For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] We are shaped by our homes: how we fit in and how we don’t, how we grow or shrink to fill spaces, and how we move our bodies across field grass and city concrete. And we are shaped by the stories we read about our homes. Who’s telling them? Who’s claiming them? How can … Read more
[ad_1] Do you know who Andrew Haswell Green was? I’m ashamed to say that prior to reading Jonathan Lee’s phenomenal The Great Mistake, I didn’t know much about the “Father of Greater New York,” even though I’ve benefited from the public spaces that he had an enormous hand in creating. I walk through Central Park … Read more
[ad_1] Krys Malcolm Belc’s memoir The Natural Mother of the Child is a nonlinear exploration of what parenthood means outside the gender binary. In the memoir, composed of a series of interlocking essays, Belc works to get a sense of who he is as a parent by reaching back to his own childhood and delving … Read more
[ad_1] Paul Mendez’s debut novel, Rainbow Milk, begins in 1956 in the voice of Norman Alonso, a skilled gardener who arrives from Jamaica to the industrial town of Blixton with his wife and their two children. Norman and his family are among the first wave of migrants of the Windrush generation who traveled from the … Read more
[ad_1] A debut novel should pack a wallop. Be it through the language or the themes, the feelings the text evokes in readers must be powerful and undeniable. Jesse McCarthy’s novel The Fugitivities does just that, and can perhaps be best explained as a music playlist curated by the likes of authors Jonathan Lethem and … Read more
[ad_1] Just like Tiya Miles, historian at Harvard University and author of All That She Carried, I grew up in Cincinnati, a city where history, voices and ghosts enter without knocking. For Miles, these echoes are held within her Great Aunt Margaret Stribling’s quilt, for me it is my great grandmother’s silver spoon, and for … Read more
[ad_1] Western audiences may not have first-hand experience cramming into Tahrir Square with two million other souls in protest, but we are more than ready to believe in ghosts. The hauntings in Slipping, Mohamed Kheir’s fourth novel (translated by Robin Moger—the first time Kheir’s work has appeared in English), take place in a post-Arab Spring … Read more
[ad_1] The successes of the vaccine rollout in the United States must not be allowed to obscure earlier failures to contain COVID-19. At the time of writing, almost six hundred thousand Americans have died of the disease. In his new book, The Plague Year, Lawrence Wright argues that they did not have to. He believes … Read more
[ad_1] Welcome to another installment of a collaboration between the Chicago Review of Books and the Your Favorite Book podcast. Malavika Praseed, frequent CHIRB contributor and podcast host, seeks to talk to readers and writers about the books that light a fire inside them. What’s your favorite book and why? This week’s guest is Jesse … Read more
[ad_1] My sister used to live on Wellington Avenue. I would drive in from Iowa, search for free parking on nearby Cannon Drive, and stay the weekend. We sometimes walked around, late at night, and I could hear people at all stages of love affairs conducting their lives in the street. Lakeview East happens to … Read more