Caitlin Hicks's Blog: Book Reviews, page 7
January 8, 2022
Embellishment, remorse & exaggeration: A THEORY OF e x p a n d e d LOVE
A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE tells of attention-starved pre-teen Annie Shea, number six in her huge, devout Catholic family in 1963 in Pasadena, California. The novel has fantastic reviews from some of the most respected voices in the literary community, among them Kirkus Reviews, iBooks and Foreword Reviews, (who gave the novel 5 stars and highlighted the title as having “enough charm to fill the corridors of Vatican City twice over”).Author Caitlin Hicks breathes originality into universal themes through the fiercely intelligent, loveable protagonist who struggles with her pious upbringing and her coming-of-age during the social upheaval of The Sixties.Hicks is also an international performer and voices her own story here. A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE is edited by filmmaker and visual artist Gordon Halloran, who curated the music and produced the soundtrack.The post Embellishment, remorse & exaggeration: A THEORY OF e x p a n d e d LOVE appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
December 21, 2021
Everything We Didn’t Say, by Nicole Baart
Excerpted from my review at New York Journal of Books
“Baart is an accomplished storyteller. She excels at layering concurrent plot threads, character arcs, and suspense with layer upon layer of storied detail . . . She builds her world character by character and sets them in motion to behave as they will.”
Nicole Baart, author of nine novels with excellent reviews and a mainstream following, continues in her well-honed tradition of family drama with a mystery at the core in Everything We Didn’t Say. Her particular craft is bit-by-bit revelation of the secrets that build and twist the narrative with speculation, curiosity, and an assortment of characters.
The novel begins with “The murders took place on a hot summer night, but to Juniper, it would always be winter in Jericho.” At the heart of this accessible novel is a woman who has given up her baby girl in the wake of an unsolved double homicide and a love affair that tore apart her friendship with her best friend. Almost 15 years later, Juniper’s motives for returning to her small town are complicated, so much so that she is unable to unravel them herself. Her librarian friend is dying of cancer, her daughter is coming of age, and the murders have not been solved. But here the book begins, and Juniper drives by a bullet-shot traffic sign, wondering aloud.
The story goes back and forth in time between “Winter / Today” and “Summer / 14 and a half years ago.” Her almost-twin brother and life-long friend, Jonathan, remains the only suspect, and even after all these years, there are forces still trying to pin it on him. Today her daughter is Willa Baker, “all arms and legs and thirteen-year-old bravado and grace,” having been raised by family, but not knowing who her father is, while Juniper lived out her exile-of-shame in Denver.
Each fact about Juniper in the present creates a question that is answered in the story of the past and becomes part of the mosaic of this story. In “Summer / 14 and a half years ago,” Juniper, in her last year of high school, was falling in love with a handsome, mysterious member of The Tate Family, whose land was caught up in the unresolved murders of Cal and Beth Murphy. And to add to that, her brother Jonathan seems to know something, but everything conspires to get in the way of any meaningful unravelling.
The drama unfolds in the past and present, and detail by detail, the night of the murder and the surrounding context, come to life over the course of the novel. In the meantime, there are tire slashings, pet poisonings, a podcast trying to solve the murders—and family secrets. Then under unclear circumstances, Jonathan nearly freezes to death when he falls through the ice. And although Juniper is determined to finally ask her brother about the night, about the murders—to fill in what she seems to be remembering—he ends up in Intensive Care in hospital, in a coma and unable to speak.
Baart is an accomplished storyteller. She excels at layering concurrent plot threads, character arcs, and suspense with layer upon layer of storied detail in her chatty prose. She builds her world character by character and sets them in motion to behave as they will. And yet she’s one step ahead of everyone, bringing all together in a satisfying finale. And her prose is peopled with red-blooded characters that reflect us in our human imperfections: She celebrates love, loyalty, and the evolving nature of family. An accessible, engaging ride.
The post Everything We Didn’t Say, by Nicole Baart appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
December 20, 2021
Ode to Creativity: a magical story on the Winter Solstice
The story toured British Columbia and Washington state to excellent reviews, and was broadcast on CBC national and regional radio numerous times. This recording features beautiful four-part harmonies by After Hours, a Sunshine Coast vocal jazz quartet, singing Christmas favourites in and out as background to the story. Locals Patrice Pollack, Brian Harbison, Brian Corbett and Mary Ellen Scribner were members of this group and the recording was produced at White Line Studios in Gibsons with Dave Kelln.
