Karma Brown on What Wild Women Do – Chicago Review of Books

Karma Brown on What Wild Women Do – Chicago Review of Books

[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

The Wronged Women of the 2000s Come to Fiction – Chicago Review of Books

The Wronged Women of the 2000s Come to Fiction – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] At Laura Hankin’s launch event for her new novel The Daydreams, about a reunion show of an early 2000s teen drama, a fan asked what she had found in her research about celebrities in the early aughts that surprised her. Laura talked about a 2009 Vanity Fair article that described Jessica Simpson as “looking … Read more

An Arc of Forgiveness in “Women We Buried, Women We Burned” – Chicago Review of Books

An Arc of Forgiveness in “Women We Buried, Women We Burned” – Chicago Review of Books

[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

Traumatic Repetition and Fresh Starts in “Lone Women” – Chicago Review of Books

Traumatic Repetition and Fresh Starts in “Lone Women” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] The Western, as a genre, is rife with horrific elements: its frequently alienating landscapes, its history of violence, and its strange and unrestrained collision of cultures. In Lone Women, Victor LaValle takes horrors both human and supernatural as his subject: a haunted vision of the American dream that accelerates into a bloody exploration of … Read more

Giving Voice to Iranian Women in “When Your Sky Runs Into Mine” – Chicago Review of Books

Giving Voice to Iranian Women in “When Your Sky Runs Into Mine” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] In September 2022 in Iran, Jina Mahsa Amini was arrested for wearing her hijab incorrectly; that is, the fabric did not cover her head completely. Three days later, she died while in police custody from severe head trauma, which the Iranian government denies. Her head, the object that caused her arrest, was beaten, the … Read more

The Women Can Save Themselves in “A Dangerous Business” – Chicago Review of Books

The Women Can Save Themselves in “A Dangerous Business” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Jane Smiley’s newest novel A Dangerous Business begins in the 1850s. The Gold Rush is in full swing as the American Civil War begins bubbling to the surface of society. Eliza literally makes a name for herself—changing her last name from Cargill to Ripple—by seeking employment at a brothel in Monterey, California after the … Read more

A Novel of the Frankenstein Women” – Chicago Review of Books

A Novel of the Frankenstein Women” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] Though any book can be released, or read, at any time of year, October always seems to bring an extra helping of reading in the eerie/spooky vein. One of this October’s most deliciously Gothic new releases is Kris Waldherr’s inventive retelling of Frankenstein from the perspective of three women in Victor Frankenstein’s life, Unnatural … Read more

A Love Letter to the Imperfect Self in “Women Without Shame” – Chicago Review of Books

A Love Letter to the Imperfect Self in “Women Without Shame” – Chicago Review of Books

[ad_1] American Book Award-winning author Sandra Cisneros has had a decades-long career publishing both prose and poems, and is perhaps most well known for her first book, The House on Mango Street, a novel told in vignettes. She often mixes Spanish and English, putting to words the in-betweenness of her dual U.S.-Mexico citizenship.  Woman Without … Read more

On Women Writers & Their Dads – Chicago Review of Books

On Women Writers & Their Dads – Chicago Review of Books

[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