Chicago Review of Books

1 day ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Lucy Rees

My golden rule is that if Kevin Wilson is writing it, I’m reading it. I could read his grocery list and still feel a punch to the gut. Run for the Hills is no exception. It’s wacky and full of heart, but in between each laugh I felt gutted. It is a story of family and the many shapes it can take, but it is also much more, asking why the ones who leave and the ones who lie are always the epicenter, always the focal point.

1 week ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Rachel Leon

Some authors get deemed “writers’ writers,” meaning their work is so skillful, sharp, and brilliant, we writers flock to it. Lydia Davis, James McBride, Joy Williams, Clarice Lipspector, Lorrie Moore, Susan Choi, Denis Johnson, Jesmyn Ward—these are a few writers whose work other writers often revisit to study, for inspiration, and to marvel. I’d put National Book Award-finalist Karen E. Bender in this same category.

2 weeks ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Rachel Leon

Our country is especially divided today. Some of those issues have long been divisive, like abortion, climate change, and immigration. Others have grown on people’s radar these days—the destruction of Social Security, the need to stop genocide in Palestine, and how much control an unelected billionaire should have in our government. Many of us are asking ourselves how we can fix this mess, how to come together to fight for the respect, dignity, and justice of all people.

4 weeks ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Ian MacAllen

Emotional intimacy is at stake in Thomas Morris’s latest story collection, Open Up. The stories feature characters struggling to find connection with others, and not often succeeding. These results are particularly depressing given that many of the relationships Morris explores are those of families—fathers and children, especially. Too often these characters, who are expected to be close, end up with distance between them.

1 month ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Deborah Copperud

The ideal soundtrack for Greg Hewett’s debut novel, No Names, would start with a Schumann piano concerto, followed by a Black Flag anthem, manually mixed onto a dusty cassette tape with a handwritten label. The punk tracks represent Mike and Pete, two young guitarists who form an infatuated friendship in the mid-1970s on the working-class side of a fictional city situated near the Rust Belt, on the migratory path of tundra swans.