Hachette Review by George Yatchisin A tunesmith with a con, not a song, in his heart, Randy Newman is a quintessential American composer. And like America, what a bill of goods…
Tag: Review by George Yatchisin
Rental House by Weike Wang
Riverhead Review by George Yatchisin You’re a mere five pages into Weike Wang’s masterful novel Rental House when she does this to you, as her married couple main characters, one…
What Nails It by Greil Marcus
Yale Review by George Yatchisin Trying to write a book review about essays in which one of our preeminent social critics, Greil Marcus, explores why he writes criticism…well, I’ve already…
10 Best Books of 2024
The following list was decided after consultation between California Review of Books co-editors David Starkey and Brian Tanguay and the journal’s most frequent reviewers, Walter Cummins and George Yatchisin. As…
Dorothy Parker in Hollywood by Gail Crowther
Gallery Books Review by George Yatchisin Late in her life Dorothy Parker claimed during an interview that if she wrote a memoir—which she was loathe to do (and never did)—she…
Plastic by Scott Guild
Pantheon Review by George Yatchisin The best speculative fiction gives us the distance to see our own world more clearly. Take Scott Guild’s debut novel Plastic. Most of its characters…
Life at the Dumpling by Trisha Cole
Review by George Yatchisin Despite the obvious misery of the pandemic, if you had the luck, privilege, and health to make it through, it also provided opportunity. It forced us…
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…
Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show by Tommy Tomlinson
Avid Reader Review by George Yatchisin As I was reading Tommy Tomlinson’s Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show, something delightful and ridiculous—at least in…
And Then? And Then? What Else? by Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket
Liveright Review by George Yatchisin Given he has previously penned a series of four books called All the Wrong Questions, it’s not surprising author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) would…