Chicago Review of Books

The Chicago Review of Books, created by StoryStudio Chicago, aims to broaden the literary dialogue by featuring varied genres, publishers, voices, and formats. It highlights the literary culture of Chicago and provides a platform for discussing literature in the Midwest.

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Articles

The Nature of the Self in "Open Up"

1 week 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.
Punk Legends and Classical Tensions in "No Names"

1 week 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.
Reclaiming Her Story: "Care and Feeding" by Laurie Woolever

1 month ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Ian MacAllen

Celebrity chefs have grown into brands far beyond the confines of their restaurants. They’re sales platforms selling television shows and cookbooks and merchandise. That’s all possible because of the cultlike following in their fan base. It’s the public’s intrigue in their personal lives that likely will entice readers to pick up Laurie Woolever’s memoir, Care And Feeding.
Coloring Outside the Lines in "Hot Air"

1 month ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Lucy Rees

Marcy Dermansky’s Hot Air had me questioning reality from the very first page. But that’s life, isn’t it? The most unrealistic anecdotes, the zaniest events, are usually the ones that actually happened. Joannie is on a date, a little unsure of how she feels about the date, and is, of course, overanalyzing why she’s unsure. Does she like him? Is she finding him attractive?
Love, Relationships, and Complication in “Dream Count”

1 month ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Monika Dziamka

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s last published novel Americanah solidified her presence in modern literature, winning various recognitions and awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.
“If we don’t allow joy to exist, then we’re smothering the light”: An Interview with Kristen Arnett

1 month ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Lori Rader-Day

We hear Florida is a wild place, a fun park-shaped peninsula where, bad news, alligators can apparently climb walls. The literature of Florida is similarly outlandish: Karen Russell, Carl Hiassen, Tim Dorsey—all writers who seem to be having far more fun than most.
Read Your Resistance: "Like a Hammer: Poets on Mass Incarceration"

1 month ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Rachel Leon

Yesterday I spent 50 cents to communicate with someone who is incarcerated. It was a cheap day. He gets one free video visit a week and, this week, he used it on me. I know his family is supporting him, putting money on his books, so I feel guilty each time I’m the one he uses his free visit on. But his family is typically working during the free video visit windows (Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 8am-4pm), and anyway, we’re friends now, he reminds me. I didn’t know him until three months ago.
Sifting Truth From Fiction: An Interview with Nicole Graev Lipson

1 month ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Rachel Leon

Those of us who are big readers fall in love with books either because of how they’re written or what they’re saying—I loved Nicole Graev Lipson’s debut memoir in essays, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, for both. Let’s start with how it’s written. Oh, the writing! Graev Lipson’s prose isn’t only gorgeous, it’s skillful—dare I say masterful. Each sentence sculpted with grace, each paragraph constructed with careful planning.
"Tell The Truth, Shame The Devil": Eve L. Ewing on "Original Sins"

1 month ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Mandana Chaffa

Even in an era of multi-hyphenates, Chicago-native Dr. Eve L. Ewing’s achievements are exemplary: scholar, educator, cultural organizer, poet, playwright and comic book author to name a few. Her newest project is equally striking. Original Sins: The (Mis)Education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism, is a critical investigation of the ways the U.S. school system engenders racial inequality and social hierarchies.
Departures from Western Idealism in Omar El Akkad’s “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”

1 month ago | chireviewofbooks.com | Joe Stanek

As a teenager born in Cairo and growing up in Doha, Omar El Akkad remembers, “I wanted for the part of the world where I believed there existed a fundamental kind of freedom.