Search Results: roberta silman

Book Review: “In the Land of the Living” — A Coming-of-Age Yarn Mixed With Grief

July 18, 2013
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Austin Ratner’s follow up to “The Jump Artist” is an an exuberant, terrific novel — for its weaknesses, as well as its strengths.

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Book Review: A Remarkable “My Beloved World”

February 19, 2013
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This is not just a story of a plucky girl succeeding; in weaving her complicated story and giving credit to those who helped her to understand how to think critically and how to develop her own moral philosophy, Sonia Sotomayor never forgets that luck and serendipity also play a part.

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Theater Review: All Glory to “Gatz” — “The Great Gatsby” Takes the Stage

March 31, 2012
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In “Gatz,” F Scott Fitzgerald’s words come at the audience like bullets because they are so relevant to so much of American life today. And create the kind of catharsis, that peculiar combination of pity and fear, that is the mark of truly great theater.

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Book Review: “Academy Street” — Affirming Life in Fresh and Surprising Ways

April 29, 2015
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This is a powerful, intensely felt short novel about the lives of ordinary people by a very young Irish writer.

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Book Review: Brilliant “Shards”

November 1, 2011
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In this novel, author Ismet Prcic’s confusion is so vivid that it becomes ours, making us participants in the story.

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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.

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Book Review: Gershom Scholem — A Rich and Complicated Jewish Life

May 2, 2017
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George Prochnik’s biography of Gershom Scholem is flawed, but well worth reading, especially for those struggling with their Jewish and Israeli identities.

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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.

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Book Review: “His Only Son” — A Delightful Discovery from Turn-of-the-Century Spain

December 1, 2016
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A splendid, absorbing read in which you feel as if you’ve been dropped onto the set of a Mozart opera.

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Book Review: “The Hired Man” — A Powerful Novel about the Aftermath of War

November 27, 2013
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Aminatta 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.

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