Review by Emily Webber Susan Finch’s collection of loosely interconnected short stories, Dear Second Husband, is set entirely in Nashville. However, what stands out most are the characters—with relationships strained by grief, violence, dissatisfaction, and changing lives. Finch’s keen…
Browsing: Book Reviews
Reflections on At the Gate: Uncollected Poems 1987-2010 by Lucille Clifton by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie Lucille Clifton always reminds me of things I need to remember. I’ve written often about how when I was a new mother a photo…
Review by Lisa C. Taylor Sometimes an Island is a short but mighty novel-in-stories that opens with a prologue and brief history of pogroms against Jews in the Russian empire in the early 1900s. The escape of three young…
Review by Carla Panciera Jane Ward’s fourth book, Should Have Told You Sooner, is both a journey novel and an exercise in time travel. As one of the novel’s youngest characters wisely observes: “‘We tend to think of life…
Walking with Beth: Conversations with my hundred-year-old friend by Merilyn Simonds Review by Melanie McGehee Award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, writer of more than twenty books across genres, reached her seventieth birthday with a specific longing: she wanted a guide…
Unvarnished Animal: A Review of Shari Caplan’s Exhibitionist by Hannah Larrabee In her prize-winning collection, Shari Caplan opens with a poem invoking the incomparable Marina Abramović: Here is the gallery of my body. (…) You’re not supposed to chew…
Review by Emily Hall Nora Lange’s short-story collection, Day Care, is a piercing exploration of womanhood and fulfillment. The follow-up to her debut novel, Us Fools, the eighteen stories in this collection center on women who feel unsatisfied and…
Review by Suzette Bishop In Dear Letters in the Red Box by Sarah Stern, her fourth poetry book, poems lift off from story, memory, dream, everyday experiences, and a deceivingly plain-spoken language, shapeshifting into something ethereal. Reading through a…
Review by Susan Blumberg-Kason One of the most difficult parts of becoming a mother—even before a baby is born—is the worrying that never, ever lets up. There are worries during pregnancy that continue if and when the baby is…
Review by Sharon Tracey Both narrative and elegy, Preeti Vangani’s poetry collection Fifty Mothers explores grief and loss triggered by the death of her mother to breast cancer at age 41. With her passing, the poet and her father…