Reviews
March 26, 2010
You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe?: Rebecca Jo Plant’s ‘Mom’ 3
by Nicole Rudick
Rebecca Jo Plant’s history of modern American motherhood shows that the high price paid by moms today is nothing new.
March 19, 2010
Nabokov’s Scraps: The Original of Laura 6
by Kevin Frazier
Dmitri Nabokov has taken some weirdly disproportionate hits for the aspect of the book that deserves the greatest praise.
March 17, 2010
The Edge, Too Has Its Edge: Reading Uwe Johnson in New York 1
by Fridolin Schley
Uwe Johnson never quite knew what to do with the self-satisfied authority of superlatives. He was interested in the inconclusive, the ambiguous, and preferred observing things from the edge.
March 16, 2010
Millennium Bridge: John Jodzio’s If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home 1
by Adam Gallari
Jodzio’s reality is a cruel one, but he is not a writer who revels in this cruelty; rather he respects his characters, and manages to find beauty in even the most dire moments, to elicit empathy towards some of the most frigid beings imaginable.
March 12, 2010
Unaccommodated Man: Robert Stone’s Fun With Problems 4
by Tatjana Soli
Robert Stone is like the friend who orders a round of stiff drinks, holds your hand, and looks into the abyss with you.
March 9, 2010
Send in the Drowned: Margriet de Moor’s The Storm 1
by Matthew Jakubowski
The Storm offers engaging historical details about the ocean’s power over Dutch life. There are demure sex scenes and macabre, watery deaths. Its bleakness – joy seems banal in this giddily dark book – is often thrilling. But the omniscient narration is choppy and unsteady.
