Book Reviews

[ad_1] In 1927 Virginia Woolf published “Street Haunting.’’ It’s a long essay that explores the imaginative act of living the lives of other people. Walking among London’s “islands of light, and its long groves of darkness” allowed Woolf the possibility to feel that “one is not tethered to a single mind, but can put on … Read more

[ad_1] During my last summer vacation before the start of my studies at university, I nervously walked into Prospero’s Books in Crouch End. As a teenager, bookstores terrified me as much as they fascinated me. In those vast rows of books, I saw a reflection of my utter ignorance of all the things I thought … Read more

[ad_1] I grew up in a Wisconsin town that, at its peak density, topped 700 residents. Throughout my childhood, I raised sheep to show at the county fair and listened to old country music, something I still do today although I often don’t admit it. I have a deep and genuine love for Wisconsin, for … 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] 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] 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] In her sophomore novel, Hex, Rebecca Dinerstein Knight delivers a thesis on love and poison as if they are one and the same. Amidst the cataclysm of Nell Barber’s expulsion from her graduate level biology program, Nell is determined to continue her research and keeps meticulous notes. This research has been unconventional lately, because … Read more