Critical Notes

Your reviews seed this roundup, please send items to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. *************************   “Julian Barnes 'Levels' With Us On Love, Loss And Ballooning.” Heller McAlpin on the acclaimed author's new memoir. She

Your reviews seed this roundup, please send items to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. *************************   New NBCC member Elizabeth Rosner reviews Tracy Guzeman's The Gravity of Birds. Thanks to a firewall, this review

Julia M. Klein reviews Sheri Fink's Five Days at Memorial for the Boston Globe. In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gina Webb reviews John Dufresne's No Regrets, Coyote. Norman Rush's Subtle Bodies,

NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari reviews Valerie Miner's Traveling with Spirits. “The best bad book on Salinger ever written.” Paul Wilner reviews the new Salinger bio. Gerald Bartell interviews mystery

“This low-key memoir is a modest dish.” Heller McAlpin on Kate Christensen's Blue Plate Special. For the Miami Herald, Kit Reed reviews Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam. “Long at Helm, U.T. Collector Leaves

Joe Peschel reviews Rick Bass's novel, All the Land to Hold Us, in the Boston Globe. For Bookforum, John Domini reviews Joseph McElroy's latest novel Cannonball. He also reviews Peter Dimock's novel George

Albert Murray, a recipient of the NBCC’s Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1996, died earlier this month at 97. The Oxford American published Walton Muyumba’s “The Blues Hero in

“She was hardly the only science fiction writer of her day to craft beautiful sentences, but she was (as her peers recognized) one of the best…” Stephen Burt on Alice

In the New York Journal of Books, George De Stefano reviews Thomas Glave's Among the Bloodpeople. Julia M. Klein reviews Christine Montross's Falling into the Fire for the Boston Globe.

Please note that there will be no roundup today. We will return with a double edition on Monday, 8/12.