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How to Become a Professional Clown (03/25)
In Stop Me If You've Heard This One, the main character, Cherry, chases her dreams of becoming a successful clown. The unusual career path actually requires a lot more work—and financial investment—than one might assume. If you're considering trading in your 9-to-5 for a bright red nose, here are some steps you might ...
Transgender Support Organizations Serving Rural America (03/25)
In Emily St. James's debut novel, Woodworking, the protagonist, Erica, must travel more than an hour each way, from Mitchell to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to attend a support group for transgender people. The group is small—seven people is 'a good turnout'—but it's there, and over the course of the book, the group's existence ...
Fish and Chip Shops (03/25)
In Colm Tóibín's novel Long Island, one of the main characters owns a chip shop in Enniscorthy, Ireland – a carryout restaurant that sells fish and chips (french fries in the United States). The dish is a staple of the British Isles, and hundreds of chip shops (aka 'chippies') can be found in the Republic of Ireland, where...
The Highland Clearances (03/25)
In Clear, the third novel from Carys Davies, an impoverished presbyterian minister reluctantly takes part in the Highland Clearances, a series of mass evictions that took place in the north of Scotland between 1750 and 1850, driven in part by the restructuring of British society during the Industrial Revolution and the collapse of the ...
Artist Ana Mendieta (03/25)
The title character in Xochitl Gonzalez's Anita de Monte Laughs Last is closely based on the artist Ana Mendieta. Although Mendieta's shocking death at the age of thirty-five has overshadowed her artistic legacy in the public imagination, Mendieta was a rising star at the time of her death, and her creative work continues to hold ...
Cape Horn (03/25)
David Grann's The Wager is a nonfiction book about events surrounding the 1741 wreck of the British ship the HMS Wager, which met its doom while rounding Cape Horn, a rocky headland at the southernmost tip of the Chilean archipelago Tierra del Fuego, where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans meet. With this book, Grann sheds light on one ...
The Erasure of Eileen Blair from Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (03/25)
Readers might be forgiven if, in reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, they miss the fact that his first wife, Eileen Blair, was in Spain with him, working for the Republican resistance against Franco's fascist forces. As Anna Funder points out in Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life, when George does refer to her, he does not ...
Virginia Woolf's The Years, British Empire, and Narrative Form (03/25)
The Years is the last of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published during her lifetime, in 1937. Beginning in 1880 and following three generations of the Pargiter family across five decades to the 'present day,' it captures intimate moments between characters and internal monologues against the backdrop of historical events and changes in ...
What's a Hare? Isn't It Just a Rabbit? Actually, No (03/25)
While commenting on Chloe Dalton's memoir Raising Hare, about her experience rescuing a wild baby hare, some of our First Impressions reviewers mentioned the common misperception that a hare is a kind of a rabbit. So what exactly is a hare?
Hares and rabbits are related, but not the same. The hare is in the genus Lepus and falls into ...
New Journalism (03/25)
In 1963, Jimmy Breslin chronicled the death of John F. Kennedy from the point of view of the man who dug his grave. Instead of joining the big names in journalism in awaiting statements of grief from world leaders, he went to the cemetery where the US president was to be buried in order to write '
It's an Honor,' a piece that told the ...
The Plow That Broke the Plains: A Dust Bowl Documentary (03/25)
One of the protagonists in The Antidote is Cleo Allfrey, a photographer dispatched by the Resettlement Administration to document life in Nebraska's Dust Bowl. She and others in the book mention a similar, real-world project: a documentary titled The Plow That Broke the Plains.
The Plow That Broke the Plains was a controversial, ...
The Social Impact of COVID-19 on Young Adults (03/25)
COVID-19 has had an immense impact on people of all ages, in all stages of life, and in all parts of the world. Mahogany L. Browne's novel A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe focuses on the various effects on young people's lives, which are still being felt and studied today. Along with the widespread death, disability, and ...
Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi (03/25)
In Sarah Harman's All the Other Mothers Hate Me, Florence, an ex-pop star, clings to a notion: that one day, just like Mariah Carey, she will have what she calls her Emancipation of Mimi moment. I immediately knew what she meant, because The Emancipation of Mimi was one of my most impactful musical albums; it was the first CD I remember ...
Madame Sosostris in T.S. Eliot's Poetry (03/25)
In Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted, Londoner Viv meets the infamous clairvoyant Madame Sosostris while she is giving readings at the Cholmondeley Room of the House of Lords. Guests are frightened and awed by the accuracy of her gift, calling her "the most dependable clairvoyant in the country," as she has...
The Preppy Killer (03/25)
A crime that occurred in the summer of 1986 in New York City inspired Cynthia Weiner's A Gorgeous Excitement. On August 26, a cyclist discovered 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in New York City's Central Park, dead due to strangulation and half naked behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, badly bruised and with cuts on her face. She had been ...
No-Fault Divorce in the US (03/25)
The title of Haley Mlotek's debut No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce is a reference to 'no-fault' divorce, which is a divorce granted without needing to prove wrongdoing by either spouse. For Mlotek, the legalization of no-fault divorce is an important moment in the history of marriage, as it raises questions about the significance...
A World Not Built for Women: Gender Bias in Medicine & Science (03/25)
In March 2019, NASA was due to launch the first all-women spacewalk from the International Space Station. It was to be a milestone in space exploration. Astronauts Christina Koch and Anne McClain were to walk outside the ISS to replace lithium-ion batteries; Mary Lawrence and Kristen Facciol were to be lead flight director and lead ...
Thomas Gainsborough (03/25)
Emily Howes' enthralling debut novel, The Painter's Daughters, features a fictionalized version of the lives of Molly and Peggy Gainsborough. Their father, Thomas Gainsborough, was one of the most influential British painters of the 18th century.
Gainsborough, born in 1727, was the youngest of John and Mary Gainsborough's nine ...
Dala Horses (03/25)
In Shelby Van Pelt's novel
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Tova Sullivan treasures her collection of Dala horses brought to the United States from Sweden decades ago by her mother.
A Dala horse, also known as a Dalecarlian horse (or 'Dalahäst' in Swedish), is a type of hand-carved, painted statuette in Swedish culture. According to
...
The Photography of Spencer Ostrander (02/25)
Thanks to the numerous photographs that accompany Paul Auster's prose, Bloodbath Nation reads like an extended photo essay, the combination of words and pictures creating a truly indelible work. The images were recorded by New York City–based photographer Spencer Ostrander, for whom this work is deeply personal.
Ostrander, who ...
No-Tech Time Travel Books (02/25)
Exploring alternate realities through time travel is a familiar subject across fiction. Traditionally, the mechanism for making such a feat possible is the invention of a new technology: a time machine, a spaceship that can go faster than the speed of light, etc. Yet books built around these high-tech means often come with a mind-bending ...
From Stagecraft to Spy Craft: Celebrity Spies (02/25)
The history of celebrities dabbling in espionage is a fascinating one. As Ronald Drabkin illustrates in Beverly Hills Spy, famous people often have opportunities to gather intelligence from high-value sources. Who would not want to socialize with a beautiful or handsome star?
One of the most audacious celebrity spies during World War ...
Books of Stories Centering Black American Life (02/25)
Diane Oliver's Neighbors and Other Stories is a collection delving deep into the corners of Black American life in the 1950s and '60s that were not and are still not usually part of the public conversation. Historical and academic writing that discusses the situations of marginalized people often does not touch on the intricacies of their...
Popular Dances of the 1960s-70s and Ballet (02/25)
In The Swans of Harlem, Karen Valby explains how Arthur Mitchell sought to make ballet appealing and relevant to a Black audience. He and his dancers regularly visited schools to give talks and performances. Mitchell loved to point out how ballet could help the students in their daily lives. He'd tell the boys how much higher they could ...
A Brief History of Events Leading Up to the Russia-Ukraine War (02/25)
Victoria Amelina (1986–2023) was a Ukrainian novelist. She spent the last months of her life researching war crimes committed by Russian soldiers during their invasion of her country.
