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…
Category: Memoir & Biography
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…
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 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…
Bloom: On Becoming an Artist Later in Life by Janice Mason Steeves
Friesen Review by Linda Lappin Painter and art educator Janice Mason Steeves came to art quite by chance late in life after a friend invited her to attend a pottery…