Peer Review: Front Row Seats
/Biographer Zachary Leader takes his readers on a long, detailed tour of the first half of Saul Bellow's life, and while those readers may be loving it, the critics have been complaining!
Read MorePeer review: Elena Ferrante’s Hunger, Rebellion, and Rage
/The critical consensus around reclusive Italian novelist Elena Ferrante is enough to make you suspect collusion - but to what end? and at what cost? Rohan Maitzen reviews the reviewers.
Read MorePeer Review: "We've All Been Wrong! Incredible!"
/Thomas Piketty's great mountain of Gallic macro-economics, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, was the hit of the Western world for one heady season. Then the parade moved on, and we were left, dazed and disheveled, wondering if we've been fed un truc de ouf. Our Peer Review attempts to sort out the l'affaire Piketty
Read MoreThis Light is Enough
/Renowned reviewer and cultural critic Daniel Mendelsohn has a scintillating new collection of his recent work; John Cotter and Steve Donoghue compare notes on "Waiting for the Barbarians"
Read MorePeer Review: Home
/Book reviewers are split on whether Toni Morrison's novel is a further triumph or a falling off. Or did these critics only find what they anticipated? We reviewed the reviews, then we reviewed the book.
Read MorePeer Review: Martin Amis, Funny Man
/For good or ill, when Martin Amis writes a new book, critics swarm to it with strong opinions pro and con - a perfect setting for a clarifying Open Letters Peer Review!
Read MoreDeLillo and the Three Ps
/The nation's book critics naturally congregated when Don DeLillo's slim new book appeared. In the latest Open Letters Peer Review, John Rodwan supplies a scorecard for the players.
Read MorePeer Review: Is Martin Amis Serious?
/The vituperation that greeted Martin Amis’ collection of essays The Second Plane reached singularly quotable proportions, even for this much-vituperated British author. In our regular feature, John G. Rodwan Jr. casts a cold eye on Amis’ dour detractors.
Read MorePeer Review: Rumble in the Alley
/Near the punchbowl, within reach of the finger sandwiches, the early critics of James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning had an oh-so-polite set of things to say about it. Out back in the alley, other critics were ready to pounce. In this regular feature, Sam Sacks officiates between the Sharks and the Jets.
Read MorePeer Review: The Opinions on “Strong Opinions”
/A.I. White has burrowed into twenty-three reviews of J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year and in this regular feature alerts us to which critics succeeded in their charge, which failed, and why
Read MorePeer Review: Enter Sophist
/James Wood, Christopher Hitchens, Michiko Kakutani, and many others have competed to put forth the definitive word on Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost. Sam Sacks is off to the races with them in this regular feature.
Read MorePeer Review: Onion Skins and Grass Cuttings
/In our regular feature, Joanna Scutts is judge and jury over the reviewers of Günter Grass’s Peeling the Onion, who rather too frequently forgot they were supposed to be considering a book.
Read MorePeer Review: Sex on the Beach
/In our monthly feature, Sam Sacks clambers over the mountain ofreviews of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, spotting perspicacity,purple prose, and possible pickpocketing along the way.
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