For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Upcountry, Chin-Sun Lee’s debut novel, is an enchanting, intertwining tale of three lonely women in the fictional, gossip-hungry Catskills town of Caliban. The story opens when April Ives, a local single mother, has lost her home in foreclosure to Claire Pederson, a city lawyer with upstate roots. Drawn to the property’s dilapidated beauty——“so ruined,” … Read more
[ad_1] As a child, amidst familial turbulence, I prayed to my mouse plush toy, asking existential questions through wordless telepathy. My family was not religionless—we were Buddhists who attended temple on major holidays—but I found comfort in confiding in this stuffed animal that I associated with wisdom of its own. I understand now, after reading … Read more
[ad_1] We like to think we are masters of our bodies and minds and, for the most part, we possess total agency and comprehension of our thoughts and actions. This assumption is embedded so thoroughly in our society that it seems unnecessary to even observe it. But that is exactly what the legendary Brazilian writer … Read more
[ad_1] Rejection letter erasure poems recently took over literary Twitter/X. Writers scribble over rejection letters they’ve received, omitting words and phrases until another message emerges. That message is often brutally funny, as if a barefaced NO lay submerged beneath the carefully crafted letter all along. But these erasure poems do more than give writers a … Read more
[ad_1] In 1870, parole emerged as a progressive-era reform to a growing problem. Disillusioned with the spectacle of punishment, parole would return lawbreakers to full citizenship once they could prove they had changed. Their logic was simple. How could a judge at trial know a person’s capacity for change? If prisons were meant to rehabilitate … Read more
[ad_1] When I think “satire” as a genre of writing, I think The Onion, or McSweeny’s, maybe A Modest Proposal—writing that is upfront and obvious about its satire. But there’s another level of skill when a writer is able to weave in satire without it being the first thought you have when reading it. Jeremy … Read more
[ad_1] Is liberalism dead? Has that dewy-eyed, woke, overly optimistic beast of limited eyesight, enlarged heart, and dangerously underdeveloped brain, this Jabberwocky of the geopolitical wood finally been slain? More to the point, can we at last acknowledge that there are no such things as universal values, no inherently reliable truth to language, and that … Read more
[ad_1] The Translator’s Voice is a new monthly column from Ian J. Battaglia here at the Chicago Review of Books, dedicated to global literature and the translators who work tirelessly and too often thanklessly to bring these books to the English-reading audience. Subscribe to his newsletter to get notified of new editions as well as other notes on … Read more
[ad_1] Bestselling Canadian author Karma Brown never shies away from tackling hard topics. Her first novel, Come Away with Me, was a fascinating portrait of a woman dealing with unspeakable loss; subsequent novels have addressed infertility, gestational surrogacy, all-consuming guilt, the dark side of 1950s ideals, and other ethical and moral quandaries. Her gift is … Read more
[ad_1] There’s no way to ease into this. I met James Kennedy in person while he was dressed as a tornado. If your brain can stretch to imagine what that looked like and how it might be done, Kennedy’s new book, Bride of the Tornado, is for you. With that particular Midwest experience of high … Read more