As we might expect, a wistful, retrospective tone runs through many of these pieces, sometimes subtly and under the surface, and sometimes quite explicitly. In one 1952 essay, “ ‘You Have the Floor, Young Seer of Things…’”, Breton laments his inability to appreciate the new trends in postwar painting and contrasts that with the enthusiasm he felt in his youth for new art.
Category: Non fiction reviews
A review of What Matters in Jane Austen? by John Mullan
For me, the book resonates on a deeply personal level. Having studied Austen in graduate school, I’ve long been fascinated by the quiet radicalism beneath her polished surface. While she never staged open rebellion against Regency norms, her fiction hums with a subtle critique of its social constraints—expressed through irony, narrative silence, and the moral gravity of her heroines’ choices. Mullan illuminates this with expert precision, showing how Austen’s critical eye is woven into every level of her storytelling.
A review of Open House: Conversations With Writers About Community edited by Kristina Marie Darling
This essay collection is of particular use to educators, with many of the essays operating from the perspective of professors in classroom settings, and thus including their strategies for engaging students in community. But there are also prescient reflections outside of the classroom or workshop, such that any reader with a passion for writing and poetry might find new perspectives and useful tools.
A review of Vulture Capitalism by Grace Blakeley
Blakeley, a thirty-two year old Oxford-educated economist/journalist, says that liberal democracies under capitalism are not true democracies. As things stand now, government and capital work together to help the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. True democracy is economic democracy, in which citizens not only vote but also have real control over their lives.
A review of Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert
Sophie Gilbert does some major uncovering in this book, digging deep into the culture’s recent past to unearth the filthy White underbelly that lies beneath. Part archeologist, part pallbearer, she exhumes the back story and brings it kicking and screaming into the light of day. Gilbert writes, “In 1995, a self-help tsunami of a book titled, innocently, The Rules, advised women who wanted to get married to look to 1950s feminine mores for guidance.”
A review of The Intersection of Poetry and Jungian Analysis Through Metaphor by Regina Colonia-Willner
The connection between poetry and Jungian analysis is clearly presented; however, a reader would be justified in coming away from this book with two ideas: that the book is aimed more at psychoanalysts, not poets, despite the extensive references to poets’ thoughts and citations from their work, and that the link between poetry and Jungian analysis is less a link and more a continuous flow, as they infuse each other.
A review of The Hole in Your Life by Bob Rich
Bob Rich is an expert on the subject. He has been a psychotherapist for over 30 years, both in a clinical practice and through extensive volunteering of his services in multiple forums. He also has firsthand experience of the most intense kind of grief, having recenly experienced the loss of his own daughter Natalie to liver cancer in December 2024. The Hole in Your Life, Rich’s 20th book, is dedicated to Natalie and draws heavily on both personal experience and Rich’s extensive clinical understanding of the many pathways grief can take.
A review of It All Felt Impossible: 42 Years in 42 Essays, by Tom McAllister
There’s something special about finding within a book ourselves, to see pieces of us reflected back to us on a page; there’s something special, too, about getting a peek into a world that feels far removed from our every day, about an escape that teaches us something about someone fully unlike ourselves. For me, Impossible bridged this line between selfishness and empathy, between the joy at shared experience and the curiosity at learning about someone who’s nothing like I am.
A review of Elis – Irish Call Girl by Anna Rajmon
Rajmon is as sharp and thoughtful as she is hilarious – in telling her story, she misses nothing regarding her experience. The picture she paints of the Irish prostitution scene is a comprehensive and complex one – from how accommodation is obtained, to how advertising is organized, to how meetings are arranged, to how travel from location to location is organized, to the power dynamics between sex workers, ‘clients’ and ‘agencies’ (‘pimps’ would be a more accurate term) – Rajmon lays it all out in black-and-white.
A Paradise Within Thee: A Review of Happier Far by Diane Mehta
Mehta’s mind thinks in music. We understand this musical schema because of Mehta’s mother, who took her to the symphony when she was a child. Mehta describes the feeling she had after the concert, “by the time I returned to our night-sky driveway I would have violins and trumpets in my bones” (46). Currently, Mehta is the poet-in-residence at New Chamber Ballet. Knowing this conjures up a sweet sensation, like the taste of honey on the tongue.