margot Livesey has a new novel, and it’s been getting a ton of press. Gemma Hardy is a combination and “recasting” of Jane Eyre and Livesey’s own childhood. Towers calls it “a delight.”

In brief: Authors are finally starting to take advantage of the unique abilities of digital books. … The L.A. Review of Books’s monthly crime fiction column is worth reading for crime fans. … And Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has inexplicably been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. The Onion A.V. Club gave Extremely Loud a rare unqualified F, and the it was voted 5th worst movie of the year in Vulture’s critics’ poll. Evidently its director threatened to keep running these tasteless ads unless it was nominated.

[In this feature, we highlight a handful of the best book reviews appearing over the weekend in major newspapers. Follow it here.]

Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?, by Henry Alford, reviewed by Charles Isherwood (New York Times)

The world—or at least a large percentage of the people I see on my commute—could use a lesson in manners. Alford, a “humorist” (a kludgy word for a supposedly fluid entity), offers a “whimsically haphazard” survey of manners. While certain of Alford’s strategies sound more passive-aggressive than effective, maybe that’s sounder than my personal tactic of staring at bus-riding cell phone talkers and pointedly following their conversation until they get creeped out and hang up.

Smut, by Alan Bennett, reviewed by David L. Ulin (L.A. Times)

David L. Ulin quietly but insightfully dissects Alan Bennett’s new pair of novellas. This is the kind of thing Ulin excels at:

Here, Bennett highlights a conflict central to both novellas: that there is a difference between pretense and self-preservation, and the roles we play (matron, widow) often serve to protect our inner selves. At the same time, there’s more at work here—since what we try to conceal is often obvious anyway.

In the end, Smut doesn’t sound like my kind of book. But the review is worth your time.

Terrorists in Love, by Ken Ballen, reviewed by Dina Temple-Raston (Washington Post)

This arresting nonfiction book attempts to discover and explain the reasons that Islamists turn to violent jihad. It’s composed of six anecdotal stories about men who were involved in violent jihad for various reasons. Ballen, the founder of an anti-terrorism nonprofit, comes to the conclusion that a lack of love on earth inspires these wayward souls to win God’s favor in the afterlife. It is, as Temple-Raston notes, not a very all-inclusive theory, but the discussion about it is quite interesting.

Treasure Island!!!, by Sara Levine, reviewed by Rebecca Barry (New York Times)

“I’m partial,” confesses Barry, in the opening of this review, “to a book with exclamation points in its title.” Not me. I’m gunshy about them, ever since the one in Swamplandia! turned out to be a bear trap. However, I am partial to “a rollicking tale, shameless, funny and intelligent,” which Barry claims for Treasure Island!!!. Before I get my hopes up, there’s no mention of either treasure or islands. It sounds, honestly, like another one of these literary novels whose purpose is to subvert all your expectations. It better be funny.

In brief: A “pale, lifeless” Jeff Bezos biography disappoints. … Houllebecq’s latest is also his first to feature a main character not modeled on himself. … The guy who named the main character of a long-running series “Harry Hole” writes a series of children’s books about farts? That makes sense, actually. And Simon & Schuster, the publisher who will readily sell their dignity, publishes it? That also makes sense. Carry on. … Christopher Paolini’s house is crazy. (Also, kids, when a major paper comes to do a profile on you, put on some damn shoes for the pictures.)