MixedOpen Letters...there are very few sources of information that give insight into Catherine Dior or tell her story. As a result, Dior remains a ghostly presence hovering just off the edge of the pages of Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture. Regardless of Picardie’s extraordinary access to the archives and her own travels in search of some kind of spiritual connection with Dior, a nuanced and complete portrait of Dior eludes her ... Picardie overcomes the absence of Catherine’s first hand account of her life and experiences by recounting the stories of other women who went through the same things ... The second half of the book, in which Picardie attempts to connect Catherine Dior to her brother Christian’s design business, is less successful ... Picardie’s determination to create a connection between Catherine’s life and her brother’s work results in a truly egregious comparison between inmate portraits...to photos of Christian with a fashion model and one of his dresses ... contains two potentially good books ... Justine Picardie’s attempt to stitch their stories together beyond that sibling relationship fails and in the process deprives Catherine Dior of the biography she deserves.
Allan Lichtman
PositiveOpen Letters ReviewWhat sets Thirteen Cracks apart from the slew of books chronicling the abuses of the Trump administration is that Lichtman does not just identify those abuses, he provides solutions designed to prevent future presidents from following Trump’s example ... an academic work and sometimes makes for dry reading. More often Lichtman’s sentences, which are packed with quotes from everyone from Hannah Arendt and Jeremy Benthem to Walter Cronkite and the punk band Lard, convey a sense of urgency that keeps the reader engaged, and the writing throughout is impassioned and incisive ... Though some of the solutions in Thirteen Cracks are unlikely to be implemented, those that could be enacted would likely do much to safeguard the future of democracy in America ... the people who would benefit most from exposure to the ideas in Professor Lichtman’s book are more likely to see a tweet dismissing it as anti-conservative propaganda than they are to ever read it.
Carole Angier
MixedOpen Letters ReviewSebald...borrowed liberally from other writers without acknowledgement. He pried into the lives of the people he knew, prodding them for their life stories, letters, and photographs which he wove into his books without their permission. And he lied to friends and journalists ... [Angier\'s] unconvincing defense is evidence of Angier’s bias in favor of Sebald the artist if not Sebald the person. Devotees of Sebald’s work will likely forgive Angier because she has structured Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald to appeal specifically to them and to satisfy their curiosity about the man and his books ... Angier also manages to create a sense of dread reminiscent of the foreboding that pervades Sebald’s books ... The best parts of Speak, Silence are the chapters in which Angier dissects Sebald’s books and attempts to explain their origins and meaning. In these chapters, Angier’s research and careful reading provide real insights into Sebald’s methods ... The holes Angier sews together to create the story of Sebald may fail to catch all of the details of his story, and her bias may allow his reputation to escape unblemished, but Speak, Silence: In Search of W.G. Sebald captures the essence of Sebald’s life and work in a highly satisfying and enlightening way.
Louise Erdrich
RaveOpen Letters ReviewThere are times when it seems like the events of 2020 will take over the novel, but Erdrich always brings the action back to the bookstore, its employees, and to Tookie ... Despite the heavy subject matter, The Sentence is not a heavy book. Tookie’s pessimistic sense of humor provides comic relief ... There are also lovely passages describing moments of deep emotion. This kind of writing can be risky, but Erdrich handles it deftly ... The writing throughout The Sentence is consistently masterful.
Evan Osnos
MixedOpen Letters ReviewOsnos writes clear prose that expertly summons images from our political past ... Osnos also displays a wry sense of humor and a willingness to weave pop culture into his writing ... a very ambitious book...Many of these subjects receive only surface level analysis and some, like Fox News and other right wing media outlets, seem largely absent. Other than the interviews with the people of Chicago, Clarkesburg, and Greenwich there is not a great deal that is new here, and even the individuals Osnos interviews fit familiar patterns ... At times, Osnos’s efforts to tie together the people from his chosen three communities seem forced ... By largely ignoring the South, Southwest, and West where economic and demographic changes are often most pronounced, Wildland offers a mostly regional view of the experience of being an American in the 21st Century. Together these issues give Wildland a random and incomplete feel that can be frustrating ... For readers who follow politics closely, Osnos offers little fresh information. For others Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury can serve as a well written, wide ranging, if unfocused and shambling, introduction to the sources of our current divisions and the threat they pose to the future of the United States.