CORNUCOPIA traces a child’s love for ice skating back to a moonlit moment on a dangerous frozen lake on Christmas Eve. An ode to creativity, the story reaches back into her childhood and her relationship with her best friend Marnie, who loves to play the drums, but is not encouraged by her family to play. Both girls become women as the town changes and they follow their separate fates, only to be reunited on the same dangerous, frozen lake of Christmas Present.
Performed by Caitlin Hicks, with sound design by Gord Halloran, the short story is available from the Winter Solstice, December 21st, through Christmas Day, 2021 as a temporary episode in the podcast series SOME KINDA WOMAN, Stories of Us .
The post Ode to Creativity: a magical story on the Winter Solstice appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
December 13, 2021
These Precious Days, Ann Patchett
Although not quite old enough to definitively summarize her life lived, Ann Patchett has written a memoir of essays called These Precious Days. At first glance, it looks like she has given up writing and, in her retirement, has taken up art, as a painting of a small dog looks up from the cover. The image, combined with the evocative words of a popular song creating the title of her book, promises an edition of predictable but perhaps mawkish reflections on a privileged life.
With its first-impression disappointment, this image of a dog’s mournful but sweet face brings to mind that consistent item of life’s injustices—there are those writers who have, by a combination of circumstance, talent, early encouragement, hard work, and luck—come into the rewards of being respected, of having their first pages read and lapped up, of having doors opened, of not having to worry about how important their cover image is. These golden writers, and Patchett is one of them, can get away with whatever they want—and still have a book that sells.
It becomes ironic, then, that Patchett devotes an entire chapter to the choice of book covers. Throughout her career and 13 published tomes, she didn’t get what she wanted most of the time. And in another essay, how a definitive summary of her COVID lockdown year, figures poignantly into the rescue dog’s face on the cover.
In this collection of essays, Patchett looks back on the discovery of her own privilege as a gifted and promising writer who goes onto be crowned with laurels of success, whose accomplishments bring her in close proximity with the rich and famous (from Tom Hanks to John Updike to Dionne Warwick) and invite her to sit among them as an equal.
She begins with “Three Fathers,” which sets the stage of her evolution as a writer. Here she pays homage to the three men who loved her mother and thus inserted themselves into her life as parents. In a moment of planned serendipity, a photo with all four of them is snapped at a wedding with Patchett in the middle. She occupies the space of the beloved—you can see she’s their treasure.
She skates over college memories with “The First Thanksgiving” and “The Paris Tattoo,” early memorable youthful adventures, followed by “My Year of No Shopping” and “The Worthless Servant.” Here she speaks of Charlie Stoblel, a do-gooder whose life had been dedicated to the care of the Nashville homeless. In a description of a tattered motel “of the lowest possible order” she finds a masterpiece:
“Every human catastrophe the carpet in the hallway had endured over the years had been solved with a splash of bleach, which rendered it a long, abstract painting.” And in the telling, an almost unbelievable story rolls out: Stoblel’s mother was 74 when kidnapped from a Sears parking lot in Nashville and murdered by an escaped convict from Michigan, “the first victim in a spree that ultimately took six lives.” And with the loosening of these words, life is definitely stranger than fiction.
Detail is one hallmark of good writing, and in a life lived, there has to be a purge. In one essay, “How to Practice” Patchett makes a meal out of relocating her inessential worldly goods into others’ hands, and in doing so inspires the rest of us to get at it before someone else has to. Here, it is her ruthless mood that is enviable, her complete peace with separation, as she looks upon her early writing sometimes disdainfully and once-meaningful objects with determination to clear space for herself.
To be fair, Patchett has a legacy of published books in the literature of her time, and so perhaps it is easier for her to know what she can let go. She’s already written down the important stuff and pored over every word of it. Not only is it not lost forever to time, there are copies.
