Anchor Books Review by Gabriel Tanguay Ortega I can only begin this review by presenting my issues. I’m not sure what this book is about. Colonialism, white saviorism, the rape…
Category: Fresh Looks
The Big Green Tent: A Novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya, Translated by Polly Gannon
Picador Review by Brian Tanguay When I read the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago as a teenager I lacked the education to fully understand it. My youthful worldview was…
Roxy and Coco by Terese Svoboda
West Virginia Review by Walter Cummins My fine feathered friends. That phrase, dating back to the 1500s, occurred to me after I read Terese Svoboda’s novel Roxy and Coco. The…
An Ordinary Youth by Walter Kempowski, Translated by Michael Lipton
New York Review of Books Review by Brian Tanguay In November 1944 Walter Kempowski was called up for mandatory service by the German government, and detailed to go from house…
By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah
Riverhead Books Review by Brian Tanguay The first time I became aware of Abdulrazak Gurnah was on this website when I read fellow contributor Walter Cummins’ review of The Last…
Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
Grove Press Essay by Brian Tanguay I first read Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller thirty years ago. I kept coming across references to Miller in the books I was…
The Book of Angels by Thomas E. Kennedy
Wordcraft Review by Linda Lappin The Book of Angels is the title of a novel written by Michael Lynch, the main character of the late Thomas E. Kennedy’s occult thriller – The…
Sophie’s World: A Novel about the History of Philosophy by Jostein Gaarder, trans. by Paulette Møller
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by Walter Cummins Although Sophie’s World was first published in Norwegian more than thirty years ago and since then has been translated into close to…
Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent
Scribner Essay by Brian Tanguay When the conservative supermajority of the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022, it overturned a…
Poetry Book Reviews for the Holidays
by David Starkey Since 2014, first for the Santa Barbara Independent and then for the California Review of Books, every National Poetry Month, I’ve offered one very short review of…