Book Reviews

[ad_1] Writing a great, multi-generational and nationalist novel is no small feat. Salman Rushdie did it with Midnight’s Children, Junot Diaz did it with The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Gunter Grass with Tin Drum, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in a manner of speaking, with One Hundred Years of Solitude. With the exception of … Read more

[ad_1] Amidst a pandemic, many of the most wealthy and powerful Americans continue to value the vitality of the economy over the vitality of humanity. We know this is nothing new. America’s legacy is founded on a willingness to fatally exploit and ignore marginalized communities for profit, all the while erasing the evidence of heinous … Read more

[ad_1] David Starr Jordan was an accomplished scientist who broadened our understanding of aquatic life — and promoted toxic ideas that harmed many innocent people. He was the first president of Stanford University, but after the untimely death of the university’s co-founder, he behaved in a way that still arouses suspicion. Writing about Jordan is … Read more

[ad_1] The nature of the book review cycle means excellent books often disappear once the initial press subsides. Book coverage tends to focus on either what’s new (through interviews, reviews and events) or canonized classics. As such, many books fall into a middle-ground of not being quite new but not being old enough for canon … Read more

[ad_1] Carmen Boullosa’s The Book of Anna begins with an unexploded bomb, or rather, one that fizzles out, “like an old man farting.” The anarchist seamstress Clementine has smuggled an explosive device onto a tram in St. Petersburg by hiding it in a bundle of rags and rocking it like a baby. The date is … Read more

[ad_1] There are many different kinds of magic. Any novelist gets to choose what kind or kinds to incorporate in the stories we tell. In the new historical fantasy novel The Glass Magician, Caroline Stevermer incorporates stage magic from the golden age of vaudeville with a more mystical, inventive system of transformative magic, and the … Read more

[ad_1] Julia Alvarez is one of our most prolific writers—her work spanning multiple genres and audiences. She has published three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, 11 books for children and young adults, and now seven literary novels. Her latest, Afterlife, is her first adult novel in nearly 15 years. Fans of Alvarez know … Read more

[ad_1] The protagonist of Andrés Barba’s novel A Luminous Republic is its premise: thirty-two mendicant children appear in the city of San Cristóbal, make the local denizens uneasy, speak in an unintelligible language, commit acts of seemingly random violence, disappear into the jungle, and eventually lose their lives. If this sounds like a spoiler, rest … Read more

[ad_1] Megan Campisi’s novel Sin Eater introduces us to an alternate universe, one reminiscent in many ways of Tudor England, in which certain food items are eaten for the symbolic absolution of a dying person’s sins (a practice not unknown to past Christian communities). For example, pickled cucumber for idleness, roast pigeon for thieving, a rabbit’s heart … Read more

[ad_1] Lacey May is a 14 year old girl living with her alcoholic mother in the sweltering heat of Peaches, a town in California. Once a lush raisin capital and now a drought-stricken desert, this town is replete with people who are plagued by poverty and thirst. Hordes of its residents have turned to religious … Read more