Critical Notes

Reviews and More From NBCC Members

By Michael Schaub

We hope you’re having a good fall! Our members have been keeping busy with reviews of books by authors including Alexander McCall Smith, Clare Chambers, Haruki Murakami, Joshua Mohr, and Michel Houellebecq, and interviews with writers like Joseph Earl Thomas and Carvell Wallace. Thanks for reading, and happy Thanksgiving!

Member Reviews/Essays

NBCC lifetime member Heller McAlpin reviewed Paula Byrne’s Hardy Women for The Wall Street Journal and Niall Williams’ Time of the Child for The Christian Science Monitor.

Linda Hitchcock reviewed Alexander McCall Smith’s The Great Hippopotamus Hotel and The Conditions of Unconditional Love and Eight Very Bad Nights, edited by Tod Goldberg, for BookTrib.

Ron Slate reviewed Slaveroad by John Edgar Wideman and Blood Test by Charles Baxter at On The Seawall.

Julia M. Klein reviewed Adriana Allegri’s The Sunflower House for the Forward and James Chappel’s Golden Years for the Los Angeles Times.

Diane Scharper reviewed Paris In Ruins by Sebastian Smee for the Washington Examiner.

Cory Oldweiler wrote about Jennifer Croft’s translation of Federico Falco’s The Plainsfor the Southwest Review.

Ellen Prentiss Campbell reviewed Clare Chambers’ Shy Creatures, and wrote a column about the revision process, for the Washington Independent Review of Books.

George De Stefano reviewed Richard Seymour’s Disaster Nationalism for the New York Journal of Books.

Britta Stromeyer wrote about book banning for the Marin Independent Journal

Frank Housh reviewed The City And Its Uncertain Walls, written by Haruki Murakami and translated by Philip Gabriel, for Media Room: The Arts in Real Life. The review was simultaneously published at The Buffalo Hive.

Genanne Walsh reviewed Penny Guisinger’s Shift: A Memoir of Identity and Other Illusions for the Portland Press Herald – Maine Sunday Telegram.

Nell Beram reviewed three books for Shelf Awareness: A Case of Matricide by Graeme Macrae Burnet, Deadly Animals by Marie Tierney, and The Saint by Carin Gerhardsen.

For The Tangential, Jay Gabler reviewed Reem Hilu’s The Intimate Life of Computers: Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s.

Olga Zilberbourg reviewed The Talnikov Family, written by Avdotya Panaeva and translated by Fiona Bell, for On the Seawall.

Paul Wilner reviewed Joshua Mohr’s new novel, Saint The Terrifying, and wrote about an anthology of Covid-related writing, A Journal of the Plague Years: Words and Music From The Lost Days, edited by Susan Zakin and Brian Cullman, for ZYZZYVA.

Jake Casella Brookins reviewed Kay Chronister’s The Bog Wife for Locus.

Karl Wolff reviewed Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel, Annihilation, for the New York Journal of Books.

Member Interviews

Nina Palattella interviewed Joseph Earl Thomas about his debut novel, God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer, one of Kirkus‘ best fiction books of the year, for Kirkus Reviews.

Jake Casella Brookins talked to scholar Garrett Bridger Gilmore about Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom (and racial justice in Lovecraft retellings) for the podcast A Meal of Thorns.

Adam M. Lowenstein spoke with Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, author of The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World, for his newsletter, Reframe Your Inbox.

Grant Faulkner interviewed Carvell Wallace about his book Another Word For Love, which explores his life, identity, and love through stories of family, friendship, trauma, and culture, for the Write-minded podcast.

Member News

NBCC lifetime member Edward Guiliano has published Lewis Carroll Collections & Collectors. For information and review copies, contact Mary Kate Maco at the University of Virginia Press.

Lisa Russ Spaar has a poem in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

In Memoriam

The National Book Critics Circle mourns the death of Sandra Gilbert, who, along with her co-author Susan Gubar, won the 2012 NBCC Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award. Our condolences to her friends and family.

“Bookstore Visit” by kristin klein is licensed under CC BY 2.0.