Book Reviews

All reviews are for The Associated Press unless otherwise noted

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, by Naomi Wood, Nov. 25, 2024

Didion & Babitz, by Lili Anolik, Nov. 11, 2024

How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? by Anna Montague, Oct. 21, 2024

Don’t Be a Stranger, by Susan Minot, Oct. 15, 2024

Only in America: Al Jolson and The Jazz Singer, by Richard Bernstein, Oct. 10, 2024, The Forward

 The Women Behind the Door, by Roddy Doyle, Sept. 9, 2024

Feh, by Shalom Auslander, July 22, 2024

1974: A Personal History, by Francine Prose, June 17, 2024, The Forward

Fire Exit, by Morgan Talty, June 3, 2024

The Playbook, by James Shapiro, May 28, 2024

Goyhood, by Reuven Fenton, May 28, 2024

This Strange Eventful History, by Claire Messud, May 13, 2024

First Love, by Lilly Dancyger, May 6, 2024

Real Americans, by Rachel Khong, April 29, 2024

There’s Going to Be Trouble, by Jen Silverman, April 8, 2024

Headshot, by Rita Bullwinkel, March 11, 2024

Great Expectations, by Vinson Cunningham, March 11, 2024

 Martyr!  by Kaveh Akbar, Jan. 24, 2024

We Must Not Think of Ourselves, by Lauren Grodstein, Nov. 27, 2023

Chasing Bright Medusas, by Benjamin Taylor, Nov. 14, 2023

The Vulnerables, by Sigrid Nunez, Nov. 6, 2023

One Woman Show, by Christine Coulson, Oct. 16, 2023

How to Say Babylon, by Safiya Sinclair, Oct. 2, 2023

Ladies’ Lunch and Other Stories, Sept. 26, 2023, by Lore Segal, The Forward

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride, August 7, 2023

Crook Manifesto, by Colson Whitehead, July 17, 2023

I Do Everything I’m Told, by Megan Fernandes, June 20, 2023

I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home, by Lorrie Moore, June 20, 2023

George: A Magpie Memoir, by Frieda Hughes, June 5, 2023

The Late Americans, by Brandon Taylor, May 22, 2023

Sidle Creek, by Jolene McIlwain, May 15, 2023

Don’t Call Me Home, by Alexandra Auder, May 1, 2023

A Living Remedy, by Nicole Chung, April 3, 2023

Commitment, by Mona Simpson, March 20, 2023

I Have Some Questions for You, by Rebecca Makkai, Feb. 21, 2023

All the Beauty in the World, by Patrick Bringley, Feb. 13, 2023

The Guest Lecture, by Martin Riker, Jan. 23, 2023

Still Pictures, by Janet Malcom, Jan. 9, 2023

Dickens and Prince, by Nick Hornby, Nov. 15, 2022

Now Is Not the Time to Panic, by Kevin Wilson, Nov. 7, 2022

Liberation Day, by George Saunders, Oct. 17, 2022

Lessons, by Ian McEwan, Sept. 12, 2022, USA Today

The Unfolding, by A.M. Homes, Sept. 6, 2022

Diary of a Misfit, by Casey Parks, August 29, 2022

Kiki Man Ray, by Mark Braude, August 15, 2022

Diary of a Void, by Emi Yagi, August 8, 2022

Tracy Flick Can’t Win, by Tom Perrotta, June 6, 2022

Either/Or, by Elif Batuman, May 23, 2022

Search, by Michelle Huneven, April 25, 2022

In Love, by Amy Bloom, March 5, 2022, USA Today

Free Love, by Tessa Hadley, Feb. 14, 2022

Foreverland, by Heather Havrilesky, Feb. 7, 2022

Lost & Found, by Kathryn Schulz, Jan. 10, 2022

These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett, Nov. 22, 2021, USA Today

Orwell’s Roses, by Rebecca Solnit, Oct. 18, 2021

Oh William!, by Elizabeth Strout, Oct. 18, 2021

Fight Night, by Miriam Toews, Oct. 3, 2021, USA Today

Harlem Shuffle, by Colson Whitehead, Sept. 13, 2021

Matrix, by Lauren Groff, Sept. 7, 2021

On Freedom, by Maggie Nelson, Sept. 5, 2021, USA Today

Afterparties, by Anthony Veasna So, August 2, 2021

Objects of Desire, by Clare Sestanovich, June 28, 2021

Phase Six, by Jim Shepard, May 17, 2021

Second Place, by Rachel Cusk, May 3, 2021

Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told?, by Jenny Diski, April 19, 2021

First Person Singular, by Haruki Murakami, April 5, 2021

Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York, by Alexander Nemerov, March 22, 2021

