A Questioning Faith
A Review of Dan Albergotti’s The Boatloads I have a special place in my heart for literature that juxtaposes the sacred and profane, that challenges perhaps the most successful meme…
Reviews
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The Sky Below
A.J. Liebling once remarked that the authors of newspaper obituaries are “a frustrated and usually anonymous tribe.” That’s certainly true of Gabriel Collins, narrator of Stacey D’Erasmo’s unusual new novel,…
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
A review of Vienna Triangle, by Brenda Webster Vienna Triangle is much more than the construction of a fiction around historical facts and figures.
The Axis of Empathy
Much has been written recently about Pakistan, most of it having to do with George W. Bush’s War on Terror. Where exactly is bin Laden hiding? Is the Pakistani government…
What Happened To Sheila
“Don’t worry, I’m not dying,” said my wife Sheila. But she was. This was about three days before it happened, and she sat up in her hospice bed and gave…
The Importance of Being Nice
Abject admiration is the worst way to start a review. Isn’t it the blurbist’s job to kiss a writer’s behind, the critic’s to skewer it on the formidable barb of…
The Purifying Flame
Glen Duncan’s new novel, A Day and a Night and a Day, is an intense and involving story of a man pressed violently against his own limitations.
A Baker’s Dozen of My Feelings about David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest
“Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he’s devoted to than he does…
The Only Band That Mattered
The author remembers his time with Joe Strummer and reflects on the band’s definitive new book, The Clash.
A Review of Deb Olin Unferth’s Vacation
Obsession distorts the lens through which we view the world; things that once seemed unfathomable become terrifically and terrifyingly plausible.
The Silence of Thousands of Miles
A Review of Matthew Eck’s The Farther Shore “The war is now a story. How will it get told?” – William T. Vollmann