For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] In a time of isolation and loss, literature keeps us connected. It also helps us to escape our reality; dream a little bigger, hope a little harder. We asked our staff and contributors to send us their most anticipated books for 2022. From experimental short stories to treasured novels in translation: There is much … Read more
[ad_1] For me, as a musician, one mark of a great short story collection is when it operates somewhat like a great symphony: cast in distinct movements, moving through different moods, tonalities and orchestrations, but at some base level—whether heard or simply felt—motivically and thematically cohesive. Manywhere, Morgan Thomas’ expansive and expressive debut collection, is … Read more
[ad_1] In many ways, we are our experiences. We wake up, experience something, react to it, consider it, form thoughts on it, go to sleep, and wake up again. This continuity of thought—memory connecting point to point to point—is one of the ways we as people come to define ourselves, according to John Locke. Novels, … Read more
[ad_1] In Primo Levi: An Identikit, the Italian critic Marco Belpoliti pieces together Primo Levi’s life as a writer, Jewish citizen of Italy, public intellectual, and survivor of Auschwitz. Like an identikit, or composite sketch, the book presents a mosaic image of the author composed of stories of different parts of his life and work. … 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 Jami … Read more
[ad_1] Your appreciation of Gunnhild Øyehaugh’s Present Tense Machine, translated by Kari Dickson, will be partially predicated on how much you think about multiverses, or déjà vu, or ever have had the indescribable sense of something missing, in yourself, in others. What elevates this novel beyond the admittedly fascinating realm of such scientific ruminations is … Read more
[ad_1] Jami Attenberg and I both hail from the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. Early in her new collection of essays, she even mentions my hometown by name, and from this entry point, I anticipated kinship. Her musings on the writing life, on self-actualization, on finding home in a variety of places, these all felt wholly relatable … Read more
[ad_1] Please note, this review contains mentions of sexual assault. Several years ago during a dinner party at my home, a friend from South Africa noticed that I had a copy of J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace on my bookshelf. It became an instant conversation piece. The friend reported that the book, published in 1999, had caused … Read more
[ad_1] Like Gone Girl, Antoine Wilson’s Mouth to Mouth is a thriller titled after its inciting incident. It’s the early nineties, and Jeff Cook, an aimless recent college graduate saves the life of a drowning swimmer off of Santa Monica beach by diving into the surf and performing CPR on the man. Though he doesn’t … Read more
[ad_1] The oracular in Gwen E. Kirby’s Shit Cassandra Saw is tense business—fraught with the dynamics of shared experience, speaking and listening. This collection of short stories reminds me of a woman who used to ride Chicago’s Red Line. You could tell when she was on the train because when it pulled into its next … Read more