Women Street Photographers, edited by Gulnara Samoilova, March 8, 2021

Kill Shot, by Jason Dearen, Feb. 22, 2021

Land of Big Numbers, by Te-Ping Chen, Feb. 1, 2021

Wild Swims, by Dorthe Nors, Feb. 1, 2021

Let Me Tell You What I Mean, by Joan Didion, Jan. 25, 2021

The Doctors Blackwell, by Janice Nimura, Jan. 18, 2021, USA Today

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, by George Saunders, Jan. 11, 2021

The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans, Nov. 8, 2020, USA Today

To Be a Man, by Nicole Krauss, Nov. 2, 2020

Our Last Season: A Writer, A Fan, A Friendship, by Harvey Araton, Oct. 26, 2020

Homeland Elegies, by Ayad Akhtar, Sept. 14, 2020

Having and Being Had, by Eula Biss, Sept. 2, 2020

Memorial Drive, by Natasha Trethewey, July 26, 2020, USA Today

Death in Her Hands, by Ottessa Moshfegh, June 15, 2020

Here We Are: My Friendship with Philip Roth, by Benjamin Taylor, May 19, 2020

Me & Patsy Kickin’ Up Dust, by Loretta Lynn, April 8, 2020

Shakespeare in a Divided America, by James Shapiro, March 3, 2020

Rebel Cinderella, by Adam Hochschild, March 3, 2020

Scratched, by Elizabeth Tallent, Feb. 26, 2020

Apartment, by Teddy Wayne, Feb. 25, 2020

These Fevered Days, by Martha Ackmann, Feb. 25, 2020

From Sea to Stormy Sea: 17 Stories Inspired by Great American Paintings, ed. Lawrence Block, Dec. 2, 2019

Parisian Lives, by Deirdre Bair, Nov. 11, 2019

The Second Founding, by Eric Foner, Sept. 16, 2019

The Grammarians, by Cathleen Schine, Sept. 3, 2019

Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson, Sept. 3, 2019

The Scandal of the Century and Other Writings, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, May 15, 2019

kaddish.com, by Nathan Englander, March 25, 2019

Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Paul Strand, Rebecca Salsbury, by Carolyn Burke, March 7, 2019

Nobody’s Looking at You: Essays, by Janet Malcolm, Feb. 19, 2019

Antisemitism: Here and Now, by Deborah E. Lipstadt, Jan. 30, 2019

The End of the End of the Earth: Essays, by Jonathan Franzen, Nov. 13, 2018

Evening in Paradise: More Stories, by Lucia Berlin, Nov. 5, 2018

Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism, by Lucia Berlin, Nov. 5, 2018

Lake Success, by Gary Shteyngart, Sept. 4, 2018

A Terrible Country, by Keith Gessen, July 9, 2018

A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety, by Donald Hall, July 9, 2018

Clock Dance, by Anne Tyler, July 9, 2018

Upstate, by James Wood, June 4, 2018

Property: Stories Between Two Novellas, by Lionel Shriver, April 23, 2018

Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography, by Julia Van Haaften, April 9, 2018

Girls Burn Brighter, by Shobha Rao, March 13, 2018, USA Today

A Tokyo Romance, by Ian Buruma, March 5, 2018

Debriefing: Collected Stories, by Susan Sontag, Nov. 13, 2017

Heather, The Totality, by Matthew Weiner, Nov. 6, 2017

The Ninth Hour, by Alice McDermott, Sept. 18, 2017

Forest Dark, by Nicole Krauss, Sept. 11, 2017

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, by Roxane Gay, June 12, 2017

Chuck Klosterman X: A Highly Specific, Defiantly Incomplete History of the Early 21st Century, by Chuck Klosterman, May 15, 2017

A Really Big Lunch, by Jim Harrison, March 23, 2017

The Idiot, by Elif Batuman, March 13, 2017

Ray & Joan, by Lisa Napoli, Nov. 14, 2016

Love for Sale: Pop Music in America, by David Hajdu, Oct. 17, 2016

Bright, Precious Days, by Jay McInerney, August 1, 2016

American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst, by Jeffrey Toobin, August 1, 2016

Vinegar Girl, by Anne Tyler, June 20, 2016

Ordinarily Well: The Case for Antidepressants, by Peter D. Kramer, June 6, 2016

Zero K, by Don DeLillo, May 2, 2016

Kill ‘Em and Leave, by James McBride, April 4, 2016

Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, by Peggy Orenstein, March 28, 2016

