About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Deborah Levy
Rave Los Angeles Review of Books \"I could wax enthusiastic about Levy’s writing, which is dreamy but diamond-sharp, prismatic, droll ... Levy does not do complication for complication’s sake. Each sentence precisely pins down a feeling, and with such economy ... Like all of us, Levy is far from coherent or fixed, and if the goal were to emerge from this book with a cohesive portrait of its author—a gestalt exercise unto itself—then the reader would fail. Certainly, this reader did, and happily so ... invites the reader into Levy’s literary imagination, and taken together, these facts and moments form a portrait, but it is far from photographic or even accurate.\
Ann Patchett
Rave Los Angeles Review of Books Patchett writes precisely, crafting a real, true world, where the buildings are more than just cardboard stage sets ... Far from a pandemic novel, Tom Lake just happens to be set during 2020 ... Our Town, a play about loss and the inability to appreciate life as it happens, is the perfect foil for Patchett’s story ... In so many ways, Tom Lake is about love in all its many forms. But it is also about death and the ephemeral and how everything goes by so damned fast. It is an elegy of sorts but also a promise that there will be magic no matter what.
Nicole Flattery
Mixed Los Angeles Review of Books Time’s movement and malleability are central to Nothing Special: Flattery shifts between days and decades, revealing how quickly everything goes even as time seems to move impossibly slow ... Flattery understands teenagers well ... Why, for that matter, set another novel in Warhol’s New York? ... It doesn’t help that Mae is disaffected and flat, if at times wryly funny. The voice befits her backwards gaze—when the novel opens, she is middle-aged—but it also reflects trends within the contemporary literary landscape. There is a rhythm to Flattery’s writing that is occasionally fascinating but also anesthetizing.
Stephanie Lacava
Mixed Chicago Review of Books Margot is...hard to grasp because LaCava’s writing is so economical and spare. Or maybe Margot can’t be grasped so LaCava must be dispassionate. Much is withheld, which can make for elegance but also iciness. It’s hard to know how to feel about I Fear My Pain Interests You. Very few of the sentences are gripping, but then why keep reading? Is Margot interesting because she lacks pain or despite that?
Elif Batuman
Positive Los Angeles Review of Books Whereas The Idiot concerned itself with linguistic misgivings and dislocations — and their various power dynamics — Either/Or is oriented more toward the physical world ... Following Selin as she navigates sex, desire, and language (and makes conclusions about all three) is fascinating; her stabs at philosophy are not.
Sheila Heti
Rave The Chicago Review of Books ... stunning, elegiac ...It is difficult to pin down Pure Colour, which reflects upon love, grief, art, air, what Anne Carson calls the \'major things.\' The novel is divided into nine parts, each section an outward sweep that boomerangs back to a shared center. Heti writes theologically, existentially, and weirdly; the prose creeps like ivy. There are commas that feel like a punch, tiny staccato breaks which cleave a sentence into sharp relief. The prose can meander and repeat in an E. E. Cummings sort of way ... Heti writes beautifully about the gaping cavern that emerges in the face of such grief; she articulates much that is unnamable. Her text is so acute and specific even as it describes the sensations that we have all been devastated by.
Jennifer Egan
Positive Los Angeles Review of Books [A] heartbreaking, dazzling story of what happens when these same forces confront the might of the digital age ... Certainly, some will want to reread Goon Squad before reading The Candy House, but that’s not necessary. This is far from being a mere sequel; it’s a kaleidoscopic new offering whose beauty resides in its elliptical returns ... On top of these spinning plates, Egan occasionally plays with the form of the writing itself. One chapter is composed as an extensive list of missives, another as an email exchange. These stylistic flourishes don’t feel entirely necessary. Egan is better when she is straightforward. If such language can be undemanding, it can also be a revelation ... It is nearly impossible to read The Candy House without wondering what it would be like to download one’s own memories and store them in a box under the bed ... the form of The Candy House reflects the reality Egan conjures. This is a fractured landscape with no clear truth, where time folds into itself and technology wreaks if not havoc then a certain anesthetizing force ... To the reader, all of this has already been proven painfully true.
Annie Ernaux, Tr. Tanya Leslie
Mixed Chicago Review of Books Little of what Elkin writes is unto itself that interesting: she sees women in red hats, a pair of awful glittery sandals, a mom with kids who kick and squirm. The observations are hurried and unedited. Some moments are inconsequential, some affecting, and all merit her attention ... What Ernaux...embrace[s] is the collectiveness of urban life, its inherent and unavoidable communion. Although anonymous amongst the crowds, we are all, as Ernaux writes, \'secretly play[ing] a role in the lives of others.\'
Christine Smallwood
Positive Los Angeles Review of Books Smallwood aptly captures Dorothy’s befuddled state: the discouraging, exhausting awareness that this day will be just like the day before, but also that she chose to do this. It is not that Dorothy feels entitled to this life but rather surprised to have found herself outside its walls. Did she turn left instead of right, or was there never a right turn in the first place? ... Dorothy’s miscarriage is a clever device, proffering a new realm for her investigatory tendencies to blossom and take hold ... If, at the conclusion of many a campus novel, the undergraduate is thrust into the world, no such advancement exists for the adjunct.
Vendela Vida
Positive The Los Angeles Review of Books Vida populates her stories with liars, runaways, the reckless — those most adept at reconfiguring their appearances, those caught in the process of becoming. She is excellent at writing teenagers, who try on and discard identities as quickly as the days pass. Their transformations are set to rushing sentences, a pace of existence which Vida renders with exceptional honesty ... I wish the novel had remained with its teenage cast, for whom adulthood is both a menace and a magnet. Though the view may be limited, it is detailed and vibrant, nonetheless ... Perhaps had more of San Francisco made an appearance in We Run the Tides, Vida’s brief detour through the problems of 2019 would have made sense ... is at its most potent when the gaze remains focused on protagonists whose psychologies cannot be mapped onto larger currents. These are fluctuating figures whose relationships have a fierce ebb and flow, but the consequences are only ever small, restricted to just a few streets. Still, Eulabee and Maria Fabiola struggle to become more, to grow bigger, and Vida lets them be envious, conspiratorial, droll, dazzling; she gives them space to be unsalvageable or to be redeemed.
Lynn Steger Strong
Mixed Los Angeles Review of Books While I believe her as a mother, and even as a high school teacher, Elizabeth as an academic left me wanting. While her students’ boredom reminds me of classes I have taught, Strong’s description of graduate school life isn’t specific enough: it’s an impression of an image and not the thing itself ... I found Elizabeth’s academia unconvincing, but perhaps she herself is unconvinced. Perhaps there is no space for her to think her thoughts or study her discarded women or write. Perhaps she buried those desires so deep that they no longer are substantial enough to be sensed ... The adjunct novel offers little transcendence because there is so little to transcend.