Mariner Review by Walter Cummins My own attempt at a geographic cure many years ago ended up as foolhardy, which is the common result for most who try. Canadian psychologist…
Category: Genres
What Is It Like to Be Alive? Fourteen Attempts at an Answer
Eastover Review by Walter Cummins Despite the seeming implication of Chris Arthur’s title of this, his tenth essay collection, he is not seeking an existential generalization about an abstract ontological…
1974: A Personal History by Francine Prose
Harper Review by George Yatchisin Here’s why Francine Prose is a better writer than you or me—she can craft a sentence like, “Tony was very funny, though when you say…
Burn by Peter Heller
Knopf Review by David Starkey Like a lot of readers in these unnerving times, I’m a sucker for a dystopian novel. Imagining how things might go wrong is oddly comforting:…
Hugging My Father’s Ghost: A Memoir by Zack Rogow
Spuyten Duyvil Review by Jonas Lamb Bay-Area poet, playwright and translator Zack Rogow’s non-fiction debut playfully deploys an experimental form. Weaving together his father, Lee Rogow’s writings, imagined conversations between…
No Ship Sets Out to Be a Shipwreck by Joan Wickersham
Eastover Review by Walter Cummins Joan Wickersham uses the 1956 discovery of the fatal wreckage of a Swedish ship, the Vasa—sunken immediately after its August 10, 1628 launching—as the starting…
The Light at the End of the World by Siddhartha Deb
Soho Press Review by Brian Tanguay This year I’ve had the good fortune to read several novels by extraordinary writers of South Asian origin, among them Latitudes of Longing by…
Time of the Child by Niall Williams
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay The remote, rain-soaked village of Faha is to the brilliant Irish writer Niall Williams what Yoknapatawpha County was to William Faulkner. On the surface a…
Awake For Ever in a Sweet Unrest: a novel by Chuck Rosenthal
Walton Well Press Review by Brian Tanguay For a novel of only eighty-nine pages, Awake For Ever in a Sweet Unrest is surprisingly deep, and will appeal to readers familiar…
Art Monster: On the Impossibility of New York by Marin Kosut
Columbia Review by David Starkey If you’ve ever had a friend who is brilliant, super-sarcastic, notices everything, can be incredibly mean but always employs that anger in the service of…