A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Book Reviews

The Chains of Love

By Susannah Felts

Wench, a story of enslaved concubines and their white male masters, is a surefooted and engrossing work of historical fiction. While debut novelist Dolen Perkins-Valdez grounds her story in compelling nineteenth-century research, the book finds its center and momentum not in reams of facts but in one woman’s impossibly conflicted heart. Deeply interior and elegantly written, this novel reveals shades of emotional complexity in the slave-owner relationship, one often portrayed as a classic battle of good and evil, heroes and villains.

Casting a Southern Gothic Spell

By Lyda Phillips

Ethan Wate, the sixteen-year-old scion of an old Southern family, feels as if complete stagnation is slowly destroying his soul. Then Lena Duchannes arrives. The mysterious new girl is the niece of the town’s reclusive—and unpopular—eccentric, who lives in a crumbling mansion on the outskirts of town. It’s only a matter of time before voodoo charms give way to graves in this debut YA novel. Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl will read from and sign copies of Beautiful Creatures at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on January 27 at 6 p.m.

Against Closure

By Anne Delana Reeves

In her newest story collection, Homicide Survivors Picnic, Lorraine M. López writes, “There are some things we just can’t help.” Things like dead birds. Ex-husbands. Poor choices. Bad cats. It’s no picnic for many of her finely drawn characters to clean up the messes others have fecklessly abandoned. López, who teaches creative writing and literature at Vanderbilt University, is the recipient of numerous Latino awards for her writing, but this collection defies boundaries of skin color, ancestry, and gender, elevating mundane events and predicaments to the scope of larger human dramas.

The People's Court

By Maria Browning

Americans across the political spectrum like to complain about the unchecked power of the Supreme Court. In The Will of the People, former Vanderbilt law professor Barry Friedman offers a meticulously researched account of the Court’s most important decisions, from Marbury v. Madison to Bush v. Gore, and reveals that the public has always had the last word.

All The King's Women

By Paul V. Griffith

He had everything—talent, adoring fans, firearms, cash, cars, and mansions—but most importantly, he had women. Lots of women. In Baby, Let’s Play House, music journalist Alanna Nash uses Elvis’s Bacchanalian appetites as the starting point for an exhaustive look at his psychology. Though not always clinically successful, Nash’s portrayal of the King as a doomed sexual superboy is an enthralling, if guilty, pleasure. Alanna Nash will read from and sign copies of Baby, Let’s Play House at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis in January 7 at 6 p.m.

With This King, I Thee Wed

By Paul V. Griffith

In Elvis: My Best Man, George “GK” Klein details his long history with Elvis Presley, from their years together at North Memphis’s Hume High School through his acceptance, on behalf of Presley Enterprises, of Elvis’s 1986 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Though Klein’s account is not unbiased, it nonetheless provides fresh insight into one of the greatest careers in the history of show business. Klein will read from and sign copies of Elvis: My Best Man at Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis on January 13 at 6 p.m.

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