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Recent Reviews
Jeremy Eichler
Positive Washington Independent Review of Books Long and complex ... The author’s writing style at times slowed down my reading. He is fond of long, complex sentences and wording that often made me stop, go back, and read again ... My struggle with Eichler’s language notwithstanding, I suspect that Time’s Echo will become required reading for students of music and of the 20th century. It is the first and only book I have come across that cites music’s agelessness even as it captures the spirit and flavor of the time of its invention.
Paul Auster
Mixed Washington Independent Review of Books His writing throughout this work is as clean and professional as readers should expect. Yet the accompanying photos of mass-shooting sites — although they required Ostrander to travel to 50-plus locations — are unexceptional.
Andrew Holleran
Mixed The Washington Independent Review of Books Here is a book that claims to be a novel but doesn’t tell a story. Instead, it spends several hundred pages — often filled with less-than-smooth writing — ruminating about gay life in northern Florida...His narrative is so detailed and specific about the region that I came away persuaded everything he was describing was real ... Because there is no story, its principal value may be the profound insights it offers into the lives of a very specific population: aging gay men in Florida. That’s not a subject of great interest to me, but perhaps it will be to others.
Alexander Wolff
Positive The Washington Independent Review of Books A knowledge of German will help the reader get through Endpapers, as German words and phrases are scattered throughout. Most of the time, author Alexander Wolff offers a translation when an unfamiliar term first appears. At other times, he uses German without providing the English equivalent, presumably assuming the words are so well known that no translation is required ... Regardless, Endpapers made me understand in a new way the profound effect Naziism had on the world in the 1930s and 1940s, an influence that continues to reverberate today ... employs a design I wish more writers would use: inserting relevant photographs into the text at the point where they are referenced. This is far better than the more common practice of bunching photos together in the middle of a book ... I became impatient with Wolff’s writing at various points. Too often, he chose unduly complex ways of expressing ordinary ideas. My preference, both as a reader and a writer, is for simplicity. And even though Endpapers was written in part during the Trump administration, Wolff mentions the former president only in passing ... a worthwhile read and certainly sheds light on the lingering predicament of some German American families and the enduring stain of the Holocaust.
Barack Obama
Positive Washington Independent Review of Books It was a long and slow read. Repeatedly, I’d be so stuck by a passage that I’d stop, ponder, then go back and read it again. Sometimes, it was the way Obama used words or turned a phrase. More often, it was a penetrating insight that caught my breath ... Unlike so many other famous men, Obama does all his writing himself — he doesn’t depend on ghostwriters. And the writing is, for the most part, superb. That is because Obama is so well read. He obviously has made it his business over his life to read deeply and broadly. His occasional references to other writers only hint at the breadth of his knowledge ... Throughout, Obama comes across as devoted and, considering his triumphs, humble ... The only criticism I have to offer of Obama’s writing is his tendency to explain with an overabundance of historical data, a pedagogical inclination he admits to. At times, it felt to me that his professorial instincts got the better of him to the detriment of the point he was making or story he was telling. One symptom of his didactic tendencies? Strings of related sentences separated not by periods but by semicolons.
Wolf Wondratschek, Trans. by Marshall Yarbrough
Pan The Washington Independent Review of Books ... a novel so far outside the mainstream of literary fiction that I can’t recommend it to the casual reader. The story is about music, and the writing style is a meandering stream of consciousness — as if the text were composed according to musical logic rather than language rules ... Author Wolf Wondratschek’s writing style makes reading difficult. The narrative shifts from third person to first person and back again without quotation marks. Sometimes the narrator is speaking, sometimes Suvorin. Much of the time, I couldn’t tell which. In later sections, others speak in the first person. The reader has to go with the flow ... The novel is a translation from the German by Marshall Yarbrough. I am always tempted, when reading a translation, to blame linguistic discomfort on the transfer from one language to another. That argument doesn’t work here, however, in part because German and English are so similarly constructed and written, and in part because the English throughout flows so naturally ... it took me longer to read this book than other novels two to three times as long. I so often had to stop, go back, and reread to try to understand ... I finished reading the book doing as I’d done from the beginning: scratching my head.
Quế Mai Phan Nguyễn
Positive Washington Independent Review of Books Her text is embroidered with poetic phrasings ... The book is also distinctly Vietnamese ... this...lends a rich cultural texture to the story, giving Western readers a feel for Vietnamese society ... Despite the tragedies and suffering strewn throughout the story, The Mountains Sing, as the title suggests, is positive and hopeful, looking forward to a better future ... the positive outlook surprised me, given the suffering of the characters during years of disaster and war. Once again, I was impressed with the toughness of the Vietnamese. They face profound adversity with a stalwart steadiness unmatched by any other nation I know of. I came away at the end of the book with a new appreciation for the courage and resourcefulness of the Vietnamese.
Marcial Gala, trans. by Anna Kushner
Positive Washington Independent Review of Books ...deeply immersed in Cuban culture and history ... Every fictional device imaginable is employed. The aberrations chronicled in detail include but are not limited to murder, cannibalism, and sexual intercourse with a corpse. Ghosts talk to and guide characters in the pursuit of treasure. Characters move casually from one sexual partner to another. Oral sex is commonplace ... As a result, I can recommend The Black Cathedral to those willing to face a society mired in poverty and excess. Its readers need to be willing to piece together the story from incomplete clues. A knowledge of Spanish will help. This is not an easy read ... But to the degree that Marcial Gala has accurately depicted the culture of Punta Gotica, the effort required to struggle through the book is worthwhile. I came away from The Black Cathedral with a deepened understanding of Cuba and the extent to which poverty can undermine decency — a lesson well worth learning.
Andy Greenberg
Mixed The Washington Independent Review of Books ... shocking ... At times, the book reads like a novel ... Greenberg delves into the technical details of how malware works, often leaving me, a man with no background in software, befuddled ... We should take Andy Greenberg’s Sandworm as a warning.
Heath Hardage Lee
Positive Washington Independent Review of Books The League of Wives is a galvanizing read, animated by the forceful leadership by Sybil Stockdale and other wives who made history. Author Heath Hardage Lee’s skillful organization of her vast amount of raw material (39 pages of notes and bibliography) renders this complex story clear and powerful. That said, the book, like all others, is imperfect. Lee’s writing is occasionally less than pristine, and she sometimes repeats herself. But more important to me was her imperfect understanding of the Vietnam War. She fails, for example, to identify the Viet Cong (VC) as minions of the North Vietnamese rather than an independent force, and she sometimes get Vietnamese place names wrong ... Most readers, of course, won’t even notice these small flaws. They will instead be mesmerized by the story of the strong and determined women of the league and what they achieved.
Patrick Radden Keefe
Positive Washington Independent Review of Books \"The sheer grisliness of the Northern Irish resistance made reading Say Nothing tough going ... Even as one who has experienced gruesome events on the battlefield, I often had to put Say Nothing aside as I recovered from the shock of the events depicted. Keefe is blatant in his narration. He should have been. The story of the Troubles is grim history best told graphically.\
David Finkel
Rave The Washington Independent Review of Books Shame is in the bloodstream of Adam Schumann, whose story Finkel tells us in greatest detail. Schumann fought to save his fellow soldiers, failed and succumbed to the trauma of combat stress. He was sent home while his buddies went on fighting and dying. For Schumann, ‘it is still the day he headed home’ … Finkel’s writing is as haunting as his subject. His descriptions are taut and incisive…But what moved this reader most was Finkel’s use of his subjects’ voices to narrate.