She puts Snoopy under the microscope, and Eudora Welty along with her skill as a knitter, and manages to wring a writer’s meaning out of it all. “Flight Plan,” an essay on her blind confidence in her husband’s abilities as a pilot, summarizes not only his obsession to fly, but Patchett’s unshakable faith in his considerable abilities and somehow paints an impression of the fabric of their relationship. “I fly with him all the time, and when we’re together in the plane I’ve never been concerned, not about black clouds or lightning, not about turbulence that could knock the fillings from your teeth.” And there you are, sitting next to her in the Cessna, or the 1947 de Havilland Beaver, knowing that feeling.
Patchett is irresistible because she is a generous observer. She’s game, she gives the benefit of the doubt and she can put it into words. In “Tavia,” she describes her friend: “She was the sweetheart queen, sorority president. Boys trailed her like a tail on a kite, discomfited by desire,” and “This is where the reader might be tempted to think that she was ‘the pretty one’ and I was ‘the smart one,’ but that would be a fairy tale. Tavis is scorching smart.”
“You can’t be a real writer if you don’t have children,” is the topic of a chapter, which wanders off into personal angst, desire, fantasy and decisions Patchett had to make and justify so that she, as a woman, could live in peace with herself as a writer sans offspring.
“These Precious Days,” the title essay that takes up almost 70 pages, is a COVID-lockdown story that mixes the celebrity of Tom Hanks with an unexpected, unusual relationship with Hanks’ assistant, Sooki, a mysterious woman who is an artist in her own right. Without directly referring to it, this chapter explains the domesticity of the dog portrait on the cover of the book and digs deeply into this “bundled up together” COVID moment of all our lives. It’s imbued with Patchett’s generosity of spirit and gives us the idea that good writers fall in love with their subjects and characters. And in falling for Sooki, Ann has us loving her, too. Their relationship is unlike anything that could be expected: the trust, the warmth, the space to be who you must. The sense of recognition of the best in each other.
At some point, Patchett answers Sooki’s concern that, as a live-in guest at Patchett’s home, she is “taking everything.”
“But of course, I was the one who took everything. Why couldn’t she see that? The price of living with a writer was that eventually she would write about you.”
Further, as a side effect of this good story well plumbed for universal truth, Patchett leaves the reader really liking her, the writer. And essay by essay, we get to know her again, like we did way back in Truth and Beauty. She has the voice of a friend, who can tell you about “stuff,” ordinary stuff that in her words, even if you have to ultimately toss it to the universe, ends up drenched in meaning. Maybe not the ultimate answers to the ever-mysteries but enough meaning to last at least for today, for as long as we reflect.
For sheer reading and reflecting pleasure, These Precious Days is a treasure. Good enough to read in bits and pieces, to read before bed, to discover upon waking. And here and there, again. Although dog-eared, although dripped on, although coffee stained. Definitely not for the purge pile.
First published in New York Journal of BooksReviewed by: Caitlin HicksThe post These Precious Days, Ann Patchett appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
December 11, 2021
ATACAMA, by Carmen Rodriquez
“ Atacama is an important witness to history, an homage to the people of Chile, Peru, Spain, and all oppressed citizens anywhere in the world. ”
In the Afterword of Atacama, author Carmen Rodriguez talks about the genesis of her novel: a deathbed confession made by her own mother. Rodriguez recreates this last secret story as a pivotal experience around which the novel revolves: a brutal vision of floods and stench, dead bodies of murdered citizens of Tacna, Peru, in April, 1925. What Rodriguez’s mother saw, which haunted her all her life, were the bodies of citizens who were eliminated because the government didn’t want their voices—or their votes to be heard. They murdered them because they feared these citizens would vote them out of office. Murdered into silence. Just one of the many examples of oppression that citizens of the working class endured in Chile and Peru from 1925–1949—the bookend years of Rodriquez’s novel.
Atacama is historical fiction with a capital H which reverberates today through the lives of revolutionary activists in Chile, Peru, Spain and even Paris, as well as journalists and artists over decades. The story begins, alternating from the point of view of two pre-teens from different social classes (Manuel from the proletariat and Lucia from the elite) who share a strong bond over the years through the political landscape of these countries.
