Sheena Kamal’s ‘No Going Back’ Unfurls a Thrilling Noir
Kamal's psychological thriller, No Going Back, utilizes crime-noir tropes but with purposeful deviations.
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Pandemics and Trumpian Echoes in Miller’s ‘Blackfish City’
When we can't turn to the federal government for the truth, sometimes we need to turn to fiction. Sam J. Miller's Blackfish City maps a pandemic in a post-United States future.
Memoir ‘Scratched’ Seeks Beauty in the Flawed
Scratched: A Memoir of Perfectionism is a staggering depiction of the impact of psychological trauma written with breathless intensity.
The Book Every American Needs to Read: ‘Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People’
Award-winning lawyer Ben Crump's Open Season irrefutably documents how America's treatment of Black Americans and other minorities is indistinguishable from genocide.
Glimmers of Truth from the Inebriated Work of the Late, Dirty Realist Writer, Charles Bukowski
If many of the pieces in Charles Bukowski: On Drinking are the literary equivalent of watching dirt circle the drain after a vigorous shower, how long will we keep watching?
‘Unthinkable’ Gives Our Brains a Second Thought
Unthinkable is an eminently readable book that includes a wealth of information about how the brain functions.
Michael Chabon and Pops Culture
If there is one thing even harder than parenting, it's writing about parenting well.
Alice Bolin’s ‘Dead Girls’ Fails to Closely Exam the Bodies
Throughout Dead Girls, Bolin is too eager to jam pack chapters with popular cultural references rather than fully deconstructing the subjects.
‘I Still Dream’ Gives Us Hope for the Tech Apocalypse
In a world of Palantir, you'll wish for Organon.
Losing the Narrative of Your Life: On Alissa Quart’s ’Squeezed’
Alissa Quart’s perspective-driven reporting on the struggles of middle-class working families in Squeezed addresses the results of America’s utterly depraved neoliberal capitalist state.
On Porochista Khakpour’s ‘Sick’, or, When Marginal Identifiers Are No Excuse
A reader will understand and sympathize with the illness and its ramifications presented here. But with the unreliable narrator -- not so much.
Julia Fine’s ‘What Should Be Wild’ Is Much Too Wild
Fine's debut novel is occasionally impressive, but too often it strives for unnecessary complexity.