Stanford Review by Walter Cummins I wish Impasse had been written when my wife was still alive. The book would have provided so much information and so many ideas to…
Tag: Review by Walter Cummins
Hitler and My Mother-in-Law by Terese Svoboda
OR Books Review by Walter Cummins Terese Svoboda could have begun the title of her latest book with a number of other famous or familiar names—Goebbels, Goering, Martha Gellhorn, H.V.…
10 Best Books of 2025
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…
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Knopf Review by Walter Cummins A Guardian and a Thief is chaotic novel, filled with surprising turns and ironic shifts, with characters whose plans constantly backfire, causing accidental but often…
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Hogarth Review by Walter Cummins When I read The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny I hadn’t known Kiran Desai had devoted twenty years to creating the novel, but I suspected…
All These Things I Will Give to You by Robert Clinton
Rain Mountain Review by Walter Cummins Robert Clinton’s ekphrastic poem “Egon Schiele,” which finds words to describe how Schiele creates a painting, provides a visual equivalent to the way Clinton…
The Expert of Subtle Revisions by Kristen Menger-Anderson
Crown Review by Walter Cummins The Expert of Subtle Revisions opens with a conundrum in a section titled “Mira,” set in Half Moon Bay, California, in 2016: “As far as…
Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon
Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Shadow Ticket, Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, published sixty-two years after his first, V, the author having reached age eighty-eight, replicates a number of themes treated…
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
Knopf Review by Walter Cummins What We Can Know is divided into two parts, each covering the same events from information available a century apart. Part One, narrated by a…
The Paris Express by Emma Donaghue
Summit Review by Walter Cummins Emma Donaghue succeeds in integrating multiple stories that involve a group of varied individuals on a train ride from Granville, Normandy, to Montparnasse station in…