Transcending the ‘Good Old Days’

Transcending the ‘Good Old Days’

Last Summer Boys: A Novel by Bill Rivers Lake Union Publishing, 2022 Paperback, 285 pages, $14.95 Reviewed by Ashlee Cowles Nostalgia is a word often used in reference to works of fiction like Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine and Stephen King’s novella “The Body,” which...
Balzac: The Man for My Thirties?

Balzac: The Man for My Thirties?

By Jeffrey Wald I  have come to realize that a writer has indelibly marked each decade of my life. In my first decade of life, that author was Franklin Dixon. All right, I understand that “Franklin W. Dixon,” the author of Hardy Boys, was a pen name used by multiple...
Beyond Black and White

Beyond Black and White

The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright. Library of America, 2021. Hardcover, 240 pages, $23. Reviewed by James E. Hartley Richard Wright’s most recently published novel is a cause célèbre. The Man Who Lived Underground, originally written in 1941, was...
Death and the Catholic Imagination

Death and the Catholic Imagination

Thirst: A Novel by A. G. Mojtabai. Slant, 2021. Hardcover, 141 pages, $25. Reviewed by Jeffrey Wald The reality of death, and what happens thereafter, has long captured the human imagination. One thinks of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or Homer’s descriptions of...
A Puzzle-Box Book

A Puzzle-Box Book

The Gray House by Mariam Petrosyan translated by Yuri Machkasov Amazon Crossing, 2017. Paperback, 732 pages, $15.95. Reviewed by Eve Tushnet “… The House demands a reverent attitude. A sense of mystery. Respect and awe. It can accept you or not, shower you with gifts...