Read at your own risk: The Doll’s Alphabet presents a ‘nightmarish’ and often ‘troubling’ world
The Doll’s Alphabet By Camilla Grudova Coach House Books 180 pp; $19.95 Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez once described searching for a style, “the right tone,” for his novel 100 Years of Solitude in The Paris Review. He eventually discovered that tone close to home: “It was based on the way my grandmother used to […]
Here are six must-read books for November
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the national correspondent for The Atlantic, in Baltimore, July 16, 2015. (Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times/Redux Pictures) This month in books: Ta-Nehisi Coates unpacks America’s moment of hope in his new collection of essays, Mike Spencer Brown chronicles a multi-decade odyssey around the world and Jorge Carrión delves into the history of bookshops as […]
Two fathers compare notes in The Dad Dialogues
THE DAD DIALOGUES By George Bowering and Charles Demers The “new dad” is a stock comic figure. He’s the guy who tries to film baby’s delivery but blacks out when Junior crowns. Clueless about diapers, he relies on duct tape. Helping out, he creates wall-to-wall messes that someone else has to clean up. As an […]
Why bombs won’t stop terrorism
THE AGE OF JIHAD By Patrick Cockburn No matter who wins the U.S. election in November, Americans can be sure their new leader will try to solve the problems of the Middle East by dropping a lot of bombs. Hillary Clinton is an avowed hawk: she backed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, orchestrated the 2011 […]
How do men age? Here’s why the answer is ‘poorly’
How Men Age by Richard G. Bribiescas (No credit) HOW MEN AGE By Richard G. Bribiescas Badly, in a word. There’s nothing newsworthy about that, of course; elderly male squirrels have their problems, too. But the lens through which Bribiescas views the issue, evolutionary biology, offers a nuanced explanation of why, during almost every phase […]
Irish novelist Eimear McBride tells a searing love story
THE LESSER BOHEMIANS By Eimear McBride In Eimear McBride’s sophomore novel, an 18-year-old Irish girl arrives in London wide-eyed and ready for her first year of drama school. While it begins as a coming-of-age novel (films kept coming to mind while I was reading, including Kids, Fish Tank, Margaret and An Education), a taut psychology […]
Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s memoir pulls no punches
I am Brian Wilson with Ben Greenman (No credit) I AM BRIAN WILSON: A MEMOIR By Brian Wilson with Ben Greenman The Beach Boys, pioneers of the California sound of the early 1960s, were the right boys—brothers Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson, cousin Mike Love and pal Al Jardine—at the right time, with the right […]
Workman’s Complication by Rich Leder
This is a super entertaining book! It is the story of Kate McCall, who basically will only admit to being a way off-Broadway actress, never mind the dog walking or being an apartment manager for a bunch of quirky people. At this moment, she is Farina LeBleu, star of Blood Song and Dance and vampire […]
Joseph Boyden imagines Chanie Wenjack’s final, terrible hours
WENJACK By Joseph Boyden In October 1966, the body of a 12-year-old Anishinaabe boy was found beside an isolated rail line in the northern Ontario bush. Chanie Wenjack had run away from a Kenora residential school. His death from exposure, publicized nationally in this magazine, resulted in the first inquest into the mistreatment of Aboriginal […]
Russia’s Bolshoi dance of history
Bolshoi Confidential by Simon Morrison (No credit) BOLSHOI CONFIDENTIAL By Simon Morrison Can you tell the story of a country through dance? Certainly. Like other art forms, dance offers great opportunity for both narrative and emotional expression. But can you tell the story of a country through a single dance company? That’s the challenge taken […]