The Same Bright Stars by Ethan Joella

Scribner Review by Walter Cummins As he demonstrated in his first two novels, Ethan Joella possesses a special ability to create a community of interrelated characters, each of whom is…

Soul, Ghost, My Absolute by Rosalind Palermo Stevenson

Rain Mountain Review by Walter Cummins In her piece “The Foghorn,” Rosalind Palermo Stevenson includes several of her own translations of Antonin Artaud, including, “The dream is true. All dreams…

Small in Real Life by Kelly Sather

Pittsburgh Review by David Starkey When it’s really working, the short story is, word-for-word, the most satisfying of the literary genres. A successful short story has all the punch of…

The Overstory: A Novel by Richard Powers

Norton Review by Brian Tanguay It has been some time since I finished a novel and immediately felt compelled to turn back to the first page and start over. The…

The Morningside by Téa Obreht

Random House Review by Walter Cummins The pleasure of reading The Morningside is engaging with the inventive creations of Téa Obreht’s impressive imagination. The frustration is not getting a developed…

My Beloved Life: A Novel by Amitava Kumar

Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay During his first year in college, Jadunath Kunwar — Jadu for short — attends a ceremony in honor of Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who along…

The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara

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…

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…

The Mighty Six-Ninety (690) by Alexander Hamilton Cherin

Review by Brian Tanguay In the early 1980s, before the consolidation of media ownership gathered steam, and well before the digital revolution completely altered the broadcast landscape, AM radio occupied…

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…