Winter Gazette - 2019

“One of my favorite audiobooks this year! I loved the narration nearly as much as I loved each of the characters and their journey. You can't help but root for the children, and appreciate how the weirdness actually accentuates the trials and tribulations of found family versus those we're related to in a very real way. Delightful.”

“I am in love with Jami Attenberg’s writing, and was gripped by All This Could Be Yours from the opening pages. Everything about the Tuchmans felt so true to me: Alex’s confusion and anger toward the family’s toxic, now-comatose patriarch, Victor; Barbra’s isolation in her later years after a long marriage to a brute; Twyla and Gary’s unwinding secret selves—all of it is so perfectly told and paced. Full of Attenberg’s trademark dry wit and precise, uncomfortable insight into the psychology of family love (and its close cousin, family hate), this novel had me laughing with genuine joy and crying in real sadness at the same time.”

“In the wake the recognition Susannah Callahan received from her memoir "Brain on Fire", in which she wrote about her struggle with an auto-immune disease that briefly stole her sanity, she became a crusader for the awareness of psychiatry's abuses of its patients in recent history and the contemporary anti-psychiatry movement. The author's superb narration of the audio book does justice to her intelligent prose and the stories she tells of many different pseudo-patients, including Callahan herself, who worked to expose the limitations of psychiatry as a branch of medicine.”

“Welcome to the Dream House in this daring new kind of memoir that defies boundaries and boldly discards the conventions of genre. Inside, Carmen Maria Machado bares her soul in all of its pain and beauty, offering an intimate and profoundly vulnerable look at her own life, love, and sexuality. Machado has a gift for exposing the raw nerves and small miracles lurking beneath the surface of our daily lives. Her words move with a strange kind of urgency, surreal and yet true, like late-night phone calls when the rest of the world is asleep. I didn’t feel like I was reading a book so much as observing a person’s innermost thoughts. In the Dream House is a unique and extraordinary book.”

“This memoir by black and gay poet Saeed Jones is a visceral coming of age and coming out story. Growing up as an only child to his single mother in Texas and spending summers with his evangelical grandmother in Memphis, Jones struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, to come out of the closet, and to love himself. He wrestles with his fractured identity, learning what it means to be gay in the black community, to be black in the gay community, and to realize that either one on its own is enough to get you killed in a straight, white world. There are passages that will bruise and choke you, but ultimately both Jones and the reader come out of the book all the better for it.”

“Whether she’s telling a very short story about a mother and daughter discussing animal cruelty while on vacation or a longer story about a trio of celebrities on a road trip to escape New York, Grand Union shows that Zadie Smith is as adept with short fiction as she is with the novel. For a form of literature that always seems to enhance the faults of lesser writers, short stories, for Smith, seem only to make her shine brighter than ever.”

“I’m convinced that Patti Smith is the reincarnation of some spiritual mystic. Someone like Joan of Arc or Hildegard von Bingen. At this point I am committed to only listening to her audiobooks because her words are even more powerful in her own dreamy cadence. I sound like a school girl mooning over her first loved celebrity but, I can’t say it’s that different for me. I’ve lived and read enough to know that Patti Smith will forever be a literary icon for me and if you disagree, I maintain that you either haven’t read her yet OR you are wrong (insert tongue sticking out emoji). Anyway. I always struggle to review Patti’s books because her dream-like writing style is hard for me to appropriately express. In Year of the Monkey, Patti struggles with two incredible losses of lifelong friends, she struggles with the odd world we all find ourselves living in now, she struggles with dreams. Her prose (as it always seems to, but more so in this book) jumps quickly and fluidly from heady esoteric musings to a fluorescent glimpse into reality. A fever dream of images, are they real or a part of her beautiful mind. Patti is obsessed with a beach covered in candy wrappers, why isn’t this in the news? An out of place conversation with strangers about Robert Bolano. A dreamy vision of discussing Ayers Rock with Sam Shepherd, and the stark reality of his declining health. If you are unfamiliar with Patti Smith and/or her books, I encourage you wholeheartedly to pick one of them up, get lost in her incredible mind and musings. If not for the sake of understanding this bumbling mess of a review, for yourself so that you too can be drunk on her words and lost for your own. ”

“What an amazing written and performed tale of love, mystery, and magic. This homage to books and storytelling is like nothing I’ve read... ever. Morgenstern has achieved a wondrous feat that defies measure.”

“Angie Cruz is a beautiful writer with a powerful voice, and readers of Julia Alvarez and Sandra Cisneros will greatly enjoy this book! Dominicana is a riveting story about family, womanhood, and what it means to be an immigrant. Ana Cancion, who’s only 15, leaves her home behind for a new life in New York City with her soon-to-be husband, Juan Ruiz. Big lights, tall buildings, and a bright future constitute the promise of a new beginning. However, upon Ana’s arrival, her fate untangles into something unexpected. It’ll be really hard to forget these characters and the realness in their heartache. Throughout these pages, I fell in and out of love, I laughed, I cried, and I was deeply moved.”

“ I struggle to write a review of Lindy West's work without resorting to simplistic three syllable sentences like "she's awesome," or, "she's the best." Maybe it's because she makes it look so very easy. She says everything I'm always thinking: about feminism, about politics, about our image-obsessed culture. And she does it with irrefutable logic, dazzling sentences, and an utterly fierce and funny sensibility. She's...(sigh) perfect.”