Those of us in the United States probably think of the Russia-Ukraine War as beginning on February 24, 2022, when Russian president Vladimir Putin ...
Cats in Japanese Literature (02/25)
Japanese people have been writing about cats for a long time. In 889, Japanese Emperor Uda wrote in his journal: 'Taking a moment of my free time, I wish to express my joy of the cat.' He proceeded to then describe the animal in thoughtful detail, including a humorous remark that will resonate all too well with cat owners: 'I affixed a ...
Is Tunisian Female Independence Slipping Away? (02/25)
The Republic of Tunisia is a small country in Northern Africa. It was the birthplace of the 2010-11 Arab Spring movement, which saw uprisings due to economic hardship and corruption. Though much of the world was taken off guard by the unrest, Tunisia has always been forward-facing. Once a protectorate of France, it gained its independence...
Gravesend, Brooklyn Over the Years (02/25)
Gravesend is only an hour from New York City's Grand Central Station by subway, but Manhattan 'might as well be Mars' to the characters of Saint of the Narrows Street. It is a small neighborhood in south Brooklyn, just north of the better-known Coney Island and Brighton Beach.
The name 'Gravesend' sounds macabre, but its roots are...
The Memoir-in-Essays (02/25)
Compared to a traditional memoir, a memoir-in-essays allows for a more thematic approach and a diversity of styles and formats. It generally prioritizes ideas and memorable scenes or vignettes, and its essays might be linked or discrete. The essays in Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez appear in roughly chronological order, but a memoir-in-...
Weddings in Contemporary Literature (02/25)
In Anne Tyler's Three Days in June, main character Gail Baines must deal with the chaos of her daughter's wedding while facing career disappointment and job loss. As weddings are landmark events in many people's lives and may reflect (or challenge) traditional family values, they can make for rich and meaningful story settings, and ...
"In This House, We Believe" (02/25)
In One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Omar El Akkad levels several critiques against Western liberalism and its contradictions. One of the most damning is this: 'It's difficult to live in this country in this moment and not come to the conclusion that the principal concern of the modern American liberal is, at all times...
A Short History of Vienna After the Second World War (02/25)
The novel The Café with No Name is set in Vienna from 1966 to 1976. To fully immerse oneself in the atmosphere of the novel, it may be helpful to review a short history of Austria and its capital during and after the Second World War.
Austria was part of Nazi Germany from March 1938 until April 1945. When Hitler's troops ...
Dreaming About Video Games: The Tetris Effect (02/25)
In Dreamover, the dreamscapes Amber and Nico experience draw heavily from the imagery and mechanisms encountered in video games. In fact, within the past few decades, scientists and researchers have been investigating the relationship between video games and dreams.
One consequence of digital gaming on dreams is dubbed the Tetris ...
Countertexts and Shifting Perspectives (02/25)
Dark Laboratory is an incredible reconfiguring of a historical moment that provides a new understanding of the current climate crisis and how it is intertwined with the legacies of colonialism. One way of thinking about the book is as a countertext to commonly taught histories of globalization, colonialism, and climate change. A ...
De Ondergedoken Camera: A WWII Resistance Group (02/25)
Song of a Blackbird is a dual timeline narrative that follows the lives of two young women, one in modern day and one during WWII. In 2011, Annick goes on a search to find her family's true history, her only clues a set of prints featuring buildings around Amsterdam signed by a mysterious 'Emma B.' And in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, the ...
Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra (02/25)
In Mona Acts Out, seasoned actress Mona Zahid is about to start rehearsals for her role as Cleopatra in Shakespeare's tragedy Antony and Cleopatra. Mona approaches the whole thing with trepidation, citing that she's "never actually seen a great Cleopatra," as the character is many-layered and must command the stage ...
A History of Strip Clubs in the United States (02/25)
In the novel Soft Core, protagonist Ruth works at a San Francisco club as a stripper, a profession with a long history in the United States. The first striptease acts in America were part of vaudeville shows at carnivals and burlesque theatres around the turn of the twentieth century. One early "disrobing act" by a trapeze ...
