For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] When you get to know someone, you aren’t presented with their life story in a linear narrative with well-timed beats. Instead, anecdotes and feelings bubble to the surface irregularly; clear personal development is established in retrospect, if at all. Jane Wong’s debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, resembles the latter, creating what … Read more
[ad_1] Rachel Louise Snyder’s propulsive new memoir Women We Buried, Women We Burned begins with the death of her mother. Her father then marries another woman, moves to the Midwest, and raises Snyder in a suffocating Christian household where religion is repeatedly used to justify abuse. Snyder’s impeccable prose lets us live vicariously through her … Read more
[ad_1] Sean Maguire was supposed to be the exception. After making it out of a West Belfast community haunted by economic precarity and the ever-present ghost of the Troubles, Sean was destined to get his college degree in Liverpool and never return. But outpacing your past, and leaving behind the city that molded you, is … Read more
[ad_1] In King: A Life—the first major biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. published in decades—Jonathan Eig describes King as “a gravitational force” in the Freedom Movement. From the earliest days of his involvement, Eig writes, King proved capable of “pulling in reporters, financial donors, and young volunteers,” and transforming a social … Read more
[ad_1] Maheshwata Devi’s urban novella, Truth/Untruth, set in 1980s Calcutta, is a story about dirty pasts that catch up with the present, and how money is often built on this belief that it won’t. It’s fiction that tingles with real-world politics. Translated by Anjum Katyal, the book begins in Khidirpur, a seedy part of central-west … Read more
[ad_1] R.F. Kuang’s dark thriller Yellowface deftly paints the worst of the publishing industry and literary community and tackles questions of cultural appropriation, exploitation, and dispossession with a stunning wit. June Hayward is out celebrating with her friend Athena Liu at a rooftop bar in Washington DC. Both were rising literary stars when they graduated … 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 … Read more
[ad_1] Reading Marta Balcewicz’s debut novel, Big Shadow, I couldn’t deny my subjectivity. In 1998, I was the same age as Judy, the novel’s inexperienced 17-year-old narrator. And like her, I desperately wished to make a living as an artist. I haunted NYC’s East Village, near my home; I held court with some unusual characters … Read more
[ad_1] “The first rule of in vitro fertilization is to never talk about in vitro fertilization,” Isabel Zapata tells us from the waiting room of the IVF clinic, where she refrains from asking the other women how they got there, where they are in the process, how they’re responding to the medications. But there are … Read more
[ad_1] The twenties have been wild for the Internet. Titanic companies like Facebook and Twitter have gone through major changes. Millions have been laid off, and in the past month alone, two popular online journalism portals, Buzzfeed and Vice News, trimmed their operations with the former completely shutting down. Is the Internet, as we know … Read more