Judging a Book: You Are One of Them by Elliott Holt

The cover of Elliott Holt's debut novel You Are One of Them cleverly obscures half the face of a person standing at a train window with a black cloud of what could be spray paint, an ink blot, a smear of violent graffiti.  Designer Janet Hansen takes advantage of that dark blot of negative space by filling it with the title and author's name.  The partial black mask is, of course, a nice play on the title's implied theme of identity, assimilation, and homogeneity.  The book wil...