We’re only weeks past the announcement of the most recent Booker Prize, something Percival Everett coulda (shoulda?) won for The Trees, and he already has a stellar new novel for us. Dr. No is a serious romp, if such a thing can be imagined (and by Everett it can). A spoof of Ian Fleming-style thrillers featuring a charismatic supervillain (who has a legitimate bone to pick) plotting to destroy America, it stars a naïve mathematician who is an expert in nothing (which is to say he is an expert in the concept of nothing). It’s also a sharp commentary on what it is to be Black in this country. Which, as the book says, is not nothing.
—James Crossley, Madison Books, Seattle, WA
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