For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Hannah Gadsby understands the value of context. In Nanette, her startling stand-up comedy show that was made into a Netflix special in 2018, she memorably provides additional context for Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. She recounts how she was once confronted by an audience member who, in the course of criticizing antidepressants, argued that if Van … Read more
[ad_1] “There is no way to tell the story of a great violence,” writes Candice Wuehle in the succinct introduction to her kaleidoscopic debut novel, MONARCH. The story that follows suggests the opposite is true: there are perhaps too many ways to tell the story of a great violence. As eerie revelations about the “blank … Read more
[ad_1] Over the course of thirty years, writer and teacher Sarah Fay received six different psychiatric diagnoses: anorexia, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and bipolar disorder. Only twelve when she was diagnosed with anorexia, Fay accepted the diagnosis and came to identify as an anorexic, reading and rereading Steven … Read more
[ad_1] It’s a tricky thing to infuse a story set in our actual, current world with giant supernatural problems and potentials. Call it “the problem of allegorical interference.” If we’re aware of actual injustices in the world—and their often-thorny causes—then it becomes, at best, weird to blame them on vampires or aliens, to focus on … Read more
[ad_1] When I was a liminal fifteen in Reagan’s dire 1980s, my desperately-needed imaginative transport took the form of cable reruns of The Twilight Zone. Having been met at the departure terminal of the fantastic some years earlier by Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, I quickly discovered that Rod Serling’s “land of both shadow and … Read more
[ad_1] In her 1938 essay, “The Three Guineas,” Virginia Woolf christened herself, along with her literary predecessors, as “the daughters of educated men.” Though she referenced only three fathers by name, the paternal influence she described can indeed be applied to a remarkable number of female writers from ages past. For varying reasons, Fanny Burney, … 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 Elaine … Read more
[ad_1] Blanche DuBois. Hamlet. Scarlett O’Hara. Heathcliffe. Has any celebrity couple created more memorable characterizations that linger in the public imagination than Vivien Leigh and Sir Laurence Olivier? In addition to their prolific work on stage and screen, modern audiences may not be aware they were also two of the first global celebrities. Obsession with … Read more
[ad_1] A cottage industry of likability discourse manifests with regularity, and Jerks, Sara Lippmann’s new collection of stories, will no doubt inspire a certain level of curiosity with the subject. The characters are not nice, they are not kind, they are not good people; they are, as the title suggests, jerks. That isn’t to say … Read more
[ad_1] The subtitle of Christine Emba’s Rethinking Sex: A Provocation is revealing yet misjudged. The description tells us a lot about Emba’s understanding of her own work but does not accurately describe the book, which frustrates rather than provokes. The issue is not just that its conclusion, that the “best sexual world is perhaps a … Read more