Manuel, 12 years old and living in a poor family in La Caruna, is the son of a union leader for the Workers Federation of Chile, a “blaster” in the saltpeter mines, in charge of the “blastings” and explosives. Naturally, he is the representative of the workers in the movement to unionize. We witness Manuel’s violent coming of age as his father’s workers’ union is poised to strike—a coordinated action with miners, railroad workers, cart operators, and longshoremen. In the ensuing fracas with government soldiers trying to quash the rebellion, Manuel’s father and younger sister are brutally killed in front of him. After he buries his sister, Manuel and his mother and remaining siblings are put on a train and shipped as refugees to the coastal town of Iquique.
Lucia, the pampered child of the elite, the daughter of a high-ranking officer in the Chilean army, lives in Tacna and fills her days with bourgeois concerns: what to wear to church, music, and dance lessons. Her father is devoted to her and her mother a socialite: “My mother was like a hummingbird, always in motion, bustling about, organizing banquets and fashion shows at the Officers’ Wives Club. . . .” Lucia has an awakening when on an outing with a friend, she escapes a massive flood of tumbling water, moving sand and rocks filled with decaying body parts from shallow graves—all unearthed by a rainstorm.
When Lucia and her parents inexplicably flee Tacna shortly after Lucia’s witnessing of the burial sludge, she overhears her father bragging about his role in the massacre of these people who floated by in the river of mud. Her confusion about her father as a mass murderer, her horror at the vision sets Lucia on a path of awakening to the realities of social justice and class that occupy the years of Rodriquez’s novel.
Later, when Manuel meets Lucia in the seaside town of Iquique, each has suffered traumatic and transformative life events both horrifying and haunting. This creates the ground upon which their friendship over the years, grows. Manuel goes on to be a journalist, Lucia continues her love of dance.
The historical detail, the insights into the citizens’ movements of resistance to terror and oppression when witnessed through the voices of Manuel and Lucia are an homage to human resilience. This sweeping novel that alights, lands on, and explores the vibrant life of Valpariso, Santiago, the Chilean diaspora and the Spanish Civil war during those decades is a testament to the courage and endurance of its people whose lives and rights have been silenced over generations by military, by government and the elite.
Rodriquez is a gifted storyteller; and her novel is wide-ranging and thorough (including a literary glance at Pablo Neruda in Paris). But what makes this story so well integrated is an irrepressible love of the arts woven into the story as each character finds a safe haven in storytelling and dance. Like a flower poking through grey cement, these gifts seem to float above the stench of the brutality directed at the citizens who will not conform to fascist will.
As Rodriquez ties up her novel with a recent-day tribute to her character Lucia in 2021, the events in real life of Chile illustrate the depth and relentless historical struggle endured by the Chilean people. As late as 2021, an overwhelming majority voted to establish a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. The people of Chile are finally having their voices heard through their votes. Although Chile faces important human rights challenges related to prison conditions, accountability for past abuses, and protecting the rights of women; indigenous people; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people; migrants; and refugees; after the journey of Atacama, this seems like a beginning worth celebrating.
“Today,” says Rodriquez, “Chileans from all walks of life have united to fight against the latest incarnation of capitalism: neoliberalism. Will they succeed and show the rest of the world?”
Atacama is an important witness to history, an homage to the people of Chile, Peru, Spain, and all oppressed citizens anywhere in the world.
This review was first published at New York JOURNAL OF BOOKS. Caitlin Hicks is an author, playwright, and actress. Her debut novel is A Theory of Expanded Love, winner of the 2015 Foreword Indie Bronze Medal for Literary Fiction.
The story is now an audiobook on Chirp:
The post ATACAMA, by Carmen Rodriquez appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
Invitation to a magical Winter Solstice
The story toured British Columbia and Washington state to excellent reviews, and was broadcast on CBC national and regional radio numerous times. This recording features beautiful four-part harmonies by After Hours, a Sunshine Coast vocal jazz quartet, singing Christmas favourites in and out as background to the story. Locals Patrice Pollack, Brian Harbison, Brian Corbett and Mary Ellen Scribner were members of this group and the recording was produced at White Line Studios in Gibsons with Dave Kelln.
