Random House Review by Walter Cummins My Friends is a haunted novel. Haunted by loss of places and people, by distressing memories, by the scars of a physical wound, by…
Category: Scroll
Reflections from the Shadow of Los Angeles: A Very Brief Memoir by Byron Schneider
Impervious Press Review by Brian Tanguay My only regret about Reflections from the Shadow of Los Angeles is, as the subtitle suggests, that it is very brief. I wanted to…
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan
Random House Review by Brian Tanguay “I recently sent a letter to a terrorist I used to know.” When considered in the context of everything that befalls its author and…
Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment by Allen C. Guelzo
Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay Abraham Lincoln believed that democracy was the single greatest achievement in human history. How Lincoln came to this belief is less well known than other…
Lou Reed: The King of New York by Will Hermes
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by George Yatchisin Will Hermes admits he’s on a fool’s errand with the opening quote of the preface to his 529 page biography of Lou…
Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt by Willard Spiegelman | Jane Kenyon: The Making of a Poet by Dana Greene
Knopf | Illinois Review by David Starkey Some striking similarities emerge between the subjects of Willard Spiegelman’s Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt and Dana Greene’s…
The Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired the World’s Great Authors by Jackie Bennett, with photographs by Richard Hanson
Frances Lincoln Review by David Starkey Does a writer need a garden to write? Obviously not, but The Writer’s Garden: How Gardens Inspired the World’s Great Authors suggests that having…
Fascism in America: Past and Present, Edited by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward
Cambridge University Press Review by Brian Tanguay One of the animating questions in the essays that comprise Fascism in America is whether or not our national political arrangement has reached…
The Life and Lies of Charles Dickens by Helena Kelly
Pegasus Review by Walter Cummins Not only could the title of Zadie Smith’s latest novel, The Fraud, be appropriate for Helena Kelly’s exposé of the many biographical deceptions she has…
The Children’s Bach by Helen Garner
Pantheon Review by David Starkey Helen Garner is having a well-deserved moment. The eighty-one-year-old author, renowned in her native Australia, but until recently barely known in the U.S., has benefited…