Bloomsbury Review by David Starkey The themes in Turkish writer Ayşegül Savaş’s new story collection, Long Distance, are easy to identify: displacement, disillusionment, disquiet. Things don’t go the way we’d…
Category: Fiction
The Paris Express by Emma Donaghue
Summit Review by Walter Cummins Emma Donaghue succeeds in integrating multiple stories that involve a group of varied individuals on a train ride from Granville, Normandy, to Montparnasse station in…
Playworld by Adam Ross
Knopf Review by Walter Cummins In Adam Ross’s Playworld, Griffin Hurt, the narrator, depicts a collection of situations he lived through during his years from middle school until early high…
Fox by Joyce Carol Oates
Hogarth Review by Walter Cummins I hadn’t read a Joyce Carol Oates’ novel in years, an avoidance I can attribute to intimidation ny her output, which I believe is fifty-eight…
The Etruscan by Linda Lappin
Pleasure Boat Studio Review by Walter Cummins This new edition of Linda Lappin’s The Etruscan marks the twentieth anniversary of the novel’s initial publication in 2004. I reviewed it then,…
The Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
Hogarth Review by Linda Lappin Anne Tyler’s delightful Vinegar Girl (2016) is often praised as a deliciously witty retelling of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. The novel shares the basic plot of much…
Flashlight by Susan Choi
Farrar, Straus & Giroux Review by Walter Cummins Flashlight’s nineteen sections, each focused on a situation in the life of a central character, are tour de forces, the situations inventive,…
Libra by Don DeLillo
Viking Essay by Brian Tanguay Returning to a book I read twenty or more years ago is usually revealing, both about the book and myself. The book is the same,…
Dogs and Monsters by Mark Haddon
Doubleday Review by Walter Cummins The seven stories in Monsters and Dogs were written over a long period, their composition interrupted by Haddon’s triple heart bypass. That time span may…