Book Reviews

A Simple Thesis in “Seek You” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 14, 2021 by Taylor Griggs

Though the COVID-19 pandemic has understandably dominated most of the conversation around public health in the last year and a half, it has been running … Read More

Parental Restlessness in “Wayward” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 13, 2021 by Teddy Burnette

A middle-aged white woman walks down the street to the grocery store and convinces herself that she’s different than the other women she’s passing by. … Read More

Connections and Entanglements in “Runner” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 12, 2021 by Lori Rader-Day

In Runner, Tracy Clark’s newest crime novel, Chicago is built on networks: the safety nets that catch the vulnerable as they fall—foster home placements, a … Read More

Lost, Like Really Lost, In Space – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 12, 2021 by Jake Casella Brookins

A while ago there was that obviously bad take that “horror cannot be set in space,” which, if nothing else, gave folks an excuse to … Read More

The Body and Environment in “Variations on the Body” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 9, 2021 by Kat Solomon

The characters in María Ospina’s debut collection are haunted by the marks that time and trauma have left upon their bodies. Variations on the Body … Read More

Self-Determination and Transcendence in “Books Promiscuously Read” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 8, 2021 by Ryan Asmussen

The experience of reading, like any intimately subjective experience, is a challenge to fathom, perhaps as tricky for us as it was for Augustine, staring … Read More

An Inheritance of Silence “Late Summer” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 7, 2021 by Amanda Sarasien

A former industrial boomtown, sinking into dingy oblivion. A web of extended immigrant families, drifting apart as individual fortunes rise and fall. The prodigal son, … Read More

Overthinking or Underestimating in “Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 6, 2021 by Caitlin Stout

While events in the past year have left some hoping for a “return to normal” in the coming months, others must continue to cope with … Read More

Temporal Distance in “Nobody, Somebody, Anybody” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 6, 2021 by D. W. White

Among the great and hidden challenges of past tense, first-person narration—and one that, while seemingly omnipresent in contemporary fiction, is seldom discussed—is fixing the temporal … Read More

12 Must-Read Books for July – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsJuly 5, 2021 by Editorial Staff

Are the temperatures rising where you are, dear reader? If you’re like those of us at the CHIRB without regular access to air conditioning, maybe … Read More

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