Abrams Review by Walter Cummins Peter Schjeldahl ends his essay “The Art of Dying”—written when he was well aware of his terminal lung cancer—with a recognition that “Dying is my…
Category: Memoir & Biography
That Librarian: The Fight Against Book Banning in America by Amanda Jones
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Amanda Jones was born and raised in the small, rural town of Watson in Livingston Parish in southern Louisiana, roughly twenty miles southeast of Baton…
And Then? And Then? What Else? by Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket
Liveright Review by George Yatchisin Given he has previously penned a series of four books called All the Wrong Questions, it’s not surprising author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) would…
Byron’s Travels by Lord Byron, edited by Fiona Stafford
Everyman’s Library Review by David Starkey First of all, God bless Everyman’s Library. What other publisher lists among its new releases the novels and tales of Pushkin, the poetry of…
The Manicurist’s Daughter: A Memoir by Susan Lieu
Celadon Books Review by Brian Tanguay Several years after the fall of Saigon, Susan Lieu’s parents fled Vietnam to escape suffocating Communist rule. Leaving was an enormous risk filled with…
Soil: The Story of A Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy
Simon & Schuster Review by Brian Tanguay Gardening and mindfulness cannot help but go hand in hand. The work of planting and tending a garden, whether in a suburban yard…
The World According to Joan Didion by Evelyn McDonnell
Harper One Review by George Yatchisin You know you’re in great authorial hands when on page two of this book Evelyn McDonnell insists about her subject Joan Didion, “Narrative was…
The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon by Adam Shatz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by Brian Tanguay In my reading over the past thirty years I’ve come across numerous references or quotes attributed to Frantz Fanon, but I’ve yet…
Getting to Know Death: A Meditation by Gail Godwin
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Gail Godwin published her first novel, The Perfectionists, in 1970 and her most recent, Old Lovegood Girls, in 2020. In the years between, Godwin was…
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…