University of California Press Review by Brian Tanguay Imagine for a moment that you’re a fourteen-year-old boy living in El Salvador with your family — mother, father, and multiple younger…
Author: Brian Tanguay
That Old Country Music: stories by Kevin Barry
Doubleday Review by Brian Tanguay “It informed me that there had been others before as deranged by matters of the heart and loins as I was now.” This line from…
In the Eye of the Sun by Ahdaf Soueif
Penguin Review by Gabriel Tanguay Ortega At nearly 800 pages, Ahdaf Soueif’s 1992 debut novel is a rewarding undertaking, a sort of modern Anna Karenina set in mid-20th century Egypt,…
The Light at the End of the World by Siddhartha Deb
Soho Press Review by Brian Tanguay This year I’ve had the good fortune to read several novels by extraordinary writers of South Asian origin, among them Latitudes of Longing by…
Time of the Child by Niall Williams
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay The remote, rain-soaked village of Faha is to the brilliant Irish writer Niall Williams what Yoknapatawpha County was to William Faulkner. On the surface a…
Awake For Ever in a Sweet Unrest: a novel by Chuck Rosenthal
Walton Well Press Review by Brian Tanguay For a novel of only eighty-nine pages, Awake For Ever in a Sweet Unrest is surprisingly deep, and will appeal to readers familiar…
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak had been on my reading list for more than a year, but the book of hers that came…
Body Friend: A Novel by Katherine Brabon
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay In Katherine Brabon’s third novel, Body Friend, the narrator is never named. She’s a woman who knows herself best when she’s in the greatest physical…
Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit by Robin Bernstein
University of Chicago Press Review by Brian Tanguay When William Freeman, a young Black man, stabbed four white people to death in Cayuga County, New York in March 1846, the…
That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Amanda Jones was born and raised in the small, rural town of Watson in Livingston Parish in southern Louisiana, roughly twenty miles southeast of Baton…