The Evasionist
/Sam Sacks reviews the fun and flawed new novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and tries to answer the question on everybody’s lips: what exactly is Michael Chabon doing?
Read MoreThree From Coach House Books
/Adam Golaski champions the “difficult read” in his review of the poetry of a. rawlings, Christian Bök, and Nathalie Stephens.
Read MorePeer Review: Running Toward the Truck
/Newspaper book pages are under threat. In our monthly feature, John Cotter assesses the reviews of Jonathan Lethem’s novel You Don’t Love Me Yet to learn what (if anything) in our print reviews is worth saving.
Read MoreMount Wharton
/Steve Donoghue converses with the critics in his review of Hermione Lee’s page-turning but harrowingly huge biography of Edith Wharton
Read MoreLimitless Apocalypse
/Karen Vanuska reviews Jim Crace’s post-apocalyptic novel The Pesthouse, in which Americans seek salvation by emigrating to Europe. Hmm, think Crace might be trying to tell us something…?
Read MoreYou Eatee?
/Steve Donoghue reviews John Donne: The Reformed Soul, a new “cuss-and-codpiece” biography by the inconceivably youthful John Stubbs
Read MoreThe Bard of Everybody
/In a review of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s restoration of the famous First Folio, Garrett Handley investigates the maddening vagaries that have always confronted the Bard’s editors.
Read MorePeer Review: Arms and the Pan
/In this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue spots a troubling pattern of left-handed praise in the reviews of Robert Fagles new translation of the Aeneid
Read MoreTwain in Vain
/Sam Sacks reviews Jon Clinch’s Finn, a novel about Huck Finn’s father, and decides that it owes a heavy debt to a literary figure apart from Mark Twain.
Read MorePeer Review: Paul Auster Perplexes
/In this monthly feature, Sam Sacks surveys the reviews of Paul Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium, which caused some confused tail-chasing amongst its critics.
Read MoreThree From Wave Books
/Kathy Rooney makes a close study of the cool-quotient of new books of poetry by Eileen Myles, Matthew Rohrer, and Christian Hawkey.
Read MoreShall We in That Great Night Rejoice?
/Steve Donoghue assesses all of twentieth century literature. That’s correct: all of twentieth century literature. Don’t believe it…?
Read MoreChilde Harold's Children
/Sam Sacks looks into the breakout debuts of young novelists to determine how youth, ambition, and general cluelessness affect the writing of these early works.
Read MorePeer Review: Martin Amis’s Nasty Glitter
/In this monthly feature, John Cotter reviews the reviewers of Martin Amis’s House of Meetings, from the gossip-slingers to the fellow fiction writers.
Read MoreTwo from Tarpaulin Sky Press
/Elisa Gabbert examines two genre-expanding books of poetry by Jenny Boully and Max Winter.
Read MoreThe Poison Tree
/Sam Sacks reviews The Castle in the Forest, Norman Mailer’s new novel about evil and Hitler and, amazingly, not about Norman Mailer.
Read More
