Critical Notes

Critical Notes Catch-up: Louise Erdrich, Richard Russo, David Means, and more

By Michele Filgate

Your reviews seed this roundup. Please send items, including news about recent publications and honors, to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. (Current members only.) Please only send links that do not require a subscription or a username and password.

NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari writes about the Bay Area Book Festival for Literary Hub.  (It includes embedded video of former NBCC president John Freeman interviewing NBCC criticism winner Rebecca Solnit.)

NBCC board member Colette Bancroft reviews “Blood, Bone, and Marrow: A Biography of Harry Crews” for the Tampa Bay Times.

NBCC board member Kate Tuttle interviews Negin Farsad for The Boston Globe.

NBCC board member Ron Charles considers Justin Cronin’s “The City of Mirrors” for The Washington Post.

NBCC board member Laurie Hertzel interviews Louise Erdrich for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Hertzel also reviews “Fever at Dawn,” by Peter Gardos and writes about the worst moms in literature.

NBCC board member Greg Barrios review’s HBO’s film based on Robert Schenkkan’s Tony award-winning play on Lyndon Baines Johnson for the Texas Observer.

NBCC board member and 2013 Balakian winner Katherine A. Powers reviews Simon Sebag Montefiore's “The Romanovs: 1613 – 1918” and C.E. Morgan’s “The Sport of Kings” for the Barnes & Noble Review. 

Former NBCC board member Rigoberto González writes about NBCC board member Greg Barrios for  NBC News.

Former NBCC board member Carolyn Kellogg, book editor at the Los Angeles Times, interviews Lisa Lucas, new head of the National Book Foundation.

Paul Devlin reviews “Invisible Man: Gordon Parks and Ralph Ellison in Harlem” for Bomb Magazine.

Anjali Enjeti reviews Laurence Leamer’s “The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan” for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and writes about literary translations for Literary Hub.

Rebecca Donner reviews “Hystopia” by David Means for Bookforum.

David Cooper reviews “The Extra” by A.B. Yehoshua for the New York Journal of Books.

C.M. Mayo reviews Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey J. Kripal's “The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained” for Literal Magazine.

Bob Hoover reviews Nathaniel Philbrick’s “Valiant Ambition” for the Dallas Morning News and Richard Russo’s “Everybody’s Fool” for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Michael Sandlin reviews Jeremy Geltzer’s “Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures” for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

John Domini reviews Natashia Deón’s “Grace” and Allison Amend’s “Enchanted Islands” for the Brooklyn Rail, and Maurizio de Giovanni’s “The Bastards of Pizzofalcone” for Bookforum.

Michael Leong reviews Dorothy J. Wang’s Thinking Its Presence: Form, Race, and Subjectivity in Contemporary Asian American Poetry for Contemporary Literature.

Dominic Green assesses the novels of Patrick Modiano in an essay for The New Criterion.

Ellen Akins reviews Jean Thomspon’s “She Poured Out Her Heart” and Louise Erdrich’s “LaRose” for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Diane Scharper reviews “The Berrigan Letters: Personal Correspondence between Daniel and Philip Berrigan” for Crux.

Jeffrey Ann Goudie reviews Louise Erdrich’s “LaRose” for the Kansas City Star.

Bradley Sides reviews Lee Clay Johnson’s “Nitro Mountain” for Electric Literature.

Paul Wilner reviews Richard Russo’s “Everybody’s Fool” for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Lisa Russ Spaar takes a look at second books of poetry by James Tate and Sam Taylor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

George de Stefano reviews “Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World” by Gregory Woods for  PopMatters.

Lori Feathers reviews Peter Stamm’s “All Days Are Night” (translated by Michael Hoffman) for Three Percent.

Joe Peschel reviews “Hystopia” by David Means in the News & Observer.

Michael Magras reviews Louise Erdrich’s “LaRose” for the Houston Chronicle and Julian Barnes’s “The Noise of Time” for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Joan Silverman reviews Jill Lepore’s “Joe Gould’s Teeth” for the Portland Press Herald.