Review by Brian Tanguay It’s tempting to think of history as a succession of recurring events and to look to the past to foretell what might happen in the future.…
Tag: California Review of Books
Code of Silence: Sexual Misconduct by Federal Judges, the System that Protects Them, and the Women Who Blew the Whistle by Lise Olsen
Review by Walter Cummins The lengthy subtitle to Lise Olsen’s exposé explains what the book is all about but doesn’t reveal the outcome of the long process that followed the…
Four Treasures of the Sky by Jenny Tinghui Zhang
Review by Brian Tanguay When Daiyu, the protagonist of Jenny Tinghui Zhang’s debut novel, Four Treasures of the Sky, is abducted from the fish market, she’s a desperately hungry thirteen-year-old…
A Conversation between David Starkey and Brian Tanguay
The following is a conversation between California Review of Books co-editors David Starkey and Brian Tanguay. David Starkey: It’s been a couple of years now since we started the California…
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Review by David Starkey Claire Keegan’s novella Small Things Like These was released just before Christmas of last year. Set in a small Irish town during Christmas 1985, the book…
The Magician by Colm Tóbín
Review by David Starkey We are clearly meant to sympathize with Thomas Mann, the title character of Colm Tóbín’s novel The Magician. A gay youth trapped in an uptight heterosexual…
The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History of Debt, Misery, and the Drift to the Right by David Roediger
Review by Brian Tanguay Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest men in America, made a statement in 2006 about class warfare which is often cited on the infrequent occasions when…
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
Review by David Starkey In order to truly appreciate Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel, a reader should be familiar with her two previous efforts: the groundbreaking pre-Covid pandemic novel,…
Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise by Jack Parlett
Review Essay by Walter Cummins Jack Parlett made his initial visit to the gay village of Cherry Grove on Fire Island in 2017 with his friend Celine by walking a…