Basic Books | Harvard Review by Walter Cummins Tobias Becker opens his new book with this epigraph from the Beatles’ song to explain the origin of his title: “Yesterday /…
Tag: Review by Walter Cummins
Signatures in Stone: A Bomarzo Mystery
Pleasure Boat Review by Walter Cummins Linda Lappin’s novel, which was the overall winner of the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense in 2014, is now out in…
The Vulnerables: A Novel by Sigrid Nunez
Riverhead Review by Walter Cummins While reading The Vulnerables, my eye kept being drawn to the subtitle, A Novel, in the header at the top of every page, as if…
California Review of Books – 10 Best Books of 2023
The following list was decided after much consultation between California Review of Books co-editors David Starkey and Brian Tanguay and the journals’ most frequent reviewers, Walter Cummins and George Yatchisin.…
Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will by Robert M. Sapolsky
Penguin Review by Walter Cummins First, a confession. I was not an objective reader of Sapolsky’s book because I was looking for evidence to undermine his thesis and find some…
What I Know about July by Kat Hausler
Meerkat Review by Walter Cummins Throughout most of Kat Hausler’s novel very little is known about the young woman called July, especially by Simon Kesler, who is by far most…
Charming Young Man by Eliot Schrefer
HarperCollins Review by Walter Cummins Eliot Schrefer’s title character, his charming young man, Léon Delafosse, is a teenaged parvenu, a poor country boy sought after by fin de siècle Parisian…
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
Viking Review by Walter Cummins As a fan of mysteries, especially those with academic settings, I was drawn to the description of Rebecca Makkai’s latest title. It offered situations that…
The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality by William Egginton
Pantheon Review by Walter Cummins Emmanuel Kant relished fine wines and gourmet meals. Werner Heisenberg thought profoundly as he strolled through a park in winter. Jorge Luis Borges was devastated…
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Zadie Smith published a piece in The New Yorker about her efforts to ignore “the long shadow” of Charles Dickens (“On Killing Charles Dickens”) when…