Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller

The subtitle of Lucasta Miller’s Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph tells you most of what you need to know about the book’s contents. It is…

Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun

Review by David Starkey As he appears in Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me, Ada Calhoun’s father, The New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, seems like kind…

Vienna 1900, Edited by Hans-Peter Wipplinger

Review by David Starkey When I visited the Leopold Museum in Vienna this past spring, I must admit that I was wowed. I was familiar, of course, with the creepy…

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…

Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts by Jed Perl

Review by David Starkey In Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts, Jed Perl takes on “the stranglehold of relevance…the extent to which [works of art] line up with…

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,…

Anthem by Noah Hawley

Review by David Starkey Noah Hawley’s new novel Anthem is set in a near, scarcely alternative future. The United States is riven by partisan divide, with the Alt Right on…

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead

Review by David Starkey Let’s be honest: after writing two of the best novels of the twenty-first century—The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys—it was going to be hard for…

In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World by Nate Anderson

Review by David Starkey At the beginning of In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, Nate Anderson, deputy editor of the…