review – Page 96 – Reads A Lot

Journeys of Self-Discovery in “Bad Tourist” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsOctober 12, 2020 by Pam Anderson

[ad_1] Suzanne Roberts’ most recent memoir, Bad Tourist, will come as a delightful surprise to readers as she merges all of her writing strengths: a travel writer’s adventures, a memoirist’s insight, and a poet’s ear for language. Roberts, an accomplished travel writer, was named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National Geographic Traveler magazine, and her previous book Almost Somewhere; Twenty-Eight Days on … Read more

Confession and Truth in “The Beguiling” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsOctober 11, 2020 by Dana Hansen

[ad_1] “We think we remember the past and imagine the future. What if in reality it’s the other way around?” So ruminates Lucy, the narrator in Vancouver-based writer Zsuzsi Gartner’s much-anticipated first novel The Beguiling, a seductive work that thoroughly upends comfortable notions of narrative linearity and offers up—in the end—a bewildering twist à la … Read more

A Bridge Between Now and Then in “Burning Roses” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsOctober 9, 2020 by Megan Otto

[ad_1] In Burning Roses, S. L. Huang treats a fairy tale as merely the prologue to the rest of a life. We meet Little Red Riding Hood, Rosa, as an older woman already looking back on her life. The famous encounter with the wolf at her grandmother’s house is long behind her—far from the guiltless … Read more

Words Transcend Walls in “Unknown Language” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsOctober 6, 2020 by Ian J. Battaglia

[ad_1] It’s easy to become caught up in the conventions of realist literary fiction as representative of fiction itself. After all, it’s a reign that has stretched from Balzac to the present day, and the modern strain of American cinematic fiction only reinforces this understanding. But the expanse of work situated in and against realism … Read more

To Be Excited and Confused in “This Isn’t Happening” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsOctober 2, 2020 by Brock Kingsley

[ad_1] In his new book, This Isn’t Happening: Radiohead’s “Kid A” and the Beginning of the 21st Century, a story centered on the Radiohead album Kid A, music critic Steven Hyden—without meaning to—asks the “Where were you when…” question regarding the album’s release: “I know I bought Kid A the day it came out, as … Read more

Sharing the Spotlight in “Celeste Holm Syndrome” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsOctober 1, 2020 by Sophie Amado

[ad_1] Inhospitable attitudes towards women in a gendered-Hollywood; a melancholic Oscar Levant; the allure of cinema in black and white— these are just a few of the thought-provoking aspects in Chicago essayist David Lazar’s new book Celeste Holm Syndrome: On Character Actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood. A writer of three previous books of … Read more

Knocking Poetry Off Its Pedestal in “The Math Campers” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsSeptember 30, 2020 by Ryan Asmussen

$Knocking Poetry Off Its Pedestal in “The Math Campers” – Chicago Review of Books$

[ad_1] An extraordinary, often mesmerizing engagement with the nature of identity and other existential trappings, The Math Campers, Dan Chiasson’s new collection of poetry, is a meta-kaleidoscope of literature and literary influence. A geometric swirl of the many faces of the author’s family and friends (particularly his teenage sons), it is colored and blended by … Read more

Recovery and Reinvention in “Like a Bird” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsSeptember 29, 2020 by Shazia Hafiz Ramji

[ad_1] In My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies, author Resmaa Menakem challenges us to think of white supremacy as “white-body supremacy” because “every white-skinned body, no matter who inhabits it — and no matter what they think, believe, do, or say — automatically benefits from it.” In … Read more

The Layered Explorations of Self in “Piranesi” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsSeptember 28, 2020 by Dana Dunham

[ad_1] Sixteen years after the publication of her breakout novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke’s second novel has arrived. The new novel, Piranesi, bears a family resemblance to its predecessor, sharing its unique creative vision and a detailed approach to the fantastic. Though these features appear in a very different time and place, … Read more

Obsession and Alternate Realities in “Red Pill” – Chicago Review of Books

Book ReviewsSeptember 28, 2020 by Michael Pittard

[ad_1] We have all, at some point in our lives, awoken to find that something we used to believe is a lie. The world used to look one way, but now you can see right through it, the cracks and the fissures. A part of you is fractured, your self is changed, disconnected, and it … Read more