New York Review Books Review by Walter Cummins Although the forty-four Mavis Gallant works assembled by editor Garth Risk Hallberg for the 2025 Uncollected Stories had their initial magazine publication…
Tag: California Review of Books
Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky
Knopf Review by George Yatchisin In Marcy Dermansky’s engrossing novel of (mis)manners Hot Air, third person limited isn’t just a narrative technique, it’s a view of the world where solipsism…
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…
Cheesecake: a novel by Mark Kurlansky
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay I thoroughly enjoyed Mark Kulansky’s new novel, Cheesecake, set in the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 1980s. West 86th street to be precise.…
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…
My Name Is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende
Ballantine Review by Gabriel Tanguay Ortega I always look forward to the release of a new novel by Isabel Allende, as I already know what it has in store—lyrical, descriptive…
Sick and Dirty: Hollywood’s Gay Golden Age and the Making of Modern Queerness by Michael Koresky
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Before reading Sick and Dirty, queer representation in Hollywood wasn’t a subject I’d given much thought to or had occasion to study. By the time…
The Accidentals: Stories by Guadalupe Nettel, translated by Rosalind Harvey
Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay I had never heard of the Mexican writer Guadalupe Nettel until her brilliant collection of short stories, The Accidentals, fell into my hands. Had I…
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…
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
Knopf Review by Brian Tanguay As I read Omar El Akkad’s scathing polemic exposing the moral shortcomings of the Western world order, I was reminded of the Fire Next Time…