Scribner Review by Walter Cummins We imagine writers doing research as individuals behind a computer screen or in a library carrel surrounded by piles of books and documents, perhaps also…
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The Danger to Be Sane: Creativity and the Eccentric Mind by Rosa Montero, translated by Lindsey Ford
Europa Review by Walter Cummins Novelist Rosa Montero opens this book with an admission that “I’ve always known something in the head didn’t work right,” then illustrates with her age…
Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World by Patrick Wyman
Harper Review by Walter Cummins While reading Lost Worlds I discovered an article reporting a prediction in Nature Cities that by 2100 15,000 American cities will suffer a severe loss…
Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures: A Biography of Denis Johnson by Ted Geltner
Iowa Review by George Yatchisin Is it possible to feel sad considering the life of someone who authored nine novels (one a winner of the National Book Award), a novella,…
Starting from Paterson by Garret Keizer
Eastover Review by Walter Cummins The nine essays in Keizer’s collection perhaps may be divided into three categories—character studies of individuals close to the author, a report on his religious…
Killing Spree by Jorie Graham
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by Laura Mullen “Then the rain came and we thought it / might clean us. / It did not clean us.” In his Theses on…
Talking to the Wolf by Rebecca Chace
Red Hen Review by Walter Cummins The inseparability of past and present permeates this novel through the lives of the four women friends whose stories alternate in the telling. It…
Body Double by Hanna Johansson, translated by Kira Josefsson
Catapult Review by Walter Cummins Although I read a translation of this novel, I assume the English sentence structure replicates that of the original Swedish, a series of flat statements…
Five Weeks in the Country by Francine Prose
Harper Walter Cummins Readers can fantasize the meeting of two literary titans as an opportunity for an exchange of legendary brilliance. But it doesn’t always work out that way. When…
A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia
Grove Review by Walter Cummins In her author’s note Stephanie Sy-Quia states that the idea for this novel came from an actual family situation—the fact that her grandfather was a…