Book Reviews
Bringing you the very best in books!
Experiencing Salinger: the Letters, the Criticism, and the Characters
Too often, a writer dies and, for a moment, their works can be found everywhere as people mourn before the media moves on to the next news item. Though today marks the last day that J.D. Salinger’s letters are on public display at the Morgan Library and Museum, the spate of digital and print... »
“Everything Here is the Best Thing Ever” (or is it?)
I’ll admit it. I was seduced by the blatantly self-promoting title and the sexy landscape on its sweet cover, which smacks of literary promise. The author, Justin Taylor, is young, it’s his first published short story collection (though his bio tells us he’s at work on his first novel in Brooklyn) and reviewers seem... »
Tom Piazza’s “City of Refuge”
“After the first two people he saw floating facedown, he had wrapped up the part of himself that would react, the way you would tape up a sprained ankle so you could walk on it. He was needed. But spreading like a bruise under that tight bandage were all the questions he could not... »
LaNew-Yorkaise.com Giveaway: Set of Three Limited Edition Novels from Olive Editions!
To celebrate the beauty of books as gifts, LaNew-Yorkaise.com will be giving away a set of three, limited edition novels from the Olive Edition line: "The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon, "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser, and "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath.To win, post about the best or most memorable... »
Jack Henry, Poet Provocateur
“jack henry’s large heart, a veteran of wars, accidents, fears, madness, disillusion, is, in these 80 different dance halls of image and sound, breaking invisible bread with jesus as the latter downs his meds with shots of tequila, while on the corner of 6th and Los Angeles streets the meteor of hope has crashed... »
Roxana Robinson’s “Cost”
Against the beautiful backdrop of an idyllic farmhouse in Maine, the Lambert family is forced to examine the ugliness that has bloomed between them over years of avoidance, setting them adrift in their own private dramas. It is the dreamer Jack’s addiction that moors them, forcing them to bump up against one another, creaking... »
The Pleasure of Language in Vanina Marsot’s “Foreign Tongue”
Vanina Marsot’s Foreign Tongue has as many layered meanings as its playful title. This novel-within a novel is part erotic romance, part insightful musings on the nuances of the French language and the difficulties of translation. Professional writer Anna takes advantage of her dual citizenship and flees to Paris after a bad break-up with LA’s... »
Nick Laird the Novelist, Nick Laird the Poet: Glover’s Mistake
Tall, shy Nick Laird of the Irish Brogue, navy buttoned shirt and blue jeans. Nick Laird the novelist, and Nick Laird the poet: both were present in last night’s reading at McNally Jackson Bookstore in Soho celebrating the publication of Laird’s second novel, Glover’s Mistake. Noticing the microphone was too short to talk into without slouching,... »
Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on The Albums That Changed Their Lives
We all have albums that have impacted our lives in some way: soundtracks to a certain summer, lyrics that spoke to a transition (love or otherwise) in our lives. In Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on The Albums That Changed Their Lives, edited and with an introduction by Peter Terzian, the personal musical musings of... »
From Nagasaki to Afghanistan: Kamila Shamsie’s “Burnt Shadows”
Maybe it’s because I spent a good part of my college years studying trauma and how people experience and record it; maybe because World War II and its fallout—both figurative and literal—is a topic I find myself drawn to again and again (my thesis was based on an oral history project I conducted that... »