Summit Review by Walter Cummins I was more than half way through The Kindness of Strangers before I realized Emma Garman’s real subject in this novel, the uncertainty of identity.…
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Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive: Stories by Alison Gadsby
Guernica Review by Brian Tanguay Competitive or recreational swimming is a tableau for most of the nineteen stories in this collection, along with family conflict, failed love and humanoids with…
Python’s Kiss: Stories by Louise Erdrich
Harper Review by David Starkey Louise Erdrich occupies one of those rare and coveted positions among contemporary authors: like Ann Patchett, Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Franzen, the late Hilary Mantel, and…
Children of Radium: A Buried Inheritance by Joe Dunthorne
Scribner Review by Walter Cummins We imagine writers doing research as individuals behind a computer screen or in a library carrel surrounded by piles of books and documents, perhaps also…
The Danger to Be Sane: Creativity and the Eccentric Mind by Rosa Montero, translated by Lindsey Ford
Europa Review by Walter Cummins Novelist Rosa Montero opens this book with an admission that “I’ve always known something in the head didn’t work right,” then illustrates with her age…
Go-Between Girl: My Indentured Roots As Reclaimed Present by Andrea Gunraj
McClelland & Stewart Review by Brian Tanguay For nearly three centuries, transatlantic chattel slavery was the preferred source for colonial labor, the bodies required to cultivate and harvest sugar, rice,…
Winning The Earthquake: How Jeannette Rankin Defied All Odds To Become The First Woman In Congress by Lorissa Rinehart
St. Martin’s Press Review by Brian Tanguay Barbara Lee, a Black Congresswoman from California, cast the sole vote opposing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force after the 9/11…
Traumatized: The New Politics of Public Suffering by Catherine Liu
Verso Review by Brian Tanguay Catherine Liu doesn’t write like your typical academic. This is what I noticed first about her latest book, Traumatized, a slender volume that delivers in…
Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures: A Biography of Denis Johnson by Ted Geltner
Iowa Review by George Yatchisin Is it possible to feel sad considering the life of someone who authored nine novels (one a winner of the National Book Award), a novella,…
Starting from Paterson by Garret Keizer
Eastover Review by Walter Cummins The nine essays in Keizer’s collection perhaps may be divided into three categories—character studies of individuals close to the author, a report on his religious…