Darling Days by iO Tillett Wright
★★★★☆ With a cascade of oddballs, theaters, dancers, confrontations, and concussions, iO Tillett Wright opens her tumultuous childhood to us. NYC in the 90s was a brutal place for the poor, and iO shows...
Category: Book Reviews
Borders by Roy Jacobsen
★★★★★ Set in the Ardennes region of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, Roy Jacobsen’s fine novel Borders (translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw) is a multi-layered saga of philosophical geopolitics and...
Loner by Teddy Wayne
★★★★☆ Teddy Wayne’s third novel Loner is a brave and precise portrait of a tense, prevalent subject. As with the opioid epidemic, sexual assault is undoubtedly widespread yet is too often hushed behind closed...
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
★★★★☆ “So here I am, upside down in a woman,” opens Ian McEwan’s surprisingly successful new novel Nutshell, which is narrated by the unborn child of a nine-months-pregnant woman. Readers may wince at this...
A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George
★★★★☆ In A Banquet of Consequences, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, of Scotland Yard, is at somewhat of a loss. Her best friend and his daughter have moved away from London to Pakistan. At work,...
Time Travel: A History by James Gleick
★★★☆☆ No matter their background, at some point just about everyone partakes in heavy philosophical discussion on the nature of time. What is time? How does it work? Is it even real? Einstein’s relativity...
Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy
★★★☆☆ Anuradha Roy’s Sleeping on Jupiter tells the story of Nomi, a young documentary filmmaker who travels back to the seaside town of Jarmuli, India to confront the long-buried secrets of her past. “I...
The Asset by Shane Kuhn
★★☆☆☆ A specter is haunting America – the specter of 9/11. This event, still being unpacked 15 years later, especially haunts Kennedy, an airport security expert who trains TSA agents. Kennedy flies constantly, motivated...
Tong Wars: The Untold Story of Vice, Money and Murder in New York’s Chinatown by Scott D. Seligman
★★★☆☆ The underworld fascinates us. Scores of reporters have delved into the seedy midst of those outside the law. Hours and hours of screen-time is dedicated to miscreants, ne’er-do-wells, gangsters and all manner of...
