Reviewing CENSUS (Jesse Ball) for Chicago Tribune

My review of Jesse Ball's incredible Census here, in Chicago Tribune. So privileged to have read this book.

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my Chicago Tribune review of a twisty Christmas story

So what was Dickens thinking when he set out to write his A Christmas Carol? The screenwriter Samantha Silva has spent a long time imagining just this.

I reviewed her book, Mr. Dickens and His Carol, for the Chicago Tribune.

The full link is here.

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Manhattan Beach/Jennifer Egan: My Chicago Tribune Review

Devastated as we all are by the unending cycle of brutal news, I keep turning back to books—to the very best of books.

The ones with heart and soul, the proof of generous, curious, receiving minds.

Last week I had the opportunity to read Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach, an historical novel of surpassing... everything. My rave review, in the Chicago Tribune, is here.

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Reviewing Julia Fierro's The Gypsy Moth Summer in Chicago Tribune

My thoughts on Julia Fierro's new novel, in the Chicago Tribune. The full text is here.

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Music of the Ghosts/Vaddey Ratner: My Chicago Tribune Review

In today's Chicago Tribune I review Vaddey Ratner's novel of Cambodian loss and love, Music of the Ghosts. 

The entire review can be found here.

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living this life new

More and more, I am becoming me.

It took me this long to get here.

Fewer and fewer things in this house. A miniature car, bright orange. No more of that corporate work that bound me to this desk from 3 AM, sometimes until 10 PM, sometimes, work that made me less than pleasant (but only sometimes, I think, I hope). Only the books I want to read twice or three times in the house, and the ones I buy now are the ones I want, not the ones I feel an obligation to.

The work I do is the work I want to do. Reading the middle-grade books that carry the grown-up wisdoms. Reading the memoirs that I will teach. Profiling the people and places that inspire me, like Elisabeth Agro, say, who has revolutionized crafts in my city. Talking to other writers in real ways about the real work we hope to do.

I lived decades measuring my life by what I thought of as "real work." I was, I boasted to myself, making the correct sacrifices. I am trying on something new. Living my life as measured by my passions. I don't know how far this will go. But I'd be so mad at me if I didn't try it.

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LAB GIRL: my thoughts in the Chicago Tribune

This coming September, on an old farm in McClure, PA, a group of very-wow writers will be sitting at a big old table in a fabulously idiosyncratic barn talking about Hope Jahren's Lab Girl to kick off Juncture's inaugural memoir workshop.

My thoughts about this near-perfect memoir are here today, in the Chicago Tribune.

There are just four spaces now left in our workshop. If you're interested in the workshop or in the newsletter, please click on this link and let us know.

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In Chicago Tribune: When Breath Becomes Air/Paul Kalanithi

When Paul Kalanithi, a rising neurosurgeon, learned his life would be abbreviated just as the most exquisite part was then beginning, he turned to the page to tell his story.

My thoughts on that book are here, in the Chicago Tribune.

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The Dogs of Littlefield/Suzanne Berne: a Chicago Tribune review

Well, I certainly loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone who feels stuck in a pre-packagedly perfect version of suburbia—or stuck inside the angst that comes from knowing that there is no achievable perfection.

The whole is here, in today's Chicago Tribune.

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Home is where the art is: a new essay in Chicago Tribune

I've been working out ideas about home and literature, literature and home for awhile now, and on March 1, accompanied by friends A.S. King, Reiko Rizzuto, and Margo Rabb, my colleagues at Penn, and students past and present, I'll be doing even more thinking about the topic for the Beltran Family Teaching Award event at the Kelly Writers House at Penn.

My newest thinking is here, in this weekend's Chicago Tribune (Printers Row), with thanks to Jennifer Day, Joyce Hinnefeld, and Debbie Levy, upon whom I seem to first try out my ideas. (Oh, Debbie, you're a gift.)

To read the whole story, go here.

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so how DO we review a memoir (without judging another's life)? my thoughts in Chicago Tribune

As a veteran reviewer (veteran = old, in case you were wondering), I still think a lot (every single time) about the responsibilities of critics—particularly when it comes to memoir.

I thought my thoughts out loud this week, in the Chicago Tribune's special edition on memoir. The link to the story is here.

(For my Tribune thoughts on the new Mary-Louise Parker memoir, Dear Mr. You, go here.)

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reviewing Mary-Louise Parker's memoir, in Chicago Tribune

Oh, I loved this risk-taking, let's think for ourselves, let's not bend to mere chronology memoir by the actress Mary-Louise Parker.

My thoughts about it, in the Chicago Tribune, here.

I've also written, in this edition of the Tribune, about the reviewing of memoir—how we might critique the book without judging the person. Those thoughts are here. 

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reviewing Mary Karr's THE ART OF MEMOIR in the Chicago Tribune

Two years ago, the students in my memoir class at Penn were encouraged to read Mary Karr's The Liars' Club—one of those rare chronologically-told life stories that transcends autobiography to become real-live-brimming-with-wisdom memoir. You can't get much more vivid than Karr does with that Club. (I'm also a fan of Lit; both books are featured in Handling the Truth.) And oh, what discussions her words and stories prompt.

The Chicago Tribune invited me to review Mary Karr's The Art of Memoir. The book, which is full of unexpected riffs on an ambling range of topics, will be particularly helpful to those who may be interested in how Karr made, then contemplated, her three life stories. She reports on the writing process, the vetting process, the after glow, and her right to change her mind in subsequent books on the story she lived.

