Critical Notes

Roundup: Lily King, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Tom Rachman, Francine Prose and more

By Eric Liebetrau

Your reviews seed this roundup; please send items to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. Make sure to send links that do not require a subscription or username and password.

*************************

Song of the Shank” is a novel of musical, racial exploitation. Linda Simon on Jeffery Renard Allen's latest book.

NBCC board member Karen Long reviews Lily King's Euphoria.

Heather Seggel reviews Nicola Upson's The Death of Lucy Kyte.

The Antiquarian, a Macabre Novel About a Search for Truth.” Review by NBCC board member Carmela Ciararu.

Louis Gordon reviews Hillel Halkin's Jabotinsky: A Life.

Former NBCC award winner Daniel Mendelsohn reviews Patrick Leigh Fermor's The Broken Road.

Matthew Jakubowski reviews Joanna Howard's Foreign Correspondent for The Kenyon Review OnlineHe also published a short story in Fiddleblack.

“O Jogo Bonito (Men Running Around in Shorts),” from Robert Birnbaum. At VQR, Birnbaum chats with Francine Prose.

Nathan Deuel reviews Phil Klay's Redeployment.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Tom Rachman's The Rise and Fall of Great Powers.

NBCC board member Steven G. Kellman reviews Henry Roth's Mercy of a Rude Stream. Kellman also takes a look at the banning of Ulysses. For the Dallas Morning News, Kellman reviews Tom Rachman's latest novel.

Charles Wright, winner of the 1997 NBCC Poetry Award for his book Black Zodiac, is the next poet laureate of the United States.

Paul Wilner reviews Michael Hastings' The Last Magazine.

According to Lambda Literary, NBCC board member Rigoberto González's book Unpeopled Eden is the best collection of gay poetry produced this year.

Adam Kirsch reviews Peter Finn and Petra Couvee's The Zhivago Affair.

Karl Wolff reviews The Wars of Heaven: Short Stories, by Richard Currey.

The Great Big Roundup of 2014 Story Collections, from David Abrams.