Book Review
Joy Rides through the Tunnel of Grief
Jessica Hendry Nelson’s probing memoir-in-essays "Joy Rides through the Tunnel of Grief" grapples with divorce, childlessness, sexual orientation, and addiction. With subjects including Nelson’s origin story (wherein her mother’s...
Book Review
Ravage & Son
Jerome Charyn’s rollicking novel Ravage & Son tours the seedy underbelly of turn-of-the-century New York City. Between 1883 and 1913, the city’s Jewish quarter witnesses the reign and fall of Lionel Ravage, a hardware and...
Book Review
My Neglected Gods
Joanne Nelson’s moving memoir-in-microessays treats her life story as mosaic, made up of glistening shards of memory and quotidian events. These pieces of no more than a few pages delve into the defining experiences of Nelson’s life...
Book Review
The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Beginners
“What if death can truly become part of the cycle of life?” That rhetorical question animates Lama Lhanang Rinpoche and Mordy Levine’s "The Tibetan Book of the Dead for Beginners", which explicates the Buddhist text, sharing...
Book Review
What I'd Rather Not Think About
In Jente Posthuma’s bittersweet novel What I’d Rather Not Think About, a woman who is bereft after her twin brother’s suicide searches to understand his mental illness. The fraternal twins at the center of the story have peculiar...
Book Review
In Vitro
Mexican poet Isabel Zapata probes the enduring mysteries of pregnancy and birth in "In Vitro", a memoir in fragments that travels from fertility treatment through to the early weeks of pandemic-time motherhood. “I want to shatter the...
Book Review
My Mother Says
In Stine Pilgaard’s novel "My Mother Says", an eccentric woman who faces roadblocks in her academic career and relationships uses humor to sidestep her pain. After breaking up with her zookeeper girlfriend over their age gap and their...
Book Review
Veganistan
In "Veganistan", Sally Butcher spotlights Middle Eastern and Mediterranean flavors through spice-rich, plant-based meals. Butcher and her Persian husband run Persepolis in London, a restaurant where “the Middle East is Allah’s gift...