Georgia Review by Paul Willis Amy Muia’s richly entangled grouping of fourteen short stories, A Desert Between Two Seas, explores the afterlife of the Spanish missions in Baja California. While…
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The Future of Truth by Werner Herzog
Penguin Review by George Yatchisin Who better than Werner Herzog, the Bavarian mad genius, to take us on a heady time-travelling exploration on what truth might mean/be/permit? The Future of…
Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress by Roy Scranton
Stanford Review by Walter Cummins I wish Impasse had been written when my wife was still alive. The book would have provided so much information and so many ideas to…
Repetition: A Novel by Vigdis Hjorth, Translated by Charlotte Barslund
Verso Review by Brian Tanguay It’s late November in Norway and the days are cold and short. A woman and her dog occupy a small cabin in a remote, forested…
10 Best Books of 2025
The following list was decided after consultation between California Review of Books co-editors David Starkey and Brian Tanguay and the journal’s most frequent reviewers, Walter Cummins and George Yatchisin. As…
The Best Poetry Books of 2025
Reviews by David Starkey As I have every year since 2014, in 2025 I set aside a couple of months to peruse the year’s books of poetry–at least those books…
Savings And Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank by Justene Hill Edwards
W. W. Norton & Company Review by Brian Tanguay The failure of banks and savings and loan institutions has a long history in the United States. Most people know something…
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Hogarth Review by Walter Cummins When I read The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny I hadn’t known Kiran Desai had devoted twenty years to creating the novel, but I suspected…
All These Things I Will Give to You by Robert Clinton
Rain Mountain Review by Walter Cummins Robert Clinton’s ekphrastic poem “Egon Schiele,” which finds words to describe how Schiele creates a painting, provides a visual equivalent to the way Clinton…
Seven Heavens Away: A Novel by Ashraf Zaghal
Anansi Review by Brian Tanguay Three Palestinian teenagers are hanging out on the streets of Jerusalem. They insult one another as teenage boys do, smoke cigarettes, and enjoy ice cream…