My Tribune review begins like this, below,

When we write about the writing of memoir, we are stuck, up front, with the lexicographer's dilemma: How do we define the word? Is memoir, for example, an autobiographical poem? Is it essay, "new journalism," fiction that feels true, ghost stories, an A-to-Z recounting of me? Is it narcissism, and if it is narcissism, what finally redeems it? Memoir can take many forms. But what, in essence, is it?

In her new book, "The Art of Memoir," Mary Karr — beloved memoirist and Peck professor of literature at Syracuse University — finds herself foiled in her quest for a "Unified Field Theory" for the category. The "first-person coming-of-age story, putatively true" gave the child Karr hope, she writes. Don DeLillo's thought that "a fiction writer starts with meaning and then manufactures events to represent it; a memoirist starts with events, then derives meaning from them" reinforces, for Karr, that "memoir purports to grow more organically from lived experience." A lifetime of reading and writing memoir has persuaded Karr that it is "an art, a made thing." Memoir, for Karr, is many things. Above all else, she suggests, it is a democratic telling open to anyone who has lived.

and can now be found in full here.

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"Don't you be a show-off," and other lessons from Kent Haruf, in his final quiet novel

We lost the great Kent Haruf way too soon. I was privileged to review his final book for the Chicago Tribune—privileged to have the excuse to go back and read Haruf interviews and profiles in preparation for the assignment.

Oh, he had so much to say. I wish he were still here, saying.

My full review can be found here.

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This Is the Story of You: on page proofs and distance

It has been a week of many words. A read and review of a very favorite author for the Chicago Tribune. The final page proofing of Love: A Philadelphia Affair, due out in September. The new afterword for the fourth edition of Handling the Truth. Revisions of the talk about home (what we learn about it in the novels we read) for the Moravian Writers' Conference, to be held this very weekend. And then, yesterday, this: the arrival of the proof pages for This Is the Story of You, a mystery set in the aftermath of a Jersey-style storm, due out from Chronicle next spring.

I'm going to leave this particular work until next week—unsure of my ability to read the story right just now. But what I want to say in this moment is this: time is our biggest ally in this writing life. The distance the process—from writing to redrafting to editing to copy editing to proof page reading—gives us from our own work. I needed months between the copy editing of Love and the proofing to see what problems still existed. I needed two years since the publication of Handling to know what else I had to say about memoir (and to be able to say it all in 1,000 words). I needed three weeks to re-read many beloved novels to know what I think about literary home, and then another week of writing and revisions to get the talk in order.

As I have needed time away from Story, which was written more than a year ago, to know if I've written as purely and truly and meaningfully as I could. I won't know, precisely, what is in those pages until I sit with them again. The mystery is a mystery to me. I have one last chance to figure out if it works.

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reviewing the powerful, wonderful, kind BETTYVILLE, in Chicago Tribune

How I loved this book—for its kindness, for its wisdom, for the way it cracked itself open, quietly. My full review of Bettyville by George Hodgman can be found here, at the Chicago Tribune. It will appear in Printers Row this weekend.

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how do we write with an empathetic imagination? thoughts in this weekend's Chicago Tribune

A few weeks ago, I built tall piles of my many essay collections (old and new) and began to ponder. Rediscovered favorite pieces by Annie Dillard, Patricia Hampl, Ander Monson, Rebecca Solnit, the World War II pilot memoirist Samuel Hynes, Elif Batuman, Megan Stielstra, Stephanie LaCava, Joanne Beard, others. Looked for insights into the empathetic imagination—how it has been managed over time, how essayists, historically, have gotten to the heart of hearts that aren't their own. I read, took notes, looked for patterns, began to write. It was a three-week process that produced just over 1,000 words.

I am blessed that the Chicago Tribune took interest in this piece. I am blessed, too, that I was able to share these thoughts at Bryn Mawr College this past Thursday, in the classroom of the very exquisite Professor Cynthia Reeves.

The essay will appear in this weekend's Printers Row. The online link is here.

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reviewing Alexandra Fuller for the Chicago Tribune

The thing is, I could have written a book about this book. I'd have dedicated a long chapter, at least, to a comparison, side by side, of three particular present-tense scenes in Fuller's first memoir played out against those same three scenes, now recorded with the reflective and rearranging past-tense of this new third memoir, Leaving Before the Rains Come.

Fuller is an exquisite writer. Memories shift.

I wrote what could fit, the full review here.

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talking about failure memoirs, in this weekend's Chicago Tribune

In my memoir class at the University of Pennsylvania, we're focusing on failure/mistake memoirs, and what they teach us. To get my own self into a teaching place, I spent considerable time during Christmas and the first weeks of the new year, studying the books that I am teaching—and thinking.

The Chicago Tribune kindly gave me room to put that thinking on its pages.

I'm thrilled to also be able to share that Daniel Menaker, the author of My Mistake and an esteemed editor in his own right, will be visiting Kelly Writers House for a publishers lunch and then my class on February 24th, at Penn.

The Tribune essay can be found here.

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On Immunity by Eula Biss, in the Chicago Tribune

Earlier this week I spoke of Eula Biss's first book, The Balloonists, and how it made me think. This weekend, in the Chicago Tribune, I'm reflecting on Biss's new book, On Immunity, a book that has been generating much press for its artful exploration of the social ramifications of personal health decisions. My review begins like this, below, and continues here.

You read Eula Biss' new book slowly, with care. You are not sure, at first, where it is going. The topic is immunity, also inoculation, also vaccination, epidemics, social responsibility, vampirism and the impossibility of completely knowing. There are episodes of bright, emboldened insight. There are incidents — sometimes still and sometimes cinematic — of personal story. There are playground questions and interviews with scientists, Achilles and Dracula, myths and birth and a child sleeping. There are others, and there is us. There are the invisible airborne germs and the visible, struck down dying.

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