Viking Review by David Starkey It’s the specter that haunts the lives of every happy, long-married couple: one of them suddenly dies. In the case of Geraldine Brooks’s memoir Memorial…
Category: Memoir & Biography
Guest Privileges: Queer Lives and Finding Home in the Middle East by Gaar Adams
Dzanc Books Review by Brian Tanguay The Gulf region of the Middle East is home to the largest number of migrants per capita of any place on the planet. Many…
Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra by Ericka Verba
University of North Carolina Press Review by Brian Tanguay Most of what I’ve learned about Chile has come from reading novels by Chilean writers, studying the country’s political fortunes since…
An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life by Michael N. McGregor
Monkfish Review by Linda Lappin In An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life, Michael McGregor, writer, university professor, inveterate traveler, former fire fighter and Rick Steeves’ tour…
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
Random House Review by Brian Tanguay The wheels of justice turn slowly. Hadi Matar, now 27, was sentenced this past February for his August 2022 knife attack on Salman Rushdie…
Swerve by Laurie Blauner
Rain Mountain Review by Walter Cummins A swerve is not a deliberate choice but rather the result of a last-second panic, an instantaneous response to a sense of threat, twisting…
The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut
Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay The first work of theater devoted to the life of Henry Christophe was staged in 1821, only a year or so after Christophe took his…
After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart by Megan Marshall
Mariner Review by David Starkey Megan Marshall, a writing professor at Emerson College, won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for Margaret Fuller: A New American Life. However, in After…
Expatriates of No Country: The Letters of Shirley Hazzard and Donald Keene, Edited by Brigitta Olubas
Columbia Review by David Starkey Shirley Hazzard and Donald Keene are far from household names. Granted, Hazzard was the author two widely acclaimed novels—The Transit of Venus (1980), winner of…
No Bars to Manhood: A Powerful, Personal Statement on Radical Confrontation with Contemporary Society by Daniel Berrigan
WIPF & STOCK Review by Brian Tanguay Where does courage come from? Why do certain people sacrifice their liberty, and sometimes their very lives for a principle, while others remain…