Book Reviews

Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona follows the life of Marek, a 13-year-old peasant boy who lives in a cruel world of sadism and stink, cannibalism and self-flagellation.

Keefe recognizes that we're all unreliable narrators of our own lives, and writes about his subjects with a keen sense of understanding.

It's a testament to Hilary Mantel's brilliance as an author that even though the moments in these stories are subtle, the book somehow feels epic in its own way.

Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist Ed Yong writes in a perfect balance of scientific rigor and personal awe as he invites readers to grasp something of how other animals experience the world.

50 years on, the authors profess amazement that another president came along willing to jettison whatever conscience he had, and whatever respect for the rule of law, in an effort to stay in office.

In David Santos Donaldson's debut novel, a young gay Black man gets some supernatural relationship advice from the Black lover of a famous white British writer, both of them long dead.

Beach reads are great — but here are some new books offering the stuff of sticky, heat-stroke dreams; overgrown, light-filled wildflower fields; and twisted alleys of old cities waking from winter.

Lindsey Fitzharris' new book tells the true story of Harold Gillies, a British surgeon whose team worked to reconstruct the faces of some of the 280,000 men who suffered facial trauma during WWI.

Kingston burst onto the scene in 1976 with The Woman Warrior and then kept writing. Critic John Powers says that, like James Baldwin, she's managed to shift American culture and remain relevant.

Séamas O'Reilly reflects on how he grieved his mother anew as he grew older, on the way grief multiplied within his family, and on mourning rituals — but it's woven through with amusement.