Roberta Silman

Book Review: “The Last Painting of Sara De Vos” — On Art and Forgery

May 17, 2016
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You may have read similar earlier works, but Dominic Smith’s novel is in a class of its own.

Book Review: Helen Dunmore’s Terrific “Exposure”

April 28, 2016
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There are resemblances to Virginia Woolf in Helen Dunmore’s awareness that much of family life lies in what is not said as much as in what is said.

Book Review: An Uneven “Bottomland”

April 5, 2016
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Perhaps in the future Michelle Hoover will let her very real talent take her into the unknown, where narrative and myth merge.

Book Review: “Living On Paper” — Letters From Iris Murdoch

March 5, 2016
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Iris Murdoch proves a wonderful companion: funny, honest, insightful, and courageous.

Concert Review: Mirror Visions — An Extraordinary Vocal Ensemble

January 25, 2016
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I urge anyone interested in the voice and or just terrific music to try to attend one of Mirror Visions’ concerts.

Book Review: “Winter” — A Luminous Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man

January 20, 2016
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This novel about Thomas Hardy becomes not only the story of an odd triangle, but also a meditation on the nature of art.

Book Review: “The Big Green Tent” — Lives Lived Without Trust, Memorably Conveyed

December 18, 2015
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We root for all of the ordinary folk who survived — and are still surviving even now — one of the bleakest and saddest periods in Russia’s history.

Fuse Book Review: Living With the Spenders—Surviving an Odd Childhood

November 18, 2015
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One must be impressed by memoirist Matthew Spender, who refuses to descend into resentment or anything resembling self-pity despite a very strange childhood.

Book Review: “Death by Water” — Imagination, Masterfully Redeemed

October 29, 2015
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Death By Water plumbs the depths of the human condition in an entirely original way.

Book Review: “Peggy Guggenheim, The Shock of the Modern” — The Woman Behind a Remarkable Legacy

October 1, 2015
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Although there is a strangely dour tinge to this biography of Peggy Guggenheim, Francine Prose is ultimately fair.

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