Review by David Starkey That Penguin Classics is publishing a new translation (by Allan Blunden) of a book packed with quotes by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who died in 1832,…
Author: David Starkey
Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller
The subtitle of Lucasta Miller’s Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph tells you most of what you need to know about the book’s contents. It is…
Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun
Review by David Starkey As he appears in Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, Ada Calhoun’s father, The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, seems like kind…
Vienna 1900, Edited by Hans-Peter Wipplinger
Review by David Starkey When I visited the Leopold Museum in Vienna this past spring, I must admit that I was wowed. I was familiar, of course, with the creepy…
A Conversation between David Starkey and Brian Tanguay
The following is a conversation between California Review of Books co-editors David Starkey and Brian Tanguay. David Starkey: It’s been a couple of years now since we started the California…
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Review by David Starkey Claire Keegan’s novella Small Things Like These was released just before Christmas of last year. Set in a small Irish town during Christmas 1985, the book…
The Magician by Colm Tóbín
Review by David Starkey We are clearly meant to sympathize with Thomas Mann, the title character of Colm Tóbín’s novel The Magician. A gay youth trapped in an uptight heterosexual…
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Review by David Starkey In order to truly appreciate Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel, a reader should be familiar with her two previous efforts: the groundbreaking pre-Covid pandemic novel,…
The Unwritten Book: An Investigation by Samantha Hunt
Review by Walter Cummins Samantha Hunt subtitles The Unwritten Book an “Investigation.” The connotation of that word suggests a systematic analysis of clues. But what Hunt has really produced is…