#14: Atonement by Ian McEwan

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Atonement is a gut-punch of a book that toys with the idea of the reliable narrator and gets one thinking about the ethics of story-telling and the power that a writer has to bend history to his will.
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#15: Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis

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In Lydia Davis' hands, things are both exactly what they are and not quite what they seem, and after an hour or so, Varieties of Disturbance starts to look less like a collection of experimental fiction and more like an adventure story.
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#16: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

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At the center of this story, which, like many family histories, is at once tremendously unlikely and perfectly plausible, Jeffrey Eugenides has placed the two great standards of the human race: a pair of genitals, and a heart.
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#17: The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

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I think of Jonathan Lethem as the poet laureate of gentrification.
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#18: Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link

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I admire imagination and craft, in equal measure. Kelly Link is one of the very few who have both in seemingly limitless quantity.
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#19: American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman

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In American Genius, a Comedy, Tillman becomes, in effect, a dozen Ellingtons conducting a monumental symphony played by an orchestra consisting of a single multifarious instrument.
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#20: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

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The book’s modest, carefully planed language and its concern with primary human needs make it timeless.
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The Best Fiction of the Millennium (So Far): An Introduction

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What are the best books of fiction of the millennium, so far?
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