Roberta Silman
The Bridal Chair will not only answer many questions about this complicated, famous family; like Chagall’s best work, it will also linger in the mind.
Kudos to the Celebrity Series for bringing this interesting and innovative young musician to Boston and kudos to Cameron Carpenter for such a fascinating few hours.
Göran Rosenberg has written a calm yet passionate account of events after Auschwitz, a memoir marked by great intelligence and equally great emotional intensity.
Daisy Hay turns her sharp yet sympathetic eye on Mary Anne and Benjamin Disraeli, whose marriage seemed unlikely at the start but which grew into something not only strange but, even in modern terms, amazing.
Breath & Imagination is a realistic, moving, and very revealing take on what it means to be a black artist in America, both then and now.
After reading this scholarly and accessible biography, I am convinced that Storm Jameson’s life is a must for anyone fascinated by the history of women writers in the 20th century.
What this magisterial biography does so well is give us an even-handed portrait of a remarkable, flawed man who is obsessed with a need to help the disenfranchised.
Gabriel is a searing experience to read, filled with sadness but also humor and forbearance, and may give comfort to parents who are dealing with difficult children.
Lila is an ambitious book that is deeply flawed and not nearly in the same class as Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead.
Elizabeth Harrower’s In Certain Circles is a stunning novel about class and marriage and power; Can Xue’s The Last Lover is a tedious surrealistic farce.
Arts Remembrance: Sonny Rollins, Jazz’s ‘Saxophone Colossus,’ Dies at 95