Critical Notes

Reviews and More from NBCC Members

By Michael Schaub

Members and friends, we hope you had a great week! Our members have been keeping busy with reviews by authors including Abraham Verghese, Tom Hanks, Michelle Min Sterling, Jancee Dunn, Emma Cline, and Victor LaValle, and interviews with writers like Camille T. Dungy, Amal El-Mohtar, and Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai. Enjoy the spring, and as always, thanks for reading!

Member Reviews and Essays

Priscilla Gilman reviewed The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese for The Boston Globe.

Linda Hitchcock reviewed We Love to Entertain by Sarah Strohmeyer for BookTrib.

Dan Kois wrote about Tom Hanks’ The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiecefor Slate.

Ron Slate reviewed four music titles by Greil Marcus, Aiden Levy, Edward Dusinberre, and William Banfield for On The Seawall.

Former NBCC board member Marion Wink reviewed Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Laura Dern and Diane Ladd’s Honey, Baby, Minefor The Washington Post, and Susan Isaacs’ Bad, Bad Seymour Brownand Brenda Janowitz’s The Audrey Hepburn Estatefor Newsday.

Tobias Carroll reviewed Meghan Gilliss’ Lungfish for the Portland Press-Herald and Michelle Min Sterling’s Camp Zero for Tor.com.

Julia M. Klein reviewed Joop van Wijk-Voskuijl and Jeroen De Bruyn’s The Last Secret of the Secret Annex for The Wall Street Journal.

Nell Beram reviewed four books for Shelf Awareness: Chita by Chita Rivera; Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer; Not Funny: Essays on Life, Comedy, Culture, Et Cetera by Jena Friedman; and We Are Too Many: A Memoir [Kind Of] by Hannah Pittard. 

Meredith Maran reviewed Jancee Dunn’s Hot and Botheredfor The Washington Post.

In The Brooklyn Rail, John Domini reviewed Mario Fortunato’s South, a Strega winner in Italy, translated by Julia MacGibbon. 

Melissa Holbrook Pierson reviewed Helen Cammock’s I Will Keep My Soul for Hyperallergic.

Jayne Marek reviewed Refugee by Pamela Uschuk for Compulsive Reader.

Michael Malone reviewed Emma Cline’s novel The Guest in The East Hampton Star

NBCC Vice President/Emerging Critics Fellowship and Online Michael Schaub reviewed Victor LaValle’s Lone Womenfor NPR.

Member Interviews

NBCC board member Lauren LeBlanc interviewed Camille T. Dungy for Literary Hub.

Dan Kois interviewed Amal El-Mohtar, co-author of This Is How You Lose the Time War, about her book becoming a bestseller due to a viral tweet from someone called “Bigolas Dickolas.”

Tobias Carroll interviewed Alex Mar and Henry Grabar for InsideHook.

Edna Bonhomme interviewed Laleh Khalili for Public Books.

NBCC Vice President/Emerging Critics Fellowship and Online Michael Schaub interviewed John Wray and author Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai and audiobook narrator Quyen Ngo for The Orange County Register.

Member News

Roxana Robinson received the Preston Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community from the Authors Guild. The presentation was made by 2008 NBCC Award for Fiction finalist Elizabeth Strout.

Lisa Russ Spaar’s debut novel, Paradise Close, was reviewed by Aimee Seu for Southeast Review.

Nancy Naomi Carlson has co-translated (with Esperanza Hope Snyder) Cuban Wendy Guerra’s Delicates, to be published by Seagull Books on June 19.

William O’Rourke’s new book, People & Places: Robert Kareka, was published Apr. 27 by Dos Madres Press.

Photo of the Rijksmuseum Library in Amsterdam by Aureliano Nobrega via Flickr. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.