Review
Carter Vaughn Findley’s “Dreams of Empire” charts the endurance, diversity, achievements, and eventual dissolution of a state that bound East and West for nearly six centuries.
Sunny Sandler gives a quietly affecting performance in a heartfelt, unsentimental coming-of-age drama about a high school musical, a mother’s cancer recurrence, and the precarious coexistence of sorrow and joy.
In a lively blend of memoir, intellectual history, and philosophical primer, Emily Eakin revisits the French theorists who transformed American literary studies—and asks what their skepticism about language and power can still offer in the age of AI.
Director Jane Schoenbrun’s seductive, funny, and unsettling meditation on horror, desire, and cinema turns summer-camp carnage into a tale of identity, intimacy, and renewal.
In Neil Van Leeuwen’s challenging book, belief and imagination overlap in ways that are provocative, unsettling, and unexpectedly illuminating.
At Brighton Music Hall, Boston’s avant-punk legends capped Mark Kates’s label anniversary with a surprisingly potent four-song set and a tribute to the late Jeff “Monoman” Conolly.
Daniel Silva’s latest Gabriel Allon novel sidelines Israeli politics for an unusually timely, expertly paced tale of Russian aggression, drone warfare, and fraying Western alliances.
Jonathan Suazo’s exhilarating, roots-conscious celebration of Puerto Rican and Dominican traditions is the standout, while Ray Obiedo assembles an expertly chosen cast for a consistently engaging, groove-rich set.
Terry Chester Shulman’s biography offers a vivid, corrective account of John Barrymore’s artistic greatness, private devastations, and spectacular decline.
David Robert Mitchell’s affectionate, unsettling return to an early-’80s Detroit suburb brings Spielbergian wonder and suburban anxiety into collision—though its dinosaur-driven black comedy eventually wears thin.
Book Appreciation: “Gulliver’s Travels” at 300 — Small Men, Tech Bro Delusions