Simon & Schuster Review by Walter Cummins Valerie Gillis closes the message to her mother that begins the novel Heartwood with this crucial memory: “But for a while, in your…
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What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory by Brian Eno and Bette A.
Faber and Faber Review by George Yatchisin At a mere 4.5 by 6.5 inches, only 122 pages long, with a cover that’s bright white and soothing flamingo pink, Brian Eno…
The Problem You Have by Robert Garner McBrearty
University of New Mexico Press Review by Jack Smith Robert Garner McBrearty’s The Problem You Have is a stunning collection of literary realism, often edgy realism, sometimes bordering on farce,…
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
Random House Review by Walter Cummins Variations of similar human tensions unite the twelve stories in this collection. In each, at least one character stands out as mastering one or…
The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker
Random House Review by Walter Cummins This case is indeed strange as it is revealed by through the voices of the two people at the center of the complication—Dr. Henry…
Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel by Edwin Frank
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by Walter Cummins For many readers of Edwin Frank’s Stranger Than Fiction, an immediate satisfaction will be Frank’s close consideration of more than thirty novels…
Our Beautiful Boys by Sameer Pandya
Ballantine Review by George Yatchisin It’s no coincidence that the two main subjects of Sameer Pandya’s second novel Our Beautiful Boys are family and violence. Set in a vaguely Santa…
The Redesignation of Paradise by Denise Newman | Alibi Lullaby by Norma Cole
Kelsey Street | Omnidawn Review by Laura Mullen Two books by powerhouse Bay Area writers are reason to celebrate—offering welcome sites of refuge and refreshment. Poets Denise Newman and Norma…
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Knopf Review by Walter Cummins Three of the four women who figure in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi’s Dream Count are attractive, affluent, successful Nigerians—the wealthy travel-writer and hopeful novelist, Chiamaka, her…
Standard Time by Dante Di Stefano
Cow Creek Review by H. L. Hix By the wholeness it tenders in so slender a volume (38 pages of poetry plus front and back matter), Dante Di Stefano’s Standard…