Books
Think of these novellas as variations on a common theme: a complicated world is scrutinized through the elemental viewpoint of one of the most memorable characters in American fiction over the past quarter-century.
Read MoreThere will be readers who appreciate Daniel Menaker’s brevity and lack of emotional engagement, but for me, much of “My Mistake” reads like notes for a memoir.
Read MoreThroughout his writing, poet Seamus Heaney’s penetrating imagination is one that strives for accuracy.
Read MoreAs the individual who quite possibly had the best seats in the house for the monumental legal battle that unfolded over the course of a few weeks in the summer of 1971, James Goodale provers invaluable morsels of insight and information.
Read MoreAminatta Forna has given us a novel that belies its modest premise, a book about how the human mind protects itself by not knowing, yet sometimes, due to unexpected circumstances, comes to terms with what it thought it could not.
Read MoreA collection of poems and essays by the admired German poet Gottfried Benn, who, because of his brief association with Nazism, has been absent from our mainstream, non-specialized, English-language view of modern German poetry.
Read MoreIn “Some Day,” Shemi Zarhin has masterfully woven together a tangle of bittersweet tales and elusive dreams. it is a book that is a pleasure to read and reread.
Read MoreWe are left with a somewhat scattered narrative written in the third person with an omniscient narrator that moves from one inner life to another, sometimes to good effect, and sometimes leaving the reader stranded.
Read MoreNina Schuyler’s uneven novel raises some interesting questions in the course of the protagonist’s quest, and there are many fascinating details about Japan and Noh plays and the power of silence.
Read MoreSo is the book worth reading? Depends how interested you are in twentieth century cultural history, in music and creative genius, in marriage and sexuality.
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Music Commentary: A Mystery Solved on the 50th Anniversary of the Release of “Queen II”