The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen
★★★★☆ This splendid collection of short stories could not have appeared at a more appropriate time. Immigrants and refugees are under attack from the highest levels of government to the lowest level of individual...
Category: Book Reviews
The Moravian Night by Peter Handke
★★☆☆☆ One evening in the Balkan village of Porodin, a group of locals join a former writer on his boat “The Moravian Night” for an evening of storytelling as they float down the Morava...
The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
★★★★☆ Hortensia James and Marion Agostino are neighbors, but they are definitely not neighborly. There is much to separate them. Hortensia is the only black owner in a South African estate just outside Cape...
The Fortress by Danielle Trussoni
★★★☆☆ Reading a memoir adds another story layer to what’s happening between the book covers. While you’re engrossed in the story the author is telling, you’re also marveling that the author is so open and frank...
Universal Harvester by John Darnielle
★★☆☆☆ John Darnielle’s new novel Universal Harvester is an urban legend — a convoluted and ultimately disappointing one, but enough of a creepy modern folktale to appeal to those readers sensitive to nostalgic storytelling....
Normal by Warren Ellis
★★★☆☆ To borrow a quote from one of the side characters in his new book Normal, Warren Ellis “kind of invented the modern end of the world.” His stories often journey into the dark corners...
Commotion of the Birds by John Ashbery
★★★☆☆ In Commotion of the Birds, John Ashbery’s twenty-seventh book of poetry, puzzling poems read like textual collages: meticulously arranged words and phrases torn and reassembled into abstraction. They’re enigmatic, but far from anything...
A Really Good Day by Ayelet Waldman
★★★★☆ Would you consider starting your morning with toast, tea, and a microdose of LSD? Throughout her decades-long battle with neuroses, irritability, and chronic pain, author Ayelet Waldman tried a variety of medications including...
The Return of Munchausen by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
★★★★☆ He’s back: after two and a half centuries of being trapped in Rudolph Erich Raspe’s 1786 novel Baron Munchausen’s Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia, the Baron himself has slipped...