CORNUCOPIA traces a child’s love for ice skating back to a moonlit moment on a dangerous frozen lake on Christmas Eve. An ode to creativity, the story reaches back into her childhood and her relationship with her best friend Marnie, who loves to play the drums, but is not encouraged by her family to play. Both girls become women as the town changes and they follow their separate fates, only to be reunited on the same dangerous, frozen lake of Christmas Present.
Performed by Caitlin Hicks, with sound design by Gord Halloran, the short story is available from the Winter Solstice, December 21st, through Christmas Day, 2021 as a temporary episode in the podcast series SOME KINDA WOMAN, Stories of Us .
“What a beautiful performance you gave and I was surprised by how great After Hours sounded. You are a brilliant storyteller! I would do this again with you in a heartbeat!” Patrice Pollack, singer
The post Invitation to a magical Winter Solstice appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
November 23, 2021
Sign petition against HR4980 * No to Vaccine Passports
Please share this petition via email or post on social media often.
Here is the petition:
I urge you to oppose H.R. 4980, which proposes “to ensure that any individual traveling on a flight that departs from or arrives to an airport inside the United States or a territory of the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and for other purposes.”
This bill mandates COVID-19 vaccines for domestic air travel to any location within the US, including private airports.
Freedom and access to travel is a fundamental right, as is freedom of medical choice.
Mandating vaccines impacts not only travelers, but also all those who depend on the airlines.
Furthermore, it has been proven that fully vaccinated people can still catch and transmit COVID-19. Therefore, H.R. 4980 is both unnecessary and not in alignment with American freedom and values.
American citizens have a right to make their own decisions regarding what treatment, medication, or vaccination they do or do not want.
Forcing an employee, citizen or traveler choose between a vaccine and their ability to travel (or in the case of airline employees – their career) is a violation of their rights.
Please vote against bills that promotesvaccine discrimination and loss of medical freedom.
I also urge you to support the Freedom To Fly Act, H.R. 4296, which prohibits TSA from asking passengers on domestic flights to disclose personal vaccination information.
Link here to register your signature:The post Sign petition against HR4980 * No to Vaccine Passports appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
November 22, 2021
A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE: AudioBOOK
Hicks’ “worthy debut novel,” as reviewed by Publishers Weekly, has fantastic reviews from some of the most respected voices in the literary community. Kirkus Reviews said, “Annie’s disarming voice evokes nostalgia for a bygone era and hope for humanity in a weary, modern world.” Ms. Hicks was also a Debut Voices Feature pick from Foreword Reviews, who gave the novel its highest rating of 5 stars and highlighted the title as having “…enough charm to fill the corridors of Vatican City twice over.”
Hicks breathes originality into universal themes through the novel’s fiercely intelligent, loveable protagonist who struggles not only with her pious upbringing, but also her coming-of-age as a young woman during the social upheaval of The Sixties. Lyrical and disarming, A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE celebrates the vastness of a young woman’s potential and gives perspective on our world with its re-creation of life in North America sixty years ago.
Live performance with video back drop
The audiobook is voiced by international performer Caitlin Hicks. It is edited by filmmaker and visual artist Gordon Halloran, who also curated the music and produced the soundtrack.
A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE, the AUDIObook, e-book and paperback are available for purchase on Amazon through Findaway Voices.The post A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE: AudioBOOK appeared first on Caitlin Hicks.
October 9, 2021
Six Palm Trees: laughter & poignancy, hundreds of times
In this week’s podcast I’m sharing a little bit of Six Palm Trees, a beloved one person stand-up comedy/drama I wrote with Gord Halloran when we were young parents and creatives living in a semi-detached heritage home near Bloor St. in Toronto.
Six Palm Trees features Annie Shea, Number 6 in a Catholic family of fourteen children, living in Pasadena, California in the Sixties. The play began as a stand-up comedy routine.
It has been performed hundreds of times to excellent reviews and standing ovations in the Eighties and Nineties on tour throughout California, British Columbia and in Oshawa, Seattle, Edmonton, Toronto, San Francisco and other cities and towns.
Funny and sad, powerful and whimsical, with mercurial mood changes and punchy humour. . . Six Palm Trees is more than a trip down memory lane . . it is a play (about) the price one woman paid to bear and raise 14 children. . . jewel of a play.” -The Sooke Standard, Vancouver Island, B.C. ”
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The second work in the saga of Annie Shea, A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE was published as a novel in 2015 to excellent reviews. The AUDIOBOOK is due for publication in October 2021! For a paperback copy of this novel, click on the sidebar on this page.
