The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case

Grand Central Review by George Yatchisin Given she’s enchanted by fairy tales, it’s only fitting that Neko Case’s memoir The Harder I Fight the More I Love You leaves its…

The Countryside: Ten Rural Walks Through Britain and Its Hidden History of Empire by Corinne Fowler

Scribner Review by Walter Cummins I’m fortunate to have taken several of Fowler’s ten rural walks in Britain along with a number of similar routes. But my ignorance limited me…

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 Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet

Biblioasis Review by Walter Cummins I must admit that throughout my initial reading of this novel I fell for Burnet’s ruse, believing I was really engaging with his translation of…

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…