Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays
Zadie Smith, the prodigiously gifted English novelist, seems to have been caught in the tangle of literary debate from the beginning.
Book Reviews
Reviews of books and other forms of literature
Declan Kiberd’s Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Life in Joyce’s Masterpiece
Declan Kiberd, a professor of Irish literature, has set out to rescue Ulysses from its reputation.
George Scialabba’s What Are Intellectuals Good For?
Scialabba writes as if he's trying by sheer example value to will a smarter, more honest, more aesthetically and morally sensitive Left into being.
Donald Hall’s Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry
For more than fifty years, Donald Hall has had a two-sided career, his fifteen books of poetry matched by fifteen books of nonfiction.
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Whether their subjugation is political, familial, romantic, or cultural, Adichie's headstrong and heartstrong heroines reach a point where they take action to loosen whatever is choking them.
Scorch Atlas by Blake Butler, Reviewed by Tim Horvath
Right off the bat, Scorch Atlas asserts itself as, if not the coolest-looking book you’ve ever fanned between your fingers, on the short-list, interior and exterior alike. Trot it out to the right café or park bench, and people will crane to try to discern what you’re reading. Visually, its obvious allusion (though a Google …
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The Humbling by Philip Roth
It would be an understatement to say that Roth has never excelled at writing women characters.
Chronic City: Review of Jonathan Lethem’s Eighth Novel
First, I am not the strong reader I might like to be. Second, I found Chronic City tedious, boring, and uninspiring. Third, the second might find cause in the first.
Please Step Back by Ben Greenman
Glittery and disco-flashy, but never indulgent, Greenman's novel is so fluid that one probably won't pick up on the key changes...
A Gate At The Stairs by Lorrie Moore, Reviewed
No one who is a fan of Lorrie Moore, or of coming-of-age novels rich in wit and specificity, should resist reading A Gate At The Stairs.