Review: THE RULES DO NOT APPLY by Ariel Levy
A staff writer for The New Yorker, Ariel Levy describes her beat as “women who are too much.
Nonfiction
Review: AN ARRANGEMENT OF SKIN by Anna Journey
For Anna Journey, it starts at the University of Houston, during the last year of her PhD program. Away in Richmond, Virginia, for a literary conference arranged by a close friend and mentor, Journey begins the affair that will end her seven-year relationship.
Review: SCRATCH: WRITERS, MONEY, AND THE ART OF MAKING A LIVING edited by Manjula Martin
Scratch, a collection of interviews and essays from writers spanning the gamut of genre, commercial success, race, gender, and class, boasts pieces from Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Yiyun Li, Porochista Khakpour, and Jonathan Franzen. Topics range from the gritty details of checks and debts to a philosophical pondering of money, art, livelihood, and lifestyle.
Review: THE STRANGER IN THE WOODS: THE EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF THE LAST TRUE HERMIT by Michael Finkel
In 1986, at the age of twenty, without saying goodbye to anybody (and ignoring the Tao’s declaration that, “the truly kind leave no one”), Knight entered the woods of central Maine and never looked back.
Review: ABANDON ME by Melissa Febos
Abandon me. The title is a straight-faced challenge. To her lover who she fears will. To two fathers who already have. To the reader who’s embarking on this story with her. Abandon me. Do the worst thing to me I can imagine. And I will save myself with story.
Review: TELL ME HOW IT ENDS: AN ESSAY IN 40 QUESTIONS by Valeria Luiselli
In her expanded essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, Luiselli outlines the intake form for undocumented minors. The procedure, on paper, is simple: Luiselli presents the questions, the children speak, and Luiselli transcribes their answers in English for the lawyers who will fight to secure their legal status.
A Fractured America with a Missing Center in Joan Didion’s SOUTH AND WEST
The political and cultural moment of SOUTH AND WEST’s release could not have been foreseen, but through her narrative disappearing act, Didion leaves us to make sense of what we read to find its central purpose.
Blood at the Root of a Rural Georgia County
Patrick Phillips is the author of Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America. Published last September, the book chronicles the racial history of Forsyth County, Georgia, going back to the Civil War and ending with it being fully cemented as an Atlanta suburb today.
Review: IN THE GREAT GREEN ROOM: THE BRILLIANT AND BOLD LIFE OF MARGARET WISE BROWN by Amy Gary
In the Great Green Room is an eminently readable biography. The book sheds light on Brown’s creative process and unlikely sources of inspiration. Gary sheds new light on how Goodnight Moon was made, and in doing so we appreciate it even more.