Heller McAlpin

Friday November 7, 2025

Random House

Review

Book Reviews

Intimate and intriguing, Patti Smith's memoir offers new revelations

November 7, 2025 • The punk rock star has produced several books that braid thoughts on her newest endeavors with memories and photographs of her lost lovers and friends. Bread of Angels is her most autobiographical.

Wednesday October 29, 2025

NPR

Review

Book Reviews

If you liked 'Sandwich,' you'll love 'Wreck,' its warm, witty sequel

October 29, 2025 • In this follow-up to her hit novel, Catherine Newman reprises her beloved Rocky, a sharp-witted, neurotically doting mother.

Monday May 26, 2025

NPR

Review

Book Reviews

'Consider Yourself Kissed' by this rich, relatable story of an overwhelmed mom

May 26, 2025 • This novel stands apart from other tales of mothers stretched too thin. Jessica Stanley weaves family frustrations with British politics and global events because our life and our times are connected.

Monday April 28, 2025

Greystone Books

Review

Book Reviews

What connects Fredéric Chopin, Marcel Proust and Jim Morrison? A final resting place

April 28, 2025 • The Secret Life of a Cemetery is a paean to the renowned Parisian cemetery, Père Lachaise. There, 10,000 visitors a day seek the graves of some 4,500 notable figures.

Tuesday April 22, 2025

Knopf

Review

Book Reviews

Joan Didion leaves one more piece of writing to faithful fans

April 22, 2025 • Didion's book is an intimate chronicle of the author's struggle to help her daughter, even if it meant digging into her own long-unexamined neuroses.

Tuesday September 24, 2024

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review

Book Reviews

'Intermezzo' is Sally Rooney's most moving novel yet

September 24, 2024 • Rooney's fourth novel is a story about learning to accept loss. And though it has its share of grief and strife, it's happier and less disturbing than Normal People and Beautiful World, Where Are You.

Monday September 23, 2024

W. W. Norton & Company

Review

Book Reviews

Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Powers plunges deep into the ocean in 'Playground'

September 23, 2024 • Richard Powers' latest novel brims with love for humanity and the planet. He makes clear that while humans have made this planet our amusement park, we have not always taken proper care of our toys.

Saturday August 24, 2024

Grove

Review

Book Reviews

'Interpretations of Love' is debut novel for 82-year-old author

August 24, 2024 • Two years ago, Cat Brushing, a collection of provocative stories about older women still very much in touch with the sensual side of life, put Jane Campbell on the map.

Tuesday July 30, 2024

Doubleday

Review

Book Reviews

Blindsided by 'The Most': This is a superb novel of a marriage at its breakpoint

July 30, 2024 • The story takes place in Newark, over the course of a single day in 1957, which we experience from the two spouses' alternating points of view. Jessica Anthony's novel deserves to become a classic.

Monday July 22, 2024

Hogarth

Review

Book Reviews

'Liars' is an autopsy of a bitterly disappointing marriage

July 22, 2024 • In her fierce second novel, Sarah Manguso writes a requiem for a failed relationship from the point of view of a survivor, the wife left behind.

Thursday June 20, 2024

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Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review

Book Reviews

In 'Parade,' Rachel Cusk once again flouts traditional narrative

June 20, 2024 • In her latest work, Cusk probes questions about the connections between freedom, gender, domesticity, art, and suffering.

Monday June 10, 2024

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Pantheon

Review

Book Reviews

In 'Consent,' an author asks: 'Me too? Did I have the agency to consent?'

June 10, 2024 • Jill Ciment wrote about a relationship she had with a teacher when she was very young – that turned into a marriage – in Half a Life. Now, eight years after his death at 93, she reconsiders their relationship in light of the #MToo movement.

Saturday June 8, 2024

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Europa Editions

Review

Book Reviews

'Forgotten on Sunday' evokes the heartwarming whimsy of the movie 'Amélie'

June 8, 2024 • Like her other books, French writer Valérie Perrin's third novel to be translated into English, centers on the life-changing magic of friendships across generations.

Wednesday May 22, 2024

One World

Review

Book Reviews

What's it like to live in a vacation spot when tourists leave? 'Wait' offers a window

May 22, 2024 • Set during a uniquely stressful summer for one Nantucket family, Gabriella Burnham's second novel highlights the strong bonds between a mom and her daughters.

Tuesday May 7, 2024

Scribner

Review

Books

'Long Island' renders bare the universality of longing

May 7, 2024 • In a heartrending follow-up to his beloved 2009 novel, Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín handles uncertainties and moral conundrums with exquisite delicacy, zigzagging through time to a devastating climax.

Wednesday February 28, 2024

MCD

Review

Book Reviews

Sloane Crosley mourns her best friend in 'Grief Is for People'

February 28, 2024 • Russell Perreault hired Crosley when she was 25 and the two became very close. He died by suicide in 2019. Her first full-length book of nonfiction is a noteworthy addition to the literature of grief.

Tuesday February 27, 2024

Knopf

Review

Book Reviews

Tommy Orange's 'Wandering Stars' is a powerful follow up to 'There There'

February 27, 2024 • An eloquent indictment of the effects of the massacre, dislocation and forced assimilation of Native Americans, it is also a heartfelt paean to the importance of family and of ancestors' stories.

Saturday February 10, 2024

Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR

Review

Book Reviews

Move over, senior center — these 5 books center seniors

February 10, 2024 • These books, including Roxana Robinson's Leaving, which comes out on Tuesday, all concern older women — some in their 60s, others in their 90s — who fully intend to enjoy all their years.

Monday December 11, 2023

Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR

Review

Book Reviews

3 coffee table books featuring gardens recall the beauty in our endangered world

December 11, 2023 • All three of these books would make great gifts for gardeners and armchair oglers alike, and may tempt you to book a garden tour — or maybe even plant some bulbs and seeds yourself.

Saturday December 9, 2023

Meghan Collins Sullivan/NPR

Review

Book Reviews

4 coffee table art books from 2023 that are a visual feast

December 9, 2023 • This group ranges from a fabulous collection by contemporary, neurodiverse artists to Milton Glaser's pop art, and Aino and Alvar Aalto's Finnish modernist designs to a survey of Islamic architecture.

Saturday November 18, 2023

Random House

Review

Book Reviews

'Day' is a sad story of middle-aged disillusionment

November 18, 2023 • Michael Cunningham's Day joins a new wave of pandemic novels, including Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel's Dayswork, and Sigrid Nunez's The Vulnerables.

Monday October 23, 2023

Bloomsbury Publishing

Review

Book Reviews

In 'I Must Be Dreaming,' Roz Chast succeeds in engaging us with her dreams

October 23, 2023 • Talk about a dream, kill a conversation. But not in the case of graphic novelist Roz Chast. Even her subconscious emanations present deliciously skewed takes on life's absurdities and fraught moments.

Wednesday October 18, 2023

Bloomsbury Publishing

Review

Book Reviews

'The House of Doors' offers an ingenious twist, exploring how literature works magic

October 18, 2023 • The writer W. Somerset Maugham plays a central role Tan Twan Eng's entrancing new novel that encompasses at-the-time risky interracial and homosexual love stories and a scandalous murder trial.

Tuesday October 10, 2023

Knopf

Review

Book Reviews

In Jhumpa Lahiri's 'Roman Stories,' many characters are caught between two worlds

October 10, 2023 • In her return to short stories, the Interpreter of Maladies author returns to fiction that powerfully conveys her characters' efforts to navigate geography and culture to find a place in the world.