Review by Linda Lappin Travel writing has been pronounced dead at various times over the last century, only to spring back with new vigor, enticing new readers to lace up…
Category: Genres
The Fall of the House of Dixie by Bruce Levine
The Fall of the House of Dixie is a fascinating account, extensively researched and written in an accessible style.
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Review by David Starkey The first half of Patricia Lockwood’s new novel, No One Is Talking About This, feels something like reading an uber-contemporary update of David Markson’s This Is…
Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion
Review by David Starkey For those of us who love Joan Didion’s writing, we who can imagine her arched eyebrow as she crafts another perfectly turned phrase that is both…
Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache from the American South by Margaret Renkl
Review by David Starkey Living blue in the red states is no easy matter, but New York Times “contributing opinion writer” Margaret Renkl, whose beat is the “flora, fauna, politics…
Bedtrick by Jinny Webber
Review by Kimberley Snow Bedtrick by Jinny Webber is her third novel about Alexander Cooke, a stage actor in Elizabethan England. The first book, The Secret Player, chronicles how a…
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Review by David Starkey Like the narrators of Kazuo Ishiguro’s two most famous novels—Stevens of Remains of the Day and Kathy H. of Never Let Me Go—Klara of his latest…
Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays by Dewitt Henry
Review by Jack Smith Henry’s newest collection of autobiographical essays, going back over twenty-five years, takes us from beginnings to endings. As the title suggests, this book is going to…
Festival Days by Jo Ann Beard
Review by George Yatchisin There’s an honored and honorable tradition of writers writing to explain why they write, from George Orwell to Joan Didion to Annie Dillard. Jo Ann Beard,…
How The Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
Review by Brian Tanguay As the controversy over the removal of Confederate monuments and tumult over critical race theory makes evident, American history is contentious and unsettled, with nostalgia and…