review – Page 86 – Reads A Lot

Brutal Order and Violent Extremes in “Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsMarch 8, 2021 by Joseph Houlihan

[ad_1] Daniel Borzutzky’s newest collection of poetry, Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018, examines specific violence in America, explicit within the global economic order. This collection, like his 2016 National Book Award-winning The Performance of Being Human, and Lake Michigan, examines a psychogeography of movement. There’s Pittsburgh, Chile, the American Middle West. Bodies … Read more

Searching for the Language of Home in “An I-Novel” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsMarch 6, 2021 by Leanne Ogasawara

[ad_1] An I-Novel by Minae Mizumura is an immigrant story turned on its head. In traditional tales, a foreign-born young person arrives on American shores unable to speak the language but grows up to become a great success. An I-Novel, instead, is about two Japanese sisters in America who long to go “home.” But what … Read more

Provocative Self-Help in “Laziness Does Not Exist” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsMarch 5, 2021 by Bessie Taliaferro

[ad_1] The self-help book never goes out of style because we always want more. The billion dollar market continues to grow each year, but the gist remains the same: make money, save time, be present, find joy. They promise that we all have the potential to self-actualize in the career of our dreams. But what … Read more

Time is a Fantasy in “The Memory Theater” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsMarch 1, 2021 by Jake Casella Brookins

[ad_1] Karin Tidbeck is one of those writers whose work is delightfully hard to pin down to a genre—their work includes fantasy and science fiction, but slips between genres to new and stranger places. In their new novel, The Memory Theater, Tidbeck has crafted a kind of modern folktale. Inventive, surreal, at times violent, the … Read more

Hot Takes and Splintered Identities in “Fake Accounts” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsFebruary 26, 2021 by Rabeea Saleem

[ad_1] Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts is one of the most buzzed-about debuts of this year. The premise is intriguing: On the eve of Trump’s inauguration, a blogger finds out that her boyfriend is secretly a conspiracy theorist. She decides to dump him rather than confront him right away. The secret knowledge that Felix, her boyfriend, … Read more

Focusing on the story in “The City of Good Death” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsFebruary 24, 2021 by nazlikoca

[ad_1] Priyanka Champaneri’s enthralling debut novel, The City of Good Death, winner of the 2018 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, is a heart-warming read about a city where people come to die in peace and the beauty of being alive, enhanced by the unapologetic presence of death in the lives of its characters. … Read more

A Review of “Cowboy Graves” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsFebruary 19, 2021 by Ian J. Battaglia

[ad_1] It’s an unexpected delight to be able to review previously-unseen work by the late Roberto Bolaño 18 years after his death. Bolaño—the Chilean poet-novelist perhaps most known for his books The Savage Detectives and the already-posthumously published 2666, both translated into English by Natasha Wimmer—left an abundant back catalog of poetry and prose after … Read more

Listening to Earth Before It’s Too Late, in “Earth’s Wild Music” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsFebruary 19, 2021 by Jonathan Dale

[ad_1] The climate crisis is so rapidly laying waste to our world that it can be depressing to even attempt to comprehend it. We’re in the midst of a mass extinction period brought upon by human greed and soulless expansion. Billions of years of unique evolution have been ripped out from under us by a … Read more

Announcing the Your Favorite Book Podcast w/first guest Dantiel Moniz – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsFebruary 18, 2021 by Malavika Praseed

[ad_1] We are excited to announce a collaboration between the Chicago Review of Books and the Your Favorite Book podcast. Malavika Praseed, frequent CHIRB contributor and podcast host, asks readers and writers one of the hardest questions there is: what’s your favorite book, and why? Joining us this week is Dantiel Moniz, author of the … Read more

A Review of “Cowboy Graves” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsFebruary 18, 2021 by Ian J. Battaglia