book review Mini Review: “Always Happy Hour,” by Mary Miller 27 Dec 2019 Always Happy Hour, by Mary Miller Always Happy Hour is a satisfying and ultimately dismaying collection of short stories that could have been a country & western song, and probably…
book review Mini-Review: Yiyun Li’s “Where Reasons End” 18 Dec 2019 I just finished Yiyun Li's Where Reasons End, which might be called a conceptual novel, an experimental novel, perhaps an experimental memoir, or perhaps just a heart-wrenching and intellectually-challenging good…
book review Micro-Review: “Cities I Never Lived In,” by Sara Majka 12 Dec 201912 Dec 2019 I just finished a collection of linked short stories, Cities I've Never Lived in, by Sara Majka. This is a collection of linked short storiesI heard of from some ten-best…
book review Book Review: “Ducks, Newburyport,” by Lucy Ellman 30 Nov 2019 Ducks, Newburyport is a new novel both celebrated and feared for its audacity: a single stream-of-consciousness sentence nearly one thousand pages long, paused but not interrupted by concisely-written chapters of a…
book review “Just Finished….” (Three Micro-Reviews) 10 Oct 201912 Oct 2019 These are micro-reviews I posted recently on the delightful Facebook readers' group, First Edition, sponsored by the London Times. Just finished The Wallcreeper, by Nell Zink, and enjoyed it thoroughly!…
book review Short Story Review: Chekhov’s “Ward No. 6” as a Discourse on Privilege 23 Jul 201923 Jul 2019 Anton Chekhov's "Ward No. 6" is a long short story, almost a novella, but most of all it is a story about how the beneficiaries of privilege blind themselves to…
book review Book Review: “Life and Fate,” by Vasily Grossman 7 Jul 20198 Sep 2019 Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman. It is no surprise that a book with perhaps the most Russian title ever--Life and Fate--weighs in at 871 pages in its English translation.…
book review Mini Review: “Lawn Boy,” by Jonathan Evison 13 Jun 201915 Jun 2019 Lawn Boy, by Jonathan Evison If you threw J. D. Salinger, Oscar Wilde, Jack London, and maybe Gerald Durrell into a blender, added a spoonful of Warhol and a dollop…
book review Mini Review: “Neon in Daylight,” by Hermione Hoby 18 May 201918 May 2019 Neon in Daylight, by Hermione Hoby I'm of two minds about this book. I enjoyed it well enough that I am glad I read it, and I do recommend it.…
book review Book Review: Anna Burns’s “Milkman” 28 Jan 201929 Jan 2019 Milkman, by Anna Burns This book shares some characteristics with Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet, which by chance I read just before picking Milkman up at the library: both explore themes…
