Critical Notes

Reviews and More From NBCC Members

By Michael Schaub

All of us at the NBCC are mourning the loss of Richard Locke, who died on Aug. 25 in New York. Richard was the president of the NBCC from 1982 to 1984, and in his career as a journalist, served as the deputy editor of The New York Times Book Review and editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. He taught literature and writing at Columbia University for almost 40 years, and was the author of Critical Children: The Use of Children in Ten Great Novels. We offer our sincere condolences to his family and friends.

Member Reviews/Essays

NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Hannah Bonner wrote “The Writing Kind: On Kate Zambreno’s The Light Room for the Cleveland Review of Books.

NBCC board member J. Howard Rosier reviewed Roger Reeves’s Dark Days for the Poetry Foundation. 

Costa B. Pappas reviewed Charles Cutter’s Under the Ashes for the Northwest Review.

Michael Malone reviewed the new Patty Lin memoir, End Credits: How I Broke Up With Hollywood, in the Pleasantville Examiner

NBCC board member Lauren LeBlanc reviewed Anna Funder’s Wifedomand wrote a fall fiction preview for The Boston Globe.

Former NBCC board member Steve Paul reviewed Mark Dent and Rustin Dodds’ Kingdom Quarterback: Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs and How a Once Swingin’ Cow Town Chased the Ultimate Comeback at KC Studio magazine. His essay in memory of the poet William Stafford appeared at Literary Hub, and he offered an essay connecting Stafford with J. Robert Oppenheimer on his website. 

Dan Kubis reviewed Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Small Worlds for The Brooklyn Rail.

David Starkey reviewed Tessa Hadley’s After the Funeral and Other Stories and Timothy Egan’s A Fever in the Heartlandfor the California Review of Books.

Martha Anne Toll reviewed Anne Berest’s The Postcardfor Lilith magazine and Jasmin Attia’s The Oud Player of Cairofor the Washington Independent Review of Books.

Gregor Thuswaldner reviewed Arturo Larcati and Friedrich Stadler‘s Otto Neurath liest Stefan Zweigs “Die Welt von Gestern”: Zwei Intellektuelle der Wiener Moderne im Exil for the Austrian History Yearbook. His review of Marcia J. Bunge, Jason A. Mahn, and Martha E. Stortz’s So That All May Flourish: The Aims of Lutheran Higher Education appeared in Christian Higher Education.

George Yatchisin reviewed The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann for the California Review of Books.

Carol Iaciofano Aucoin reviewed Jill Lepore’s The Deadline: Essays for WBUR’s Arts & Culture.

Joyce Sáenz Harris reviewed LaToya Watkins’ Holler, Childfor The Dallas Morning News.

Melissa Holbrook Pierson reviewed Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fanfor The Brooklyn Rail.

Nell Beram reviewed four books for Shelf Awareness: End Credits: How I Broke Up with Hollywood by Patty Lin; Everything/Nothing/Someone by Alice Carrière; Funny Things: A Comic Strip Biography of Charles M. Schulz by Luca Debus and Francesco Matteuzzi; and Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy by Bill Griffith.

Lanie Tankard reviewed The Drinker of Horizons, which concludes Mia Couto’s trilogy Sands of the Emperor and is translated by David Brookshaw, for World Literature Today.

Priscilla Gilman reviewed Everything/Nothing/Someone by Alice Carrière for The Washington Post.

Jim Schley reviewed Rick Winston’s Save Me a Seat: A Life with Movies for Seven Days.

Kathleen Rooney reviewed Sheena Patel’s I’m a Fanfor the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Member Interviews

NBCC Vice President/Barrios Prize Mandana Chaffa interviewed NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Taylor Byas for the Chicago Review of Books, and talked to Rebecca Gayle Howell and Ashley M. Jones about their anthology What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People for The Rumpus.

Anne Charles interviewed Bettina Aptheker about Communists in Closets: Queering the History 1930s-1990s for the Vermont cable access show All Things LGBTQ.

Meg Lemke interviewed Marjane Satrapi for Publishers Weekly.

NBCC board member J. Howard Rosier interviewed Adam Shatz about his book, Writers and Missionaries, for The Nation.

Amelia Ada interviewed poets Matt Broaddus (Temporal Anomalies) and Adrienne Chung (Organs of Little Importance) for the podcast You Shouldn’t Let Poets Lie To You.

For their Book Cougars podcast, NBCC member Chris Wolak and Emily Fine spoke with Erin Flanagan and Katrina Kittle about their new novels, Come with Me and Morning in this Broken World.

Elaine Szewczyk profiled novelist Alice McDermott for Publishers Weekly. McDermott’s new novel, Absolution, will be out this fall.

Member News

Kathleen Rooney’s novel From Dust to Stardustwas published today by Lake Union Publishing.

“Low Memorial Library, Columbia University, New York City” by Boston Public Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0.