Cusk is a master of the illustrative anecdote, allowing her to telescope between the specific and the abstract.
Review: The Undying by Anne Boyer
Woven throughout the deeply personal story of Boyer's battle with breast cancer is a social and political critique of the breast cancer “industry.”
Review: When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl’s Book by Naja Marie Aidt, translated by Denise Newman
The engulfing panic of losing someone indispensable to you stops time. Needs and emotions are put on hold: hunger, sleep, lust, and ambition are stifled...
Review: Savage Appetites by Rachel Monroe
Monroe is writing from inside the obsession. She is someone who is prone to what she calls “crime funks,” someone who has always been “murder-minded.”
Review: Love in the New Millennium by Can Xue
With its non sequitur dialogue, arias sounding from the sky, and houses that vanish behind characters’ backs, the book takes place in a dreamscape—Dali’s playful...
Review: The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom
Sarah M. Broom’s debut book The Yellow House reads like a multifaceted map of not just a place, but also an expanse of time, marking...
Review: Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
Trick Mirror is a book that only a millennial could write, but one who is smart enough to be able to see our lives objectively,...
Labyrinthine Cinema: Review of Manifesto, Julian Rosefeldt
Julian Rosefeldt’s thirteen-part film installation, Manifesto, is situated at the approximate midpoint of the Hirshhorn’s Manifesto: Art x Agency exhibition which comprises the entire outer...
Review: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
“All the boys knew about that rotten spot,” describes the narrator of The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead’s searing novel set in Jim Crow-era Florida. The boys,...
Review: Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob
Good Talk whiplashes the reader from ease and pleasure to apprehension and concern, so that the reader is never truly comfortable.
Review: Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok
More than a fast-paced thriller, Searching for Sylvie Lee is a meditation on dislocation, the gulf that separates generations of migrants, and the price of...
Review: On The End of Privacy by Richard E. Miller
What it means to live in a world where anyone can hide behind a screen but anything, once written on a screen, can’t be hidden.