About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Katherine Rundell
Rave Chicago Review of Books Rundell’s own observations and interactions color her depictions of each animal in ways that are easy to latch onto. Every clever description is as enjoyable to read as the facts ... Rundell’s style of description does a great deal to bring these astounding beings with whom we share a world, if not a life, within the realms of human understanding and empathy ... Wondrous.
Suzanne Scanlon
Rave Chicago Review of Books Grief, language, and the self are three of several major themes that Scanlon skillfully weaves through the text until their inextricability becomes unmissable ... Committed highlights the lack of language to properly describe our emotions and needs as a significant barrier to \"going sane\" as one of Scanlon’s doctors put it ... Though it appears to follow the author’s winding stream of consciousness, the catalog of her thoughts is not disorganized. Every return to a particular subject is purposeful and revelatory.
Amy Key
Positive Chicago Review of Books Key ruminates on society’s tendency to treat romance as a luxury in much the same way that certain people view tampons ... Key gives herself grace, recognizing the utter humanness of her own thoughts, which in turn extends grace to any reader for whom her words resonate.
Haruki Murakami, trans. by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen
Positive Chicago Review of Books If an aspiring storyteller were to pick up Haruki Murakami’s Novelist as a Vocation...expecting a step-by-step guide to putting a novel together, they may well be disappointed. However, what Murakami’s memoir does offer is certainly of equal value. It is one novelist looking back over his life and career in an attempt to better understand the many fragments that make up the whole of his success, with a great deal of introspection, self-deprecation, and dispelling of myths along the way ... Pensive ... The tone of the book is intimate, yet unadorned and straightforward in the style Murakami has come to be known for. He engages with personal disappointments, misunderstandings perpetuated by the public, and his own earlier hopes and dreams in an appealingly honest way. There are also a few curveballs ... Murakami has more than a few nuggets of insight to share.
Samanta Schweblin, trans. by Megan McDowell
Positive The Chicago Review of Books Although not as eerie as Schweblin’s readers might expect, there is certainly a great deal to linger over after the final page is turned. Chief among them, a choice: which of the losses bearing down on us are we willing to release to find relief? ... The thing Schweblin does so expertly in the strongest of Houses’ narratives is not only making note of the assumptions her readers carry with them, but wielding them for her own, unforeseen ends ... Among the most intriguing examples of loss in this collection captures the fragile moment of understanding between two people who both crave a reprieve from the tension plaguing their respective romantic partnerships ... Schweblin interrogates the concept of empty space by forcing it to take a different shape in every story ... Schweblin urges us to confront the emotions, ideas, and personal qualities we would dearly love to ignore, or to erase outright.
Cadwell Turnbull
Mixed West Trade Review While admirable in its attempt at allegory as well as its ambitious scope, the multitude of storylines do not truly overlap until towards the end, and the transitions between each section that precedes this merger can be jarring, especially when interjected by the occasional reminder that our omniscient narrator is actually the very first character we were introduced to ... a lot of information to take in and keep track of ... What makes this more difficult is how often the story stops in its tracks to give readers extensive background information on each character. There is not a consistent flow of action until the point when the storylines well and truly converge during an intense, pro-monster march from Boston Commons to Boston, Massachusetts’ City Hall ... The most intriguing section of the novel is when we are shown the development and use of the omniscient narrator’s abilities, which involve time-travel and the existence of the multiverse. This character’s ability to study situations from every angle of possibility allows him to consider the many facets of inevitability, especially when it comes to the mistakes human beings make, and results in perhaps the most poignant storyline of the book. It is likely that the other characters mentioned above will embark on similar journeys of self-discovery over the course of the series, but in this first volume it is the narrator who experiences the most in the way of mental and emotional growth. The narrator’s particular abilities also allow for the most organic recounting of background information in the story. Since revisiting the past is essential to who this character is, doing so as a means of introducing what we need to know about him is especially fitting ... The prose itself is very readable—despite the length of the novel, it is very easy to find yourself several chapters ahead of where you began in no time at all. With what is hopefully the bulk of the foundation laid in this first volume, and the fluidity of the climactic third act in mind, readers can likely look forward to a gripping, fast-paced epic in what remains of the series, as well as a magic mirror in which ways to engage more effectively with our own world are reflected.