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.
Book Reviews
Reviews of books and other forms of literature
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.
Ray of the Star by Laird Hunt
Pain is one of the particles forming the novel’s packed core. The story focuses (largely) on graying-haired Harry, a man who once suffered a loss that left his life in shambles.
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned by Wells Tower
The characters in these stories are all recovering from the demise of a major relationship: a broken marriage, neglectful parents, ungrateful children, lack of sex, sexual abuse, and overall disillusionment with the people closest to them.
Of Song and Water by Joseph Coulson
Throughout the novel, Coulson’s narration slips fluidly between the perspectives of the three generations of Moore men, jumbling timelines and storylines without much fuss over which parts belong to the present and which to the past.