Glimpses of Vulnerability
In The Irish Goodbye, Beth Ann Fennelly returns to the “micro-memoir,” a form that conveys human experience through brief, richly detailed scenes.
Book Reviews
Art in the Face of Erasure
Carolyn Newton’s second novel, Songs of the Dead Road, follows a Polish pianist whose life is shaped by wartime loss, Soviet labor camps, and the enduring power of music. The novel explores how memory and art bear witness to histories the world would rather forget.
Beyond Monumental Figures
In I’ll Make Me a World: The 100-Year Journey of Black History Month, Harvard professor Jarvis R. Givens interrogates how historical consciousness should be grounded in everyday life.
A Haunted Town
The Witch’s Orchard, Archer Sullivan’s debut novel, is both an excellent mystery and a study of how a small, isolated community endures a series of soul-shaking events.
Hell’s Kitchen
In W.M. Akers’ new mystery, To Kill a Cook, set in 1972, a restaurant critic rushes to solve the murder of a chef and simultaneously save her career and her upcoming marriage. Akers will discuss To Kill a Cook at Parnassus Books in Nashville on February 4.
Elevation
George Saunders’ Vigil raises nuanced questions about kindness and what we owe the living — and the dead. Saunders will discuss the book with Ann Patchett at Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville on January 30.
