by Jinny Webber Yaa Gyasi’s essay in the March 20, 2021 book section of the Guardian throws out a challenge. Author of the new novel, Transcendent Kingdom, Gyasi describes her…
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Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl
Late Migrations is an elegantly-crafted collection of brief essays, many less than a page long, that focus on Renkl’s family history and the way she sees reflections of that history…
Still Life with Timex by Elisabeth Murawski
by Walter Cummins Poets have written about the death of children, the saddest and most intimate of griefs, from Ben Jonson’s “On My First Son—”Farewell, thou child of my right…
I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom
Review by George Yatchisin Think of Rachel Bloom’s memoir I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are as a bathroom book. It’s written in zippy chapters—some lists, some mini-screenplays,…
Blue Swan Black Swan: The Trakl Diaries by Stephanie Dickinson
Review by Walter Cummins The Austrian poet Georg Trakl endured a short, distressed life (1887-1914) before he overdosed on cocaine in a psychiatric hospital in Krakow, sent there after a…
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
Review by Walter Cummins Has climate change reached a tipping point? Is it too late, or do we still have an opportunity to redeem the planet? Some optimists, citing previous…
Having and Being Had by Eula Biss
Review by George Yatchisin Eula Biss wants me to be better and I’m not sure I’m up for that. When I refer to the quick several page essays that build…
The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
Review by Jinny Webber “Reading The Hearing Trumpet liberates us from the miserable reality of our days,” wrote Luis Buñuel after the 1976 publication of Leonora Carrington’s novel, recently re-released…
My Life with Women: The Consolation of Jazz, Vols. 1 & 2 by Thomas Kennedy
Review by Linda Lappin Thomas E. Kennedy, author of The Copenhagen Quartet, is often considered a “writer’s writer,” one whose name may be known only to a particular niche of…
The Gospel According to H.L. Hix by H.L. Hix
Review by Walter Cummins First, came the gospel writer cluster of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now, two thousand years later, the world has another “according to” version, in this…