Katharine Coldiron

Book Review: “Vanishing Monuments” — An Unforgettable Memory Palace

May 18, 2020
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Vanishing Monuments is painstaking, in the literal sense of that compound word: it took enormous pain to make this book. It’s a novel that, for all its organizational strategies, reads with the immediacy of a memoir.

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Book Review: Amina Cain’s “Indelicacy” — Brilliant, But Icy, Minimalism

February 10, 2020
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Amina Cain’s style is unusual, and it may tow readers so rapidly through this brief novel they won’t look back.

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Recommended Books, 2019

December 14, 2019
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An eclectic round-up of our favorite books of the year from our critics.

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Book Review: “Vernon Subutex 1” — Rock and Roll, Drugs, and Sex Among the Over-The-Hill Gang

November 7, 2019
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Virginie Despentes novel reads like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia mashed with Don Quixote and set in contemporary Paris.

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Book Review: “As a River” — How Secrets Divide

September 15, 2019
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As a River is a sensuously and smoothly written book, a heartfelt meditation on what divides us from each other and from love.

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Book Review: “We Are All Good People Here” — From All Sides

August 3, 2019
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We Are All Good People Here is an enormously insightful examination of how dangerous suggestible people can be, to those around them and to themselves.

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Book Review: “The Bird King” — Nothing But Enchantment

March 12, 2019
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The Bird King is an utterly lovely reading experience.

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Book Review: “The Western Wind” — A Magisterial Murder Mystery

February 22, 2019
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The Western Wind turns out to be a beautifully written novel, a serious book of great depth, intention, and craft.

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Book Review: “Gatsby’s Child” — America’s Old Money, In Decay

February 18, 2019
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Everything about Schumacher’s story indicates that clichés about the ’50s are so powerful because things really were that way: repressive, poisonous, full of unspoken secrets and blustering ignorance.

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Book Review: “For Other Ghosts” — Stories that Surprise

October 8, 2018
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The twelve stories in this collection are set in radically different places, use multiple forms, and reflect varying levels of political engagement.

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