Book Reviews
I’m an avid book reviewer, although I’ve had to curtail my review practice quite dramatically since returning to a full-time “day job” in early 2007. If you’re an author/publisher/publicist who’d like to contact me about a possible review title, please use this site’s contact form, and please understand that I can only review a very limited number of titles each year. These titles tend to fall within the following areas: short-story collections; fiction and nonfiction on Jewish themes; French literature (in the original or in English translation); French history (in English, French, or English translation); and books about the craft, business, and/or teaching of writing.
To wit, a selected list of my published reviews:
James L.W. West, III, ed., A Short Autobiography by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner, 2011), The Writer, March 2012.
Mark Yakich, A Meaning for Wife (Ig Publishing, 2011), Fiction Writers Review, January 2012.
Martin Fletcher, The List (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2011), Jewish Journal, November 2011.
Nathacha Appanah, The Last Brother (trans. Geoffrey Strachan; Graywolf Press, 2011), Jewish Book World, Fall 5771/2011.
Christopher Johnson, Microstyle: The Art of Writing Little (W.W. Norton, 2011), The Writer, September 2011.
Sam Savage, Glass (Coffee House Press, 2011), Writermag.com, August 2011. (full text available with free site registration)
Suzanne Marrs, ed., What There Is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), The Writer, July 2011.
Villa Gillet/Le Monde (multiple translators), The Novelist’s Lexicon: Writers on the Words That Define Their Work (Columbia University Press, 2010), and Molly McQuade, ed., One Word: Contemporary Writers on the Words They Love or Loathe (Sarabande Books, 2010), The Writer, May 2011.
“Looking Backward: Third-Generation Fiction Writers and the Holocaust” (essay-review with emphasis on Natasha Solomons, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English [Reagan Arthur Books, 2010]; Alison Pick, Far to Go [Harper Perennial, 2011]; and Julie Orringer, The Invisible Bridge [Knopf, 2010]), Fiction Writers Review, April 2011.
Mark Doty, The Art of Description: World Into Word (Graywolf Press, 2010), The Writer, March 2011.
Derek Rubin, ed., Promised Lands: New Jewish American Fiction on Longing and Belonging (Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England, 2010), Jewish Journal, December 2010.
Natasha Solomons, Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English (Reagan Arthur Books, 2010), Jewish Book World, Winter 5771/2010.
Alexander Neubauer, ed., Poetry in Person: Twenty-Five Years of Conversation with America’s Poets (Knopf, 2010), The Writer, October 2010.
Jacob Paul, Sarah/Sara (Ig Publishing, 2010), Fiction Writers Review, July 2010.
Rina Frank, Every House Needs a Balcony (trans. Ora Cummings; HarperCollins, 2010), Jewish Journal, June 2010.
Carol Sklenicka, Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life (Scribner, 2009), The Writer, June 2010.
Scott Warnock, Teaching Writing Online: How & Why (NCTE, 2009), The Writer, March 2010.
Norah Labiner, German for Travelers: A Novel in 95 Lessons (Coffee House Press, 2009), Jewish Book World, Fall 5769/2009.
Chloe Aridjis, Book of Clouds (Black Cat, 2009), Fiction Writers Review, September 2009.
Matthew Leone, ed., Crafting Fiction, Poetry, and Memoir: Talks from the Colgate Writers’ Conference (Colgate University Press, 2008), The Writer, June 2009.
Midge Raymond, Forgetting English (Eastern Washington University Press, 2009), Fiction Writers Review, June 2009.
Robert Hartwell Fiske and Laura Cherry, eds., Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press, 2008), The Writer, April 2009.
Lena Lencek and Piero Brunello, eds. How to Write Like Chekhov: Advice and Inspiration, Straight From His Own Letters and Work (trans. Lena Lencek; Da Capo Press, 2008), The Writer, February 2009.
Roberto Bolaño, Nazi Literature in the Americas (trans. Chris Andrews; New Directions, 2008), The Chattahoochee Review 28.4 (Fall 2008).
Margot Singer, The Pale of Settlement (University of Georgia Press, 2007), Kenyon Review Online, October 2008.
James Wood, How Fiction Works (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), The Writer, October 2008.
Yuko Taniguchi, The Ocean in the Closet (Coffee House Press, 2007), The Chattahoochee Review 28.1 (Winter 2008).
Susannah Patton, A Journey Into Flaubert’s Normandy (Roaring Forties Press, 2006), The Writer, August 2007.
Jeffrey Goldberg, Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), The Chattahoochee Review 27.2 (Winter 2007).
Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them (HarperCollins, 2006), The Writer, February 2007.
Irène Némirovsky, Suite Française (trans. Sandra Smith; Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), The Missouri Review 29.3 (Fall 2006).
Faïza Guène, Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow (trans. Sarah Adams; Harvest/Harcourt, 2006), The Chattahoochee Review 27.1 (Fall 2006).
Carmen Callil, Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland, and Vichy France (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), The Christian Science Monitor, 10 October 2006.
Mary Pipher, Writing to Change the World (Riverhead, 2006), The Writer, September 2006.
Walter Laqueur, The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Oxford University Press, 2006), JBooks.com, August 2006.
Ted Kooser and Steve Cox, Writing Brave & Free: Encouraging Words for People Who Want to Start Writing (University of Nebraska Press, 2006), The Writer, April 2006.
Michael D’Antonio, Hershey: Milton S. Hershey’s Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams (Simon and Schuster, 2006), The Missouri Review 29.1 (Spring 2006).
Albert Camus, Camus at Combat (ed. Jacqueline Lévi-Valensi; trans. Arthur Goldhammer; Princeton University Press, 2006), The Chattahoochee Review 26.2-3 (Winter-Spring 2006).
Tamar Yellin, Kafka in Brontëland and Other Stories (Toby Press, 2006), JBooks.com, March 2006.
Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), The Writer, February 2006.
Marcie Cohen Ferris, Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South (University of North Carolina Press, 2005), The Forward, 14 October 2005.
Camille Cusumano, ed. France, A Love Story: Women Write About the French Experience (Seal Press, 2004), Boston Sunday Globe, November 4, 2004.
Deborah Dash Moore, GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation (Harvard University Press, 2004), JBooks.com, October 2004.
Emile Zola, The Belly of Paris (trans. Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, rev. Tracy Biga and Guy Bennett; Sun & Moon, 1996), The Boston Book Review, April 1996.
Dan Bar-On, Fear and Hope: Three Generations of the Holocaust (Harvard University Press, 1995), Hadassah, February 1996.
Albert Camus, The First Man (trans. David Hapgood; Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), The Boston Book Review, November 1995.
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