Tag: Book Review

  • FROM CAIRO TO TEXAS

    As a former journalist, I am interested in the career of others in the profession—and that of Lawrence Wright has confounded me for some time. Why does the author of the internationally acclaimed book, The Looming Tower, choose to write two politically charged books on Texas in later years? That strikes me as a strange…

  • HARDING: THIS OTHER EDEN

    Paul Harding roared onto the literary scene in 2010 by winning the Pulitzer for his first novel, Tinkers—a beautiful work of art marked by its rhythmic prose reflective of his musical background. Harding’s third novel, This Other Eden, certainly maintains his reputation for lyrical, complex writing that forces you past the surface plot into deeper…

  • ROSSETTI’S GOBLIN MEN

    Almost 30 years ago I came upon a tiny “gift book” containing Christina Rossetti’s 567-line ballad Goblin Market, illustrated by the art of her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Back then I was a businesswoman, years removed from my early college classes in English literature, so I did not tend to “analyze” my reads quite so…

  • SEBASTIAN BARRY’S SPATE OF WORDS

    It is difficult to explain why I like Sebastian Barry’s mournful Booker Prize-nominated On Canaan’s Side better than his current Booker-nominated Old God’s Time, and why all his other lauded works fall somewhere in between, but let me start by saying that Barry is masterful at the craft of writing. In the past I have…