Review by Kate Petersen
I heard Ann Beattie read once, years ago, at the New York State Summer Writers Institute in Saratoga Springs. I was new to writing as craft, and to the short story, and what stories I knew had sky in them.
784 pp., Ballatine, $27
Reviewed by Sara Joy Culver
1.
The important thing to understand before you read this review is that I am not a snob.
Continue reading "Justin Cronin's The Passage: A Review, of Sorts" »
602 pp., Knopf, $26.95
by Sally Franson
A lot of fuss has been made about the length of Julie Orringer's debut novel, The Invisible Bridge. Coming in at a whopping 602 pages, this sweeping historical epic, which has earned itself references to Tolstoy and Eliot, isn't exactly the stuff that summer vacations are made of.
Continue reading "Review: The Invisible Bridge, by Julie Orringer" »
90 pp., Caketrain Press, $8
by Feng Sun Chen
The first thing I noticed about Lucas Farrell's Bird Any Damn Kind was the cover. It is rarely appropriate to judge a book by its cover, as the saying goes, but this book lives up to its beautiful and surreal front image by Louisa Conrad.
Continue reading "Review: Bird Any Damn Kind, by Lucas Farrell" »
by J. Lee Morsell
When I was growing up in Mendocino, California, the poet Sharon Doubiago was a hero and a role model to me and to a few other friends interested in literature. She would visit our small town periodically, read at a local venue and drink wine with our parents. She seemed very shy.
Continue reading "Recovering Memory, Writing Nightmare: Sharon Doubiago's Epic Memoir of Incest" »
by David LeGault
John D'Agata has already done a lot for the nonfiction world. His debut essay collection, Halls of Fame, combined innovative use of form with insightful prose that made readers re-consider the way a collection of short nonfiction could build to a bigger theme and meaning.
Continue reading "Review: John D'Agata's About a Mountain" »
(or, "How Long Until Pitchers and Catchers Report?")
by Kevin O'Rourke
Timing is everything. Just when I couldn't have been more distraught over the end of the 2007 baseball season, and moreover the manner in which it concluded (another sweep?!), my mother gave me a book. Namely Michael Chabon's highly entertaining and evocative Summerland (Miramax, 2002). His tale of children & baseball & a fantasy world which exists in tandem with our own certainly did its very best to raise my spirits. So what if the book is supposed to be for kids? So was a certain other series about a boy wizard and his adventures. I enjoyed that one too, even if it meant removing the books' dust jackets whenever reading them on the subway.
Continue reading "Tug McGraw's Leap: Baseball and the Literary Arts" »