Extraordinary writing
This book is so hard to read that it is testament to the author’s skills that I continued to read it, avidly in fact, almost against my own wishes. Sarah Perry is writing of the death of her beloved father-in-law, his...
Nonfiction
All in Moderation
So go Ezekiel Emanuel’s 6 prescriptions for longterm wellness, which seem reasonable enough. Emanuel has an impressively lengthy resume as an oncologist and bioethicist at several Ivy League universities. He also worked on the Obamacare Act and thus helped to...
My kid’s famous. Let’s ride this train.”
People of my age might view the phenomenon of influencers with vague bewilderment. Who are these people, and why are they so famous? How do they make money? And why do people want to be influenced by them? Some, if...
The Grasshopper and the Ant
I expect many readers have heard of and/or read Ann Patchett, but how many have heard of Lucy Grealy? I had not. Grealy wrote a well-received memoir, Autobiography of a Face, but only one, and she died young, which is...
Wild in the water
In 1950, Gavin Maxwell moved to a cottage on the West Coast of Scotland, into a small house standing isolated near the sea. His memoir, Ring of Bright Water, about the place and the animals he shared it with, became...
‘The sexiest flowers on earth’
The Orchid Thief of the title is John Laroche: a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth. Susan Orlean wrote about him for...
Humans & Technology; a New Era
This nearly 500 paged book stuffed with information and concepts and history is not going to be easy to review comprehensively. This review will just highlight a few key ideas and topics that rise to the forefront of my mind...
A history of trauma and reconciliation
May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. This memorable sentence is the start of Arundhati Roy’s wonderful The God of Small Things, and anyone who has read it knows or has assumed the novel contains the broad outlines of...
Banaras – City of life, death and desire
I was not familiar with the term ‘slow journalism’ which, per a search, has multiple definitions (my favorite is “unbreaking news”). Words that fit Radhika Iyengar’s Fire on the Ganges include “storytelling” and “taking time” – to listen, to observe,...
Surgery under fire
Many of us have had the experience of surgery in a hospital, either for ourselves or people around us. The routine may be familiar if fraught: nurses briskly entering and leaving, vital signs checked at apparently random intervals, those bright...
Lucky Woman
This is not one of Quindlen’s lovely novels, but a non-fiction where she writes her thoughts on life and life’s lessons. It was a highly enjoyable read because I relish her writing voice, its clarity and charm, and also enjoyed...
Survivor
I could not wait to read this book. Rushdie has written 22 books in his 77 or 78 years of life, and of those, only 2 have been non-fiction – Joseph Anton, and now Knife. These are the only 2 books...
The story is the thing
Autofiction — lightly anonymized fiction based on the author’s own life experience — has been very popular lately, with a host of young writers exploring that genre. As a smattering of examples reviewed in this blog, there’s Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie...
Fine dining with an unusual chef
The National Museum of African American History and Culture opened in 2016 during President Obamas last year in office after 8 scandal-free years (we can only marvel, but sadly). To honour David Adjaye, the Ghanaian British architect who designed the...
From the trenches of minimum-wage existence
In the early 2000s, Stephanie Land found herself the single mother of a small child, out of a broken relationship with the child’s father, with a high school education, and no job skills. She needed to make a living for...
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