Picking up yesterday's thread, the balance in Seçkin’s novel sways toward the personal, whereas the political scene in Alaa Al-Aswany’s The Republic of False Truths (2021) is more prominent, despite all the attention paid to characterization—a network that grows increasingly complex as readers turn the pages. (And there’s at
At first, I planned to carry on with my non-fiction and fiction rhythm from my booklog. While I was reading up on Lauren Groff to review her new book for The Chicago Review of Books, I came across her essay “The Ambivalent Activist, Jane Roe” in Fight of the
The 1619 Project (Edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein) opens with an epigraph from Langston Hughes, his poem “American Heartbreak 1619”: I am the American heartbreak-- The rock on which freedom Stumped its toe-- The great mistake That Jamestown made Long ago He’s such
This has been a rich year for short stories. Some collections I’ve enjoyed without making notes, like Venita Blackburn’s How to Wrestle a Girl (2021); her stories are vivid and will appeal to readers who prioritize voice, as well as readers who admire a certain playfulness that’s delicately balanced
The more that I read now about the climate emergency, the more references I find within my other reading. Here, in Deirdre McNamer’s Aviary (2021), an unexpectedly lyrical rumination: “She prayed for the groaning, hectically gorgeous, steaming world, which seemed, more and more often, to lurch and shudder on
