Picturing The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin’s text and Steve Schapiro’s photographs undertake similar strategies, revealing systemic racism and its hypocrisy through the telling of deeply personal, narrative moments.
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The Interplay of the Collective and the Individual in We Ride Upon Sticks
Quan Barry’s collective narration creates the semblance of a unified whole that is also prescient in its selective individuation: while dipping into single characters’ arcs to develop them as individual people, this separation and isolation prepares the reader to meet and accept the novel’s ending.
Reading Robert Pinsky’s Jersey Breaks: Becoming an American Poet
Robert Pinsky’s narrative moves insofar as it leads to poetry: that the events of a life in writing seem a bit accidental; that what sustains a life in writing is not fame, not a cartoon version of oneself chatting with Lisa Simpson, but a commitment to language bordering obsession.
Traversing Memory in The Heather Blazing
Through a juxtaposition of present-day and memory, Colm Tóibín’s second novel allows the reader to understand who the protagonist is and the pressure of his past on the present.
The Peculiar Ritual of Poetry Readings in Douglas Kearney’s Optic Subwoof
By looking at the institution of poetry readings, the peculiar ritual in which the poet is both the priest and the sacrifice, Kearney goes where other writers should follow.
The Allure of Power in Our Finest
A murky, hopeless, disenchanted life view is at the heart of Ariel Horowitz’s debut novel, which follows a veteran politician, his son who is new to public life, and his unambitious weed dealer grandson.
An Exploration of the Collective in Flight
Lynn Steger Strong’s deeply affecting family novel demonstrates how people move as both individuals and as part of a collective—much like a flock of birds flying overhead—as they endeavor to love each other in a time of crisis.
Now Is Not the Time to Panic’s Exploration of Meaning
Kevin Wilson’s latest novel revolves around a phrase that the protagonist conjures the summer of 1996, when she is sixteen. “It meant nothing,” Frankie thinks. Yet it is a code that bonds her with her friend, two loners finding shared understanding in the meaningless words.
Grief and Love in We All Want Impossible Things
Catherine Newman’s new novel is a paean to kindness, to the kind of friendship and family relationships that unabashedly avow their love and affection, that cuddle and enthuse and share delicious food and drink and lean hard into humor.