Plastic by Scott Guild

Pantheon Review by George Yatchisin The best speculative fiction gives us the distance to see our own world more clearly. Take Scott Guild’s debut novel Plastic. Most of its characters…

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by Walter Cummins Sally Rooney’s central charterers in Intermezzo, her fourth novel, talk quite a bit, just about every time they interact, hashing and rehashing…

The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness by Leslie Valiant

Princeton Review by Walter Cummins As I read the explanatory chapters of Leslie Valiant’s The Importance of Being Educable—winner of the Turing Award, I found myself quibbling with him about…

Life at the Dumpling by Trisha Cole

Review by George Yatchisin Despite the obvious misery of the pandemic, if you had the luck, privilege, and health to make it through, it also provided opportunity. It forced us…

Death at the Sign of the Rook by Kate Atkinson

Doubleday Review by Walter Cummins Kate Atkinson’s title for her sixth Jackson Brodie detective novel, Death at the Sign of the Rook, offers a broad hint that she is about…

Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania by Kathryn Hughes

Johns Hopkins Review by Walter Cummins Kathryn Hughes appears to have taken great pleasure in writing Catland, bouncing back and forth between considering the life of Louis Wain, an artist…

Ain’t No Grave by Mary Glickman

Open Road Review by Jinny Webber Based on an infamous episode from Georgia history as experienced by two childhood friends, Ain’t No Grave paints a unique picture of early twentieth…

Home Is Where We Start: Growing Up in the Fallout of the Utopian Dream by Susanna Crossman

Penguin Review by Linda Lappin London. Amid the exhilarating social turbulence of the 1970s, Alison, a single mother, packed up her three children and headed off to a commune to…

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

Knopf Review by Jinny Webber In the lead article in the New York Times morning newsletter of September 25, 2024, Steve Lohr, who covers technology and the economy for the…

A Walk with Frank O’Hara by Susan Aizenberg

New Mexico Review by H. L. Hix Frank O’Hara himself is not a recurring presence in Susan Aizenberg’s new volume, but the themes introduced in the title poem, which opens…