Review by David Starkey The first half of Patricia Lockwood’s new novel, No One Is Talking About This, feels something like reading an uber-contemporary update of David Markson’s This Is…
Author: David Starkey
Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
Review by David Starkey For those of us who love Joan Didion’s writing, we who can imagine her arched eyebrow as she crafts another perfectly turned phrase that is both…
Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South by Margaret Renkl
Review by David Starkey Living blue in the red states is no easy matter, but New York Times “contributing opinion writer” Margaret Renkl, whose beat is the “flora, fauna, politics…
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Review by David Starkey Like the narrators of Kazuo Ishiguro’s two most famous novels—Stevens of Remains of the Day and Kathy H. of Never Let Me Go—Klara of his latest…
Francis Bacon: Revelations by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan
Review by David Starkey Francis Bacon: Revelations is a monumental book: the press release claim that it was “ten years in the making” doesn’t seem like an exaggeration. The notes…
The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm
Review by David Starkey Janet Malcolm, who died on June 16, 2021, typically referred to herself as a journalist. While that’s certainly an honorable occupation—and working for The New Yorker,she…
A Year with Swollen Appendices by Brian Eno
Review by David Starkey Several years ago, as I was listening to the ambient music of Brian Eno, which has kept me company through decades of reading, writing and grading…
Phase Six by Jim Shepard
Review by David Starkey Right about now, probably the last thing most readers are looking for is another book about pandemics, and Jim Shepard’s new novel is a pandemic book…
Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future by James Shapiro
Review by David Starkey The introduction to James Shapiro’s Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future recounts the Public Theater’s 2017 staging…
L’Origine: The Secret Life of the World’s Most Erotic Masterpiece by Lilianne Milgrom
Review by Linda Lappin Since its first foray into public view at the Brooklyn Museum in 1988, Gustave Courbet’s l’Origine du Monde, a depiction of female anatomy sans head, lower legs,…