Complex Expressions of Connection in “The Last Language” – Chicago Review of Books

Complex Expressions of Connection in “The Last Language” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] “One thing all truths have in common,” observes Angela, the protagonist of award-winning author Jennifer duBois’s fourth novel, The Last Language, is that “they are only visible from certain distances.” Angela is a twenty-seven-year-old PhD candidate in linguistics at Harvard. She is also the recently widowed mother of four-year-old Josephine. After a harrowing miscarriage, … Read more

Desiring the Divine in “The Pole” – Chicago Review of Books

Desiring the Divine in “The Pole” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] “Go back to Beatrice, the real Beatrice,” urges Beatriz, a graceful yet unassuming forty-something patron of the Sala Mampou concert hall who lives with her husband and son in Barcelona. “What was it that made Dante choose her over all other women? Or go back to Mary. What was it about Mary full of … Read more

Satire and Sorrow in Lars Iyers’ “My Weil” – Chicago Review of Books

Satire and Sorrow in Lars Iyers’ “My Weil” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Ontological evil; the madness of evil or the evil of madness. This is the topic around which Johnny has centered his doctoral degree in Disaster Studies at All Saints University in Manchester, England. Raised in a children’s home, Johnny registers as more psychologically fragile (or maybe just more earnestly human) than the rest of … Read more

In Search of Lost Time and Space in Kate Zambreno’s “The Light Room” – Chicago Review of Books

In Search of Lost Time and Space in Kate Zambreno’s “The Light Room” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] A novel Kate Zambreno reads during the first year of the pandemic opens with a description of an apartment walled by windows on all sides. The novel’s protagonist has recently separated from her husband, and she takes this sun-struck apartment for her three-year-old-daughter. Zambreno, a Guggenheim fellow, professor of writing at Columbia University, and … Read more