Can Whimsy Save the Small-Town Novel?

Can Whimsy Save the Small-Town Novel?

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger. Grove Press, 2018. Paperback, 320 pages, $17. Reviewed by Matt Miller Small towns in American fiction have a history as varied as the landscapes they inhabit. Often stifling or enervating, as in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sherwood...
How the Land Can Heal

How the Land Can Heal

Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, a New Earth by Charles Massy. Chelsea Green, 2018. Paperback, 511 pages, $24.95. Reviewed by Matt Miller Americans today little appreciate how European settlement transformed the landscape of this continent. Before...
Moral Reasoning in an Acceptable Time

Moral Reasoning in an Acceptable Time

The Kairos Novels: the Wrinkle in Time and Polly O’Keefe Quartets by Madeleine L’Engle, edited by Leonard S. Marcus. Library of America, 2018. Hardcover, 1917 pages, $80. Reviewed by Matt Miller Fantastic literature has always been beloved of those who feel themselves...