‘God, If There Was a God’

‘God, If There Was a God’

Missionaries: A Novel by Phil Klay. Penguin Press, 2020, Hardcover, 416 pages, $28. Reviewed by Joshua Hren It isn’t surprising that Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity begins by immersing us in the rejection thereof, the highways of doubt and the...
The Place of Punctuation in Literary Art

The Place of Punctuation in Literary Art

Mark My Words: Profiles of Punctuation in Modern Literature by Lee Clark Mitchell. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Softcover, 166 pages, $15. Reviewed by Oliver Spivey Many literature professors have long expressed their embarrassment at simply professing literature. Not...
The Girl of Slender Meanings

The Girl of Slender Meanings

Muriel Spark’s Early Fiction: Literary Subversion and Experiments with Form by James Bailey. University of Edinburgh Press, 2021. Hardback, 224 pages, $100. Reviewed by Asher Gelzer-Govatos Reading critical approaches to a favorite author can be an exercise in futile...
Breaking the Leaf-Mould

Breaking the Leaf-Mould

Tolkien’s Modern Reading: Middle-earth Beyond the Middle Ages by Holly Ordway. Word on Fire Academic, 2021. Hardcover, 382 pages, $24. Reviewed by John Tuttle Holly Ordway’s engrossing volume Tolkien’s Modern Reading is significant in its own right, but it also marks...
Counter-Tradition of the American Imagination

Counter-Tradition of the American Imagination

Geographies of Flight: Phillis Wheatley to Octavia Butler by William Merrill Decker. Northwestern University Press, 2020. Paper, 294 pages, $43. Reviewed by J. L. Wall Aboard the Arbella—or maybe in Southampton before the colonists departed for the New World—John...