Review by Walter Cummins Novelist as a Vocation—Haruki Murakami’s collection of ten essays on novel writing, first published in Japan in 2015 but not translated into English until 2022—suggests that…
Tag: Review by Walter Cummins
Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
Review by Walter Cummins The character of Gwendolen Kelling provides a form of ballast to Kate Atkinson’s Shrines of Gaiety. It’s not that she can prevent the criminality and murders—bodies…
Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy by Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Review by Walter Cummins In her latest book, Shanda, Letty Cottin Pogrebin revisits the early and mid-twentieth century obsession with covering up family scandals that, if revealed, would destroy the…
Hidden Cargoes by Chris Arthur
Review by Walter Cummins Hidden Cargoes—like Chris Arthur’s previous eight essay collections—is a book that can change your life, not so much your behaviors and beliefs but how you relate…
A Storm in the Stars by Don Zancanella
Review by Walter Cummins The presence of Mary Godwin Shelley opens and closes Don Zancanella’s intimate portrayal of the circle around Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Storm in the Stars. The…
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…
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…
The Unwritten Book: An Investigation by Samantha Hunt
Review by Walter Cummins Samantha Hunt subtitles The Unwritten Book an “Investigation.” The connotation of that word suggests a systematic analysis of clues. But what Hunt has really produced is…
Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality by Eliot Schrefer
Review by Walter Cummins Eliot Schrefer’s Queer Ducks is a revolutionary book, one that upends longstanding assumptions about the nature and purpose of sex in the animal kingdom, with implications…