Like a Hallmark movie, Dinners with Ruth is an engaging and entertaining story, with episodes of great pathos. It is an upbeat, easy-to-read gift book, which is undoubtedly what its publisher intended.
Culture Vulture
Book Review: “In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss” — A Brave and Heartrending Story
This is a profoundly disturbing memoir about a subject that hits close to home for many readers.
Book Review: Sarah Ruhl’s “Smile: The Story of a Face”
This is the voice of a wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, patient, and author who wrote a memoir on her own terms. I can’t wait for Sarah Ruhl’s next play.
Book Review: “Mike Nichols: A Life” — Portrait of a Protean Artist
This nearly 600-page text is a closely detailed, comprehensive portrait by a biographer riveted, as many of us are, by his charismatic subject.
Book Review: “Fallout” — Memorably Detailing the Defeat of the Hiroshima Cover-Up
I heartily recommend M.M. Blume’s excellent Fallout, which ably synthesizes large amounts of archival, historical, and biographical material from three continents.
Book Review: “Twilight of Democracy” — A Slim Investigation of the “Clerks”
Twilight of Democracy made me yearn (uncharacteristically) for hard scientific data to supplement Anne Applebaum’s punditry about the pundits.
Film Review: “There Are No Lions in Tel Aviv” — The Story of Rabbi Doolittle
This is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen, one that I plan to view again and again.
Book Review: “Here We Are” — Philip Roth’s Boswell
This glimpse into the relationship of two American Jewish writers makes for good reading during the pandemic: an intelligent, gracefully written memoir of friendship.
Book Review: “These Fevered Days” — Exploring an Enigma
From the first page of Martha Ackmann’s new book on Emily Dickinson, you know you’re reading something entirely different.
Book Review: Vivian Gornick’s “Unfinished Business” — Remembrance of Pages Past
Vivian Gornick is an elegist of the transformative experience of reading and writing, what she calls “the companionateness” of books.