Basic Books | Harvard Review by Walter Cummins Tobias Becker opens his new book with this epigraph from the Beatles’ song to explain the origin of his title: “Yesterday /…
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Signatures in Stone: A Bomarzo Mystery
Pleasure Boat Review by Walter Cummins Linda Lappin’s novel, which was the overall winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense in 2014, is now out in…
The Vulnerables: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez
Riverhead Review by Walter Cummins While reading The Vulnerables, my eye kept being drawn to the subtitle, A Novel, in the header at the top of every page, as if…
Restless for Words by DeWitt Henry
Finishing Line Review by Jack Smith Founder of one of the most prestigious literary magazines in the country, Ploughshares, DeWitt Henry is also a prize-winning novelist, memoirist, essayist, and poet. …
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…
A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick by Cathy Curtis
Norton Review by Brian Tanguay “There is simply no accounting for her gifts. She was a unicorn, born among horses.” So wrote author and cultural critic William Deresiewicz in “The…
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…
California Review of Books – 10 Best Books of 2023
The following list was decided after much consultation between California Review of Books co-editors David Starkey and Brian Tanguay and the journals’ most frequent reviewers, Walter Cummins and George Yatchisin.…
Blood Memory: The Tragic Decline and Improbable Resurrection of the American Buffalo by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns
Knopf Review by David Starkey I’ve refrained from watching the new Ken Burns PBS documentary The American Buffalo to better assess its companion volume by Burns and Dayton Duncan, Blood…