Book Review
Minus Me
In Mameve Medwed’s novel "Minus Me", after receiving devastating news about her health, a woman decides to leave her husband detailed directions on how to live the rest of his life without her. Annie lives in a small town in Maine,...
Book Review
Cormorant Lake
With a dash of magical realism, Faith Merino’s novel "Cormorant Lake" concerns the meanings and complexities of motherhood and family. When Evelyn comes home to find one of her roommate Erin’s children thrashing, alone, in her bath...
Book Review
This Is Not the Jess Show
Anna Carey’s young adult novel This is Not the Jess Show starts in a familiar fashion, with a teenager in the suburbs dealing with drama. But there are unsettling events, too: Jess hears a chorus of chants in the morning, her dog has...
Book Review
Places I've Taken My Body
Molly McCully Brown’s collection of essays, Places I’ve Taken My Body, describes what it’s like to live in a body that is often classified as disabled. Brown relates what it was like growing up with cerebral palsy and shares the...
Book Review
Heaven
Emerson Whitney’s genre-bending memoir "Heaven" is about gender, family, and memory. It is cerebral in examining social labels and expectations, as well as how selves are constructed and the stories that people tell themselves about...
Book Review
The Healthy Deviant
Built on the premise that today’s world is unhealthy, Pilar Gerasimo’s "The Healthy Deviant" is a self-help corrective. Arguing that society has normalized problems like a lack of sleep, unhealthy eating, overworking, and...
Book Review
The Opposite of Falling Apart
Micah Good’s "The Opposite of Falling Apart" includes a meet-cute, angst, and lots of introspection as its characters confront weighty issues. Jonas, an amputee, and Brennan, a girl with severe anxiety, are hardly a perfect match, but...
Book Review
Invisible People
The journalist Alex Tizon had a goal: to bring to visibility those “who existed outside the mainstream’s field of vision.” He felt that everyone had a story, and he wanted to help people tell it. That’s exactly what "Invisible...