Private Rites by Julia Armfield

Flatiron Review by Walter Cummins The world of this novel is ominously dystopian—constant rain pounding a city of unmoored, vulnerable buildings, displaced people fearful of being flooded out of threatened…

A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman by Robert Hilburn

Hachette Review by George Yatchisin A tunesmith with a con, not a song, in his heart, Randy Newman is a quintessential American composer. And like America, what a bill of goods…

Rental House by Weike Wang

Riverhead Review by George Yatchisin You’re a mere five pages into Weike Wang’s masterful novel Rental House when she does this to you, as her married couple main characters, one…

Harlow/Smith Postcards: Icons in Black & White by Stephanie Dickinson

Rain Mountain Review by Walter Cummins Stephanie Dickinson is drawn to giving voice to people in physical and psychic pain, characters—real and fictional—at the fringes of society or, as in…

What Nails It by Greil Marcus

Yale Review by George Yatchisin Trying to write a book review about essays in which one of our preeminent social critics, Greil Marcus, explores why he writes criticism…well, I’ve already…

the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless by Matthew Cooperman

Parlor Review by H. L. Hix The title of Matthew Cooperman’s new poetry collection, the atmosphere is not a perfume it is odorless, indicates by its very structure one strong…

Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik

Scribner Review by George Yatchisin Perched in a cultural place between Ryan Murphy’s Bette and Joan and Craig Seligman’s Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me, Lili Anolik’s Didion & Babitz…

A Tipsy Fairy Tale: A Coming of Age Memoir of Alcohol and Redemption by Peter E. Murphy

Toplight Review by Walter Cummins Peter Murphy relates the story of his adolescent and youthful perpetual drunkenness in the second person, addressing the person whose life he explores as “you”…

Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter by Ian Mortimer

Rosetta Review by Walter Cummins Most of us tend to consider the Middle Ages and those who inhabited those distant centuries victims of an inferior world that we’re fortunate to…

A Boy’s Guide to Outer Space by Peter Selgin

Regal House Review by Walter Cummins Peter Selgin’s Boy’s Guide is in many ways a deceptive novel. From its playful title and lively accounts of the adolescent hi-jinks of the…