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Debut
Mischa Berlinski, Fieldwork
Berlinski’s novel is a smart, engaging thriller about anthropologists and missionaries in Thailand that occasionally gets lost in jungles of digression. Honorable mention to Ellen Litman’s charming The Last Chicken in America, about Russian immigrants in Pittsburgh.
Stinker
The Almost Moon, by Alice Sebold
Lots of big names underwhelmed us this year: Amis, DeLillo, Roth, Rowling. But Sebold, whose debut novel, The Lovely Bones, was the best-selling book of 2002, went above and beyond—or below and behind. Her wandering story of matricide is both implausible and uncompelling: The voice is wrong, the characterization is off, the pacing is set on shuffle.
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Michael Cera, Prince of the Innocent Adolescent
The Rise of P.S.1’s New Boss, Klaus Biesenbach
David Edelstein on Sherlock Holmes
The View From W. Eugene Smith’s Window
Where to Eat 2010 
The Cleverly (Cheaply) Decorated One-Bedroom
Union Square's New Kiddie Wonderland 
Why Euros Are Fueling the Real-Estate Market 
Larry Kramer's Big Gay Book
Ronald Tackmann, Escape Artist