IN THE MEANTIME:
YOU CAN sample chapters from the audiobook of
A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE (recorded as podcasts)
Chapter One:
https://www.caitlinhicks.com/wordpress/chapter-one-a-theory-of-expanded-love/
SHEA FAMILY MOTORS
https://www.caitlinhicks.com/wordpress/shea-family-motors/
LOST AT DISNEYLAND
https://www.caitlinhicks.com/wordpress/lost-at-disneyland-from-a-theory-of-expanded-love/
LILY
https://www.caitlinhicks.com/wordpress/lily-chapter-20-audiobook/
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September 22, 2021
The One Hundred Years of Lenni & Margot
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin
Review by Caitlin Hicks
“ abundance of heart . . .”
The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot is the debut novel of Marianne Cronin. The novel explores the edges of two lives in retrospect from 1940 to 2014. It’s a tribute to two women, a 17 year old and old an 83 year old, both facing the fact of their existence on this earth, and the inevitable demise they face as their lives are shortening to a predictable end.
They meet in an art therapy class (The Rose Room) at the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital and immediately discover a chemistry between them; Lenni shines through her hospital scrubs as witty and ironic, refusing to look at the unfortunate fate that has been dealt her (“When people say ‘terminal,’ I think of the airport.”); Margot presents as eccentric and wise, with a lifetime of unexpected secrets to tell.
Their imaginative premise emerges as they sense their opportunity: Both quirky women on the opposite ends of life decide to celebrate themselves with 100 paintings, each depicting a year and an important incident from their lives. It promises to be a joyful story.
The tone of Lenni’s voice—irreverent and blunt, insightful beyond her years—echoes the two doomed teenagers in The Fault in Our Stars. The obvious anguish of being witness to a young person who knows her time is limited to the confines of her terminal disease dictates that those in the thrall of such an unfortunate event must be wiser than anyone has a right to be, and it propels the reader into the story with something besides pity to hang on to.
The stories represented in the paintings that Margot and Lenni create to celebrate the 100 years between them are linked together with predictable hospital scenes, bringing the reader back to fluorescent-lit hallways and flyaway hospital gowns, wheelchairs, loudspeakers, needles, and plastic bags. The vivid past that is conjured with each story is thus dispelled with a reality check at predictable intervals.
Each chapter alternates between Lenni and Margot in chronological order with titles such as: “Lenni and Forgiveness” and “The First Kiss of Margot Macrae,” and subtitles “London, March 1960 Margot Docherty is Twenty-Nine Years Old.” Beginning with “Orebro, Sweden, January 11, 1998—Lenni Pettersson is One Year Old” and for Margot a morning in 1940 when she is nine years old, the overarching story encompasses these years with personal insight and historical detail.
On the edge of death and virtually abandoned by her parents, Lenni observes small things and cherishes them in the hospital moment, such as welcoming the presence of silverfish roaming the cracks at night. “You might think that I would want to get rid of them, that I might fear that they are in greater number than me,” Lenni tells the hospital chaplain Father Arthur about the bugs, “that they might be living in the wall in their disgusting thousands, but I quite like them. They remind me that life is possible in even the most inhospitable conditions.”
Her observations put her in full control of her narrative, so much so that when she falters, it’s almost a surprise. Despite the sad premise, and Lenni’s counterpoint, the narrative, which unfolds like peeling back the skin of an orange, layer by layer, brings the reader into the present to live a few more moments of normalcy in two lives doomed to end soon. Oddly, Margot’s voice through the telling of her life’s adventures, her loves, her regrets and moments of inspiration, comes through as more explorative and vulnerable; she seems to have questions still to answer before she goes gentle into the night.
It isn’t until page 151, after Margo has told her 29th story and both have made paintings representing their consecutive years up until then, that Margot confesses to Lenni that “It’s my heart. The reason I’m here, it’s my heart.”
For the reader, the reason to read is the abundance of heart, found on every page.
This review was first published on New York Journal of Books
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