Anchor Books Review by Gabriel Tanguay Ortega I can only begin this review by presenting my issues.  I’m not sure what this book is about. Colonialism, white saviorism, the rape of nature, sure—but I don’t think any fresh perspectives are offered here, at least nothing new, nothing remarkable, nothing beyond that these are bad. I don’t think this book ultimately serves any purpose other than to provoke and to upset. I am baffled by Hanya Yanagihara’s weird obsession with gay men/male homosexuality and the way she portrays these in her novels. (I did not finish A Little Life because of ..read more

Doubleday Review by Walter Cummins It occurred to me that one approach to reviewing of Ranganath’s explanation of human memory would be to test my own memory as I recall what stuck with me from the vast amount of information he provides. Why have I held onto certain facts and overlooked others? Is what matters to me different from what matters to others? If so, what does that say about who I am? In the book’s coda Ranganath admits for all that he does know about memory there is much he does not: “Why do we remember? Almost thirty years after pasting those sticky electrodes on the head of my f ..read more

Picador Review by Brian Tanguay When I read the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago as a teenager I lacked the education to fully understand it. My youthful worldview was unsophisticated, amounting to little more than America Good – Soviet Union Bad. I sensed that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book was important, a monumental achievement, but my understanding of the reasons why were hazy, and I didn’t fully grasp what a searing indictment of a political regime it was. Looking back nearly a half century later, as my country flirts with authoritarianism and one of America’s two political parties a ..read more

Sourcebooks Review by George Yatchisin How much of writing is staring down the dark. (Just ask Dante and his selva oscura.) Of course that also means, how much of life is staring down the dark, knowing that even if we fail or fear to consider it, the dark will swallow us up in the end. So maybe that’s why we want something to be out there, and why not Bigfoot? Here’s one of the nut graphs John O’Connor offers in his lively, thoughtful, funny, The Secret History of Bigfoot: Field Notes on a North American Monster: Whatever mythic yearning monsters fulfill, we’re jonesing hard. Sixty-six milli ..read more

Liveright Review by David Starkey “Reading about how a succession of relatively small misjudgments and poor decisions can lead, with surprising speed, to human catastrophe on an unimaginable scale should, if nothing else, make us wonder how much progress we have made in diplomacy and statecraft, if any, since June 1914,” Michael Korda writes in the epilogue of his new book, Muse of Fire: World War I As Seen Through the Lives of the Soldier Poets. It’s clear that Korda doesn’t find our era much different than the cataclysmic years of the War to End All Wars: “Wilfred Owen and his fellow poets ..read more

West Virginia Review by Walter Cummins My fine feathered friends. That phrase, dating back to the 1500s, occurred to me after I read Terese Svoboda’s novel Roxy and Coco. The title sisters and several of their harpy fellows are potentially fine as they shed occasional feathers and eventually expose their full-feathered glory. Dr Seuss used the phrase as the title of an illustrated children’s book, but this novel is hardly for youngsters or comic, although it is very clever and full of wonder. That’s Svoboda’s impressive feat, making her readers—at least this one—believe her harpies are credib ..read more

Penguin Review by David Starkey In 2013’s Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash, Edward Humes describes in detail the massive harm caused by America’s profligate production of trash. Garbology does look at some of the ways we can counteract our carelessness, but specific solutions to environmental problems are the central focus of his new book, Total Garbage: How We Can Fix Our Waste and Heal Our World. And while curbing the refuse that’s likely to end up in a landfill—or in our food and water—continues to be a concern of Total Garbage, this time around Humes has plenty of other wastefu ..read more

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay Dean Pusey is broken. By the Marine Corps and a tour of duty in Iraq. By the circumstances of his birth and adoption. By confusion about his sexuality. He was used to taking and executing orders, but civilian life is an overwhelming welter of choices, an endless loop of “what if” questions and decisions and infinite possibilities.  Matt Young wrote about his experience in the Marines in his memoir Eat the Apple, published in 2018. In End of Active Service, his debut novel, readers get the jargon, banter and attitude of a warrior culture, full of hard-dr ..read more

Penguin Review by Walter Cummins We’ve all probably witnessed similar scenes afternoons when school is out, middle schoolers gathered in groups, all fixated on their smartphone screens and ignoring each other. By the time they get to college they’ll probably be like those I heard an acting instructor lament. She had to teach them what the interaction of a human conversation is all about—what it means to communicate with eye contact and facial expressions as they exchange words and sentences. For Generation Z it doesn’t come naturally when thumbs on a miniature keyboard is their basic mode of ..read more

Bloomsbury Review by Brian Tanguay I can’t remember if I requested this collection of stories from the publisher or if it was just sent to me, but it arrived at a moment when I needed something different in my reading diet. I had never heard of Jessie Ren Marshall, but after reading her debut effort I won’t forget her any time soon.  Sometimes it’s necessary to switch off one’s critical brain and simply read, laugh and appreciate a writer’s inventiveness. The dozen stories in Women! In! Peril! are wickedly funny and imaginative, each very different, shifting locales from the forgotten Am ..read more