Books

Book Review: No “Odd Woman” Out — Vivian Gornick’s Richly Engaging Memoir

May 28, 2015
Posted in , ,

Author Vivian Gornick’s discontent is foundational, fertile, unquenchable, except by writing, and quite often funny.

Read More

Poetry Review: “Davey McGravy” — Real Grief, Real Imagination

May 27, 2015
Posted in , ,

Part of the maturity of Davey McGravy is how, though each poem has its own shape, each is a necessary part of the whole.

Read More

Book Interview: When Did America Become a Christian Nation?

May 27, 2015
Posted in , ,

“Yes, America might have been a nation of Christians, but that was different from being formally a Christian nation.”

Read More

Book Review: “Girl of My Dreams” — A Vivid Look at Hollywood and History

May 23, 2015
Posted in , ,

Peter Davis knows Hollywood from the inside and has written a splendid novel about the great days of Tinsel Town with the kind of passion you rarely see anywhere these days.

Read More

Book Review: Oliver Sacks’ “On The Move” — A Mix of the Distant and the Intimate

May 20, 2015
Posted in , ,

Oliver Sacks’ On the Move is an absorbing, idiosyncratic, often moving memoir.

Read More

Book Review: The Fiction of Norway’s Per Petterson — The Early Bonds That Bind

May 19, 2015
Posted in , , ,

I Refuse is one of those novels that only truly comes clear on a second reading, when certain initially apparently innocuous, easily passed-over sentences reverberate with revealed meaning.

Read More

Book Review: “We All Looked Up” — A Book and Album Where Adolescence Meets the Apocalypse

May 14, 2015
Posted in , ,

It’s not by accident that some of the greatest coming-of-age stories are concerned with deconstructing social stereotypes.

Read More

Book Review: “Days of Rage” — Counterculture Craziness

May 13, 2015
Posted in , ,

How can you act sanely when your country is brazenly committing genocide? Many of us didn’t.

Read More

Poetry Review: Peter Gizzi’s “In Defense of Nothing” — Poetry as the Fruit of Bewilderment

May 5, 2015
Posted in , ,

Peter Gizzi is a master at allowing his poetic language to summon its own range of meanings, rather than blatantly declaring them to the reader.

Read More

Book Review: “Academy Street” — Affirming Life in Fresh and Surprising Ways

April 29, 2015
Posted in , ,

This is a powerful, intensely felt short novel about the lives of ordinary people by a very young Irish writer.

Read More

Recent Posts