My Name is Lucy Barton, by Elizabeth Strout, Jan. 11, 2016

Alive, Alive Oh! And Other Things That Matter, by Diana Athill, Jan. 4, 2016

The Japanese Lover, by Isabel Allende, Nov. 2, 2015

MJ: The Genius of Michael Jackson, by Steve Knopper, Oct. 19, 2015

Drinking in America: Our Secret History, by Susan Cheever, Oct. 12, 2015

Thirteen Ways of Looking, by Colum McCann, Oct. 12, 2015

The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman, August 3, 2015

The Love Object, by Edna O’Brien, July 10, 2015

Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to Be Understood, by Edna O’Brien, July 10, 2015

In Montmartre: Picasso, Matisse and the Birth of Modernist Art, by Sue Roe, April 20, 2015

Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi, by Hayden Herrera, April 20, 2015

There is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction, by Saul Bellow, edited by Benjamin Taylor, March 30, 2015

A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler, Feb. 9, 2015

The First Bad Man, by Miranda July, Jan. 12, 2015

Family Furnishings, by Alice Munro, Dec. 8, 2014

David Hockney: The Biography, by Christopher Simon Sykes, Nov. 10, 2014

Rendez-vous with Art, by Philippe de Montebello, Martin Gayford, Sept. 30, 2014

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, by John Lahr, Sept. 22, 2014

The Betrayers, by David Bezmozgis, Sept. 22, 2014

Women in Clothes, by Sheila Heti et al., Sept. 3, 2014.

Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands, by Chris Bohjalian, July 7, 2014.

The Last Kind Words Saloon, by Larry McMurtry, May 6, 2014.

The Snow Queen, by Michael Cunningham, May 5, 2014.

Updike, by Adam Begley, April 7, 2014.

My Life in Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead, Jan. 27, 2014.

Andrew’s Brain, by E.L. Doctorow, Jan. 13, 2014.

Little Failure, by Gary Shteyngart, Jan. 6, 2014.

Brown Dog Novellas, by Jim Harrison, Dec. 2, 2013.

Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City, by Russell Shorto, Oct. 21, 2013

Quiet Dell, by Jayne Anne Phillips, Oct. 14, 2013

Goat Mountain, by David Vann, Sept. 9, 2013

Dissident Gardens, by Jonathan Lethem, Sept. 9, 2013

After Her, by Joyce Maynard, Aug. 19, 2013

& Sons, by David Gilbert, July 22, 2013

The Woman Upstairs, by Claire Messud, April 29, 2013

The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer, April 8, 2013

The Book of My Lives, by Aleksandar Hemon, March 20, 2013

Saul Steinberg: A Biography, by Deirdre Bair, Nov. 20, 2012

Sweet Tooth, by Ian McEwan, Nov. 7, 2012

What Are You Looking At? The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art, by Will Gompertz, Oct. 28, 2012

The Story of Ain’t: America, Its Language, and the Most Controversial Dictionary Ever Published, by David Skinner, Oct. 12, 2012

Vagina: A New Biography, by Naomi Wolf, Sept. 19, 2012

Winter Journal, by Paul Auster, Aug. 24, 2012

Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, by Kay Larson, July 7, 2012

Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens, by Andrea Wulf, May 1, 2012

A Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert, and the Death That Changed the British Monarchy, by Helen Rappaport, March 20, 2012

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, by Katherine Boo, Feb. 6, 2012

The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by her Beauty to Notice, by M.G. Lord, Feb. 3, 2012

A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, by Lawrence M. Krauss, Jan. 11, 2012

Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats, by Roger Rosenblatt, Jan. 3, 2012

Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life, by Ann Beattie, Nov. 14, 2011

Charles Dickens: A Life, by Claire Tomalin, Oct. 26, 2011

Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane, by Andrew Graham-Dixon, Sept. 15, 2011

Starting From Happy, by Patricia Marx, Aug. 23, 2011

Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein, by Julie Salamon, Aug. 21, 2011

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett, June 9, 2011

Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, by Don Van Natta Jr., June 1, 2011

Stan Musial: An American Life, by George Vecsey, May 10, 2011

An Accidental Sportswriter: A Memoir, by Robert Lipsyte, May 2, 2011

To End All Wars, by Adam Hochschild, May 2, 2011

Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter, by Patricia Albers, May 2, 2011

The Summer Without Men, by Siri Hustvedt, April 26, 2011

Reading My Father: A Memoir, by Alexandra Styron, April 18, 2011

You Think That’s Bad: Stories, by Jim Shepard, March 23, 2011

Modigliani: A Life, by Meryle Secrest, March 1, 2011

Between a Rock and a Hot Place: Why Fifty Is Not the New Thirty, By Tracey Jackson, Feb. 14, 2011

The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, By Tracey Jackson, Feb. 14, 2011

Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, by Michael Korda, Nov. 16, 2010

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Nov. 11, 2010