Recommended Reading
The Hundred-Year House (Viking, 2014) by Rebecca Makkai
by Liza Boldrick Hunting For Clues With Ghosts Rebecca Makkai’s novel The Hundred-Year House invites more than one reading. It may be finished in one long day on the beach, but this is no beach read; given the complex storyline, … Continue reading
WHITE OLEANDER by Janet Fitch
by Liza Boldrick There are two types of books: those which you can abandon for a day or two when things get hectic, and those which become temporarily fused to your fingertips, making the trip with you to the coffee … Continue reading
The Relentlessness of Salvation (Snake Nation) by Robert Parham
Robert Parham, who for many years has dedicated much of his life to his own poetry and to the poetry of others via his co-editorship (with James Smith) of the Southern Poetry Review, has in The Relentlessness of Salvation proven … Continue reading
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1989) by Allan Gurganus
Reviewed by Sophie Xiong Recently “epic” has become a grossly misused word due to the trendiness of brash exaggeration. Reading Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (Ivy Books), however, restores the meaning of an epic. Allan Gurganus’ monumental 875-page first … Continue reading
THE BOOK OF GOODBYES (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2013) by Jillian Weise
Reviewed by Philip Belcher Winning the 2013 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and the same year’s James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets should be sufficient to recommend Jillian Weise’s The Book of Goodbyes to the reading public. Still, … Continue reading