Steve Stern’s novel about the Jewish expressionist painter Chaim Soutine is more informative than it is engaging.
Books
Book Review: “The Undercurrents” — History as a Whisper in Your Mind
Kirsty Bell’s psychological-cultural-topographical-historical walking tour of Berlin is an idiosyncratic delight.
Book Review: “War and Me: A Memoir” — A Poignant Tale of Survival
Faleeha Hassan’s assessment of the damage America caused — through the ‘good intentions’ of regime change — may surprise many who depended on the mainstream media to learn about what happened in Iraq.
Book Reviews: “Grey Bees” and “Lucky Breaks” — Civilian Life in Wartime Ukraine
Neither book is primarily directly about the war itself. Rather, in sometimes oblique ways, they show the price paid by Ukraine’s non-combatant civilians.
Book Review: “The Shores of Bohemia” — Cape Bohemian Rhapsody
The Shores of Bohemia is clearly a labor of love, and a worthy one. But John Taylor Williams’ idea of “a group portrait,” however attractive, proves impossible to pull off.
Poetry Review: John Koethe’s “Beyond Belief” – Disembodied Mind
Poet John Koethe moralizes in an abstract “universal” space — some might call it versifying in a vacuum.
Book Review: “As It Turns Out” — Not Enough About Edie and Andy
Alice Sedgwick Wohl has a disturbing tendency throughout the book to back away from her points even as she makes them, as if afraid she will find herself trapped in some politically incorrect cul de sac or just a bad neighborhood.
Book Review: “We Carry Their Bones” — Life and Death at a Reform School During Jim Crow
We Carry Their Bones arrives at a time of increased interest in the history of racism and reform schools, particularly in Florida.
Poetry Review: “Whale Fall” — The Dark at the Bottom of the Ocean
It is dark, so very dark, at the ocean’s bottom. And yet, there is also a disquieting, wonder-filled magic in the child’s moon which hovers over these poems; an incantatory moon echoing like a lullaby, drawing on a time of innocence.
Poetry Review: “Island Heart” — The Dance of Passion
These poems are of their own time and place — written in Haiti and France early in the twentieth century — yet they remain impressively fresh.