We love books here at the Editorial Department...even the ones we weren't personally involved with. However, with dozens of newspapers, magazines and websites covering new releases, it can be difficult to keep track of what people are saying about books newly on shelves. To try to resolve that dilemma, we offer our Tuesday Review Wrapup, using the last sentences of prominent book reviews as literary tea leaves to discern the trends guiding our industry. This week, we're looking at Barbara Kingsolver's newest novel, The Lacuna.

• "Had Kingsolver made Harrison a stronger character, he might be have been able to hold his own against such mighty events. But he's too detached, too wispy a guy, especially when compared with figures that leap off the page in Kingsolver's other novels. He's too a pale an observer in a book blazing with color."  - USA Today

•  "But there is also a much fuller picture here. The history it covers is fascinating — from radical politics in Mexico, to poor people in Washington, to the search for communists in the United States. If there is a failing in the book, it is in the distance at which Shepherd remains throughout. He's interesting and lives through interesting events, but never as vibrant as the women Kingsolver populated in "The Poisonwood Bible."  - San Francisco Chronicle

• "“The Lacuna” can be enjoyed sheerly for the music of its passages on nature, archaeology, food and friendship; or for its portraits of real and invented people; or for its harmonious choir of voices. But the fuller value of Kingsolver’s novel lies in its call to conscience and connection. She has mined Shepherd’s richly imagined history to create a tableau vivant of epochs and people that time has transformed almost past recognition. Yet it’s a tableau vivant whose story line resonates in the present day, albeit with different players. Through Shepherd’s resurrected notebooks, Kingsolver gives voice to truths whose teller could express them only in silence."  - New York Times

•  "In formal terms, what most impresses is that she has created a protagonist who is unambiguously decent and opinionated, without being dull and sanctimonious. If Shepherd’s decency at times verges on monotony, Kingsolver’s portrait is so intimate and pitch-perfect that he never seems unbelievable. It’s true that his character is an idealization, but this is fitting, for in the context of the novel Shepherd embodies our nation’s noblest potential — while his fate, alas, suggests its heartbreaking compromise."  - San Diego Union Tribune