Authorial Pseudonyms (02/25)
I've joked on more than one occasion that, should I ever write a novel of my own, it will have to be under a pseudonym to save myself from the ire of all the real people I'll be turning into fiction. Many famous and acclaimed writers have used a pseudonym (also known as a pen name, nom de guerre, and nom de plume). The name Mark Twain is ...
Berlin Club Culture (02/25)
In Aria Aber's Good Girl, narrator Nila spends her teenage years in the labyrinths of Berlin's legendary techno clubs. Awash with drugs and unrestrained by straight-laced sexual mores, the Berlin club scene was hand-built by grassroots pioneers into a recognized cultural institution, eventually attracting visitors from across the globe ...
The Jeju Uprising (02/25)
Han Kang's latest novel, We Do Not Part, delves into a dark part of Korean history known as the Jeju uprising, the Jeju massacre, or (in Korea) 'Jeju 4.3,' for the day it began. Jeju, Korea's largest island, located southwest of the Korean peninsula, is sometimes today called 'the Hawaii of Asia.' In the introduction to a recent article ...
Red Lines and Anticipatory Obedience (02/25)
In Ali Smith's Gliff, two children living in a sinister surveillance state in the not-too-distant future return home to find a line of red paint circling their house. In this dystopian society where all-pervasive technology tracks and controls every aspect of people's lives, these red painted lines are used to flag those who have been ...
Sugar Beets (02/25)
In Beta Vulgaris — titled after the scientific name for sugar beets — workers come to Minnesota from across the country to work long shifts on big machines called pilers to harvest the crop. Is that what you picture when you hear the term 'sugar beets'? Me neither — I always imagined deep red or borscht, but as it might ...
Demeter and Persephone (02/25)
Rachel Lyon's novel Fruit of the Dead is based on the story of Demeter and Persephone from Greek mythology. In the original story, Demeter, goddess of the harvest, is devastated when her daughter Persephone is kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld, who intends to make her his wife. Demeter's grief is so great that it affects the ...
Escape and Evasion Maps (02/25)
In Lea Carpenter's Ilium, some of the spies have escape and evasion maps. Also known as escape maps or silk maps, these are scarves imprinted with maps that intelligence officers and soldiers have historically used when they've ended up behind enemy lines. They offer information about how best to escape or at least find somewhere safe to ...
Mobilian Jargon (02/25)
Joe Barrow, the protagonist of Francis Spufford's
Cahokia Jazz, does not speak the titular city's common language, Anopa. He learns bits and pieces of it over the course of the novel, at around the same pace as the reader (heeding the
suggestion of his friend Alan Jacobs, Spufford does not include a glossary). We learn the words for ...
The Harlem Renaissance (02/25)
Tia Williams' novel A Love Song for Ricki Wilde contains flashbacks to the Harlem Renaissance, considered a golden age for Black culture and art in the United States. This movement, centered in Manhattan's Harlem neighborhood, took place between the 1910s and 1930s.
During the period known as the Great Migration, when large numbers...
Harvard's Glass Flowers (02/25)
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's novel Glassworks begins with the heroine employing a Czech glass artist to create a collection of realistic flora and fauna for her university in Boston. In interviews, the author has stated that she was inspired by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, a father-and-son team who created thousands of remarkably detailed ...
US Military Mules in World War II (01/25)
One of the characters in Derek B. Miller's novel The Curse of Pietro Houdini is a limping mule named Ferrari. The author notes that mules were used extensively during World War II in the Italian theater, in areas where trucks couldn't go, such as mountain passes and forests.
Mules are remarkable creatures that have been used as pack ...
A History of the Texas Rangers (01/25)
In Elizabeth Gonzalez James's novel The Bullet Swallower, a group of Texas Rangers pursue the protagonist, Antonio Sonoro, with maniacal zeal. The most dangerous member of the posse tortures and murders innocent civilians as a warning to Sonoro, crossing the Rio Grande and attacking Mexican citizens with impunity. Set in the mid-1890s...
