Drown

"It is the best book he has written. It is one of the best books anyone has written in recent decades. It takes us, the readers, in to a world we would not otherwise know, that of a Dominican immigrant kid to the States. And does that with a dazzling technical brilliance that few writers have. For example, in one story we learn that the family keep their photos under the bed in a plastic sleeve, and we realise this is because of the humidity in their impoverished and damp-ridden home. The detail is tiny but it tells you more about their poverty than pages of explanatory text. I have read his other books. They are good, but this is the purest and best thing he has done."