DeWitt Henry recommends When the Music Stopped: Discovering My Mother, nonfiction by Thomas J. Cottle: “Cottle’s memoir of his mother, Gitta Gradova, a prominent concert pianist, is first a biography that evokes her career, performances, and friendships with such greats as Rachmaninoff, Toscanini, Heifetz, and Horowitz, giving us a cross section of classical music’s inner…
Philip Levine recommends The Ha-Ha, poems by David Kirby: “David Kirby has been writing very original and moving poems for at least twenty years, but this new book is his most daring and successful. The world that Kirby takes into his imagination and the one that arises from it merge to become a creation like…
Margot Livesey recommends Heaven Lake, a novel by John Dalton: “In this immaculately written first novel, Dalton follows a young American, Vincent, who goes to Taiwan as a Christian missionary and ends up making an epic journey to mainland China. Heaven Lake is large in scope, vivid in character, and beautifully plotted.” (Scribner)
Margot Livesey recommends Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, nonfiction by Peter Turchi: "I love the layering of imagery and information that Peter Turchi accomplishes as Maps of the Imagination unfolds. The illustrations throughout are wonderful—so surprising and various and interesting. My brain felt enlarged by reading this account of so many different…
George Garrett recommends The Stone That the Builder Refused, a novel by Madison Smartt Bell: "The magnificent final volume of Bell’s Haitian trilogy about the only successful slave revolution in history. Epic in scope, yet grounded and richly detailed, this huge work is a masterpiece." (Pantheon)
Mary Gordon recommends Ideas of Heaven, stories by Joan Silber: "This original, finely wrought collection deals with spiritual issues, always with a combination of grace and lightness." (Norton)
DeWitt Henry recommends Garrett in Wedlock, stories by Paul Mandelbaum: "In this ‘novel-in-stories,’ Garrett, who feels ‘himself to be without ethnic heritage,’ is thrown into a jumble of heritages by love of his wife and her two children by earlier marriages, one to a Norwegian adventurer, the other to an Indian bigamist. The Norwegian comes…
Maxine Kumin recommends Horses and the Human Soul, poems by Judith Barrington: "The poem, Barrington writes, ‘has lodged in my heart like a stone in the shoe.’ It is a perfect image for recollection. Here are the horses of her English childhood and the outbreak of World War II filtered through family reminiscence, her coming…
Philip Levine recommends From the Meadow, selected and new poems by Peter Everwine: "This collection presents all of Everwine’s poems that he still regards with affection in a career that spans forty years or more, many of the poems never collected before. It includes a few of his remarkable translations from the Hebrew as well…
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