New York Review Books Review by Walter Cummins Although the forty-four Mavis Gallant works assembled by editor Garth Risk Hallberg for the 2025 Uncollected Stories had their initial magazine publication…
Tag: Review by Walter Cummins
Swerve by Laurie Blauner
Rain Mountain Review by Walter Cummins A swerve is not a deliberate choice but rather the result of a last-second panic, an instantaneous response to a sense of threat, twisting…
Golden State: The Making of California by Michael Hiltzik
Mariner Review by David Starkey The first time I really noticed the bumper stickers on the cars in front of me was when I began driving, in the late 1970s.…
Twist by Colum McCann
Random House Review by Walter Cummins Although Colum McCann doesn’t refer to the 1948-49 Shannon-Weaver theory of communication, my remembering it helped me understand his novel Twist, in which the…
Heartwood by Amity Gaige
Simon & Schuster Review by Walter Cummins Valerie Gillis closes the message to her mother that begins the novel Heartwood with this crucial memory: “But for a while, in your…
Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
Random House Review by Walter Cummins Variations of similar human tensions unite the twelve stories in this collection. In each, at least one character stands out as mastering one or…
The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker
Random House Review by Walter Cummins This case is indeed strange as it is revealed by through the voices of the two people at the center of the complication—Dr. Henry…
Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel by Edwin Frank
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Review by Walter Cummins For many readers of Edwin Frank’s Stranger Than Fiction, an immediate satisfaction will be Frank’s close consideration of more than thirty novels…
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Knopf Review by Walter Cummins Three of the four women who figure in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi’s Dream Count are attractive, affluent, successful Nigerians—the wealthy travel-writer and hopeful novelist, Chiamaka, her…
Gliff by Ali Smith
Pantheon Review by Walter Cummins Words create multiple possibilities throughout the world two adolescent siblings inhabit in Ali Smith’s latest novel, Gliff–title’s sound what the younger one, Rose, chooses to…