In Maggie O’Farrell’s sterling Hamnet, she seeks to fill in the blanks of history to tell a deeply human story. … More Life and Death in the Margins: Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell
A review of a nonfiction account of one woman’s quest to save children orphaned by or suffering from AIDS in Ethiopia. … More Motherhood, Charity, and Africa’s AIDS Orphans: There is No Me Without You, by Melissa Fay Greene
A humane, sharply observed set of interlocked stories about a home care worker taking care of AIDS patients in the 1990s. … More A Handbook for Helping the Dying: The Gifts of the Body, by Rebecca Brown
“It’s always a matter, isn’t it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled? When things hold together, it’s only temporary.” Simply put, The Great Believers is a novel about the fragility of life; how tenuous our grasp on it–and each other–is. It is also beautiful, honest, and funny. I am not ashamed to admit that … More Living and Dying in Times of Crisis: The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai
“Humans haunt more houses than ghosts do.” On the surface it would be easy to read and digest (perhaps even to dismiss) The Turner House as a simple family saga. To do so would be to miss the point entirely, and to miss an incredibly layered portrait of America, Detroit, racial politics, and more. The Turners … More The Turner House, by Angela Flournoy: Book Review
If you’re looking for a book that will make you incredibly mad at the healthcare system, this is the novel for you. If you’re already mad or have been burned by America’s healthcare system, there’s a chance this novel could be a fist-pumping endorsement of your experience–except how could a novel about a young mother … More Alice & Oliver, by Charles Bock: Book Review
“So much of life was the peeling away of illusions.” I had been very much looking forward to reading this book, but unfortunately it has been quite a disappointment. The first hundred pages, about the childhood and teen years of Eileen Tumulty, fly by and are quite promising. But something curious happens as she becomes … More Book Review: We Are Not Ourselves, by Matthew Thomas
