Category: Book Reviews

The Painted Word is primarily a book about the rise of modern art—and art theory. (It also feels as if it’s a little bit about Tom Wolfe, too, but then, what book of his doesn’t feel that way?) Still, it’s an engaging read, filled with Wolfe’s studied observations and dripping with a detached bemusement toward…

Wayne Benson is tired of living a complicated life. His needs are pretty simple—quiet time to write, three square meals a day (preferably prepaid and prepared for him), and comfortable surroundings. But where to find all of these things in one place? Enter The Sunset—a retirement community he once toured with his parents, prior to…

Jack Gorse is a complicated man. The particularity of his nature is revealed in the book’s opening paragraph as he describes an episode of curdled cream in his self-serve coffee—an episode that led him forever after to drink his coffee black and obsessively double check each time he fills his cup. We soon learn that…

In June of this year, Press 53 released Curtis Smith’s most recent short story collection titled The Species Crown. Smith is also the author of the novel An Unadorned Life and two previous short story collections, Placing Ourselves Among the Living and In the Jukebox Light. This was my first chance to read a book…

Perry L. Crandall would like you to know that he is not retarded. Retarded would be 75 on an IQ test, and he is 76. Besides, Perry takes care not only of himself, but also of his Gran, a crusty, no-nonsense woman who loves him for who he is and lets him shine his light…

Carrie, the protagonist of Claire Cameron’s debut novel The Line Painter, is consumed by grief after the sudden death of her boyfriend Bill. She takes off in Bill’s car, headed, she decides, for the western reaches of Canada. Friends and family, worried–both about her state-of-mind and for her safety–call repeatedly on her cell phone, leaving…

Daja Wangchuk Meston begins his memoir dramatically with a desperate leap from a third story hotel window in a remote area of Tibet. It’s a quick glimpse at a man pushed beyond his limits, unsure of his place in the world, and desperate beyond sense. When he jumped, he fully expected to die. That was…

It took me several weeks to finish Al Sim’s most recent collection–Stories in the Old Style–but before you conclude that I didn’t enjoy it, let me explain. I, too, wondered why I had taken so long to finish reading these stories that–if asked casually, “Did you like them?”–I would have unequivocally said were wonderful. And…

I finished Richard Lewis’s most recent YA novel The Killing Sea in two days. Really one and a half. I purchased it for my son but couldn’t wait for him to get through a trilogy he is currently reading and so I picked up The Killing Sea and read it myself. Am I glad I…