The Ecological Uncanny: On the “Southern Reach” Trilogy
How might the Weird respond to the anxieties of the 21st century? Jeff VanderMeer's hallucinatory "Southern Reach" trilogy provides one possible answer.
All Reviews
Sex and the Sacred Text: Michelle Tea on the Republication of Eileen Myles’s “Chelsea Girls”
I most remember reading "Chelsea Girls" in the dark, at bars around San Francisco in the '90s …
Purposeful Motion
Things I did not do while reading Sven Birkerts's "Changing the Subject."
Disturbing Boredom
A Yi's new novella is a refreshingly non-verbose, verb-driven, first-person narrative of taut tension.
Not a Donkey
Buruma's essays are not polemical or revisionist. Instead, he constantly retouches, rethinks, contrasts, usually and mordantly laying cant and dogma to rest.
The Spyglass and the Astronomer: Seeing Galileo in Perspective
Seeing Galileo from his own perspective is rather like looking just once through his telescope.
Environmentalism as a Religious Idea
Stoll provides a history of how theology, the arts, and the sciences stimulated each other to deeper understandings of our relationship to nature.
Language and the Postapocalyptic World
"The Country of Ice Cream Star" shares an interest in tearing down modern civilization so that the cornerstone of that civilization might be inspected.
From the Globe to the Brain and Back
Few subjects seem, at first glance, as detached from historical study, or indeed from one another, as globalization and the neurosciences.
Noir, the Hipster, and the Myth of New Orleans
Michael Allen Zell's "Run Baby Run" (Lavender Ink, 2015) uses the serialized crime novel to dissect urban New Orleans.
A Portrait of Marriage in Two Parts
Lauren Groff's "Fates and Furies" is a portrait of a marriage in two parts: "Fates" (his) and "Furies" (hers).
An All or Nothing Gamble: Václav Havel and His Spiritual Revolution
It is difficult not to romanticize the Havel story.
Ferrante and Her Fourth and Final Neapolitan Novel
The intense appeal of the Neapolitan novels is the intimacy they provide as we follow Elena and Lila's involvement in each other's lives.
Mr. Difficult Rejects His Title: Ira Wells on “Purity”
Jonathan Franzen could never entirely overcome his youthful conviction that reading was supposed to be more fun than work.
Texts for Nothing
Eric Jarosinski first made a name for himself as a Twitter aphorist; he now continues his project in book form with "Nein. A Manifesto."
Finding Order in Chaos
Barry Yourgrau is forced to confront his forever-mushrooming mess and, by extension, himself, in "Mess."
:quality(75)/https%3A%2F%2Fassets.lareviewofbooks.org%2Fuploads%2F201509Story-of-the-Lost-Child.jpg)