Archive for January, 2011
McClatchy Newspapers Picks up My Baxter Review
The McClatchy Company, parent company of The Kansas City Star, picked up my review of Charles Baxter’s Gryphon.
So, in addition to The Kansas City Star, the review appears in The San Luis Obispo Tribune (California)
The Biloxi Sun Herald (Mississippi)
The Olympian (Washington)
The Tacoma News Tribune (Washington)
The Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky)
The Rock Hill Herald (South Carolina)
The Centre Daily Times (State College, Pennsylvania)
The Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho)
The Modesto Bee (California)
The Bradenton Herald (Florida)
The Macon Telegraph (Georgia)
The Myrtle Beach Sun News (Florida)
The State (South Carolina)
The Belleville News-Democrat (Illinois)
The Tri-City Herald (Washington)
The Bellingham Herald (Washington)
I also reviewed Baxter’s Soul Thief
in the April 20, 2008, edition of The Kansas City Star. You can read the review here.
I Review Jessica Anya Blau’s “Drinking Closer To Home”
You might recognize Jessica Anya Blau as the author of 2008’s semi-autobiographical coming-of-age story “The Summer of Naked Swim Parties.’’ High and low comedy, nude swimming, and familial frenzy floated through “Swim Parties’’ like pot smoke.
I review Jessica Anya Blau’s Drinking Closer To Home in the January 19 edition of The Boston Globe.
You can buy Drinking Closer To Home at Barnes & Noble.
I review Charles Baxter’s “Gryphon”
A Baxter story always surprises with its metaphysics. Typically Midwestern, Baxter’s characters appear to be living ordinary, even mundane lives when suddenly the supernatural or near-supernatural, sometimes the beautifully strange, rears its magical head. Not really magical realism, it’s more like correlative subtext that has replaced T.S. Eliot’s objectivity with a metaphysical phenomenon — the magical correlative.
I review Charles Baxter’s Gryphon New and Selected Stories in The January 15 edition of The Kansas City Star.
You buy Gryphon at Barnes & Noble.
“Drinking Closer to Home”
I’ll be reviewing Jessica Anya Blau’s Drinking Closer to home in the January 19 edition of The Boston Globe.
I Review “Lawn Order,” a Cozy Mystery by Molly MacRae
Soon after the poisoning, the town’s welcome sign is defaced with green paint. Some crackpot fills a dumpster with manure, and an entire lawn and garden is sprayed with weed killer, spelling out obscenities. A fishpond blows up. Three goats dance on a police car.
I review Molly MacRae’s Lawn Order in The Boston Globe.
You can buy Lawn Order at Barnes & Noble.
