A nonfiction book that reads like a novel reflects the unpleasant truth of overconsumption in the lives of Mumbai’s wastepickers.
REVIEW: Castaway Mountain: Love and Loss Among the Wastepickers of Mumbai by Saumya Roy
Category: Reviews
An archive of our reviews of memoirs, essay collections, and other works of creative nonfiction.
REVIEW: Promenade of Desire: A Barcelona Memoir by Isidra Mencos
Spain is the backdrop for a memoir frankly exploring the evolution of female desire from childhood to adulthood.
REVIEW: Curing Season: Artifacts by Kristine Langley Mahler
The experimental memoir combines research, reflections on belonging, and a variety of essay forms in the author’s exploration of her past.
REVIEW: The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications by Aaron Angello
Each of the words in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 becomes a prompt for the entries in this collection of short prose pieces.
REVIEW: Walking Him Home: Helping My Husband Die With Dignity by Joanne Tubbs Kelly
This is a memoir of helping a husband die with dignity also gives testimony to their relationship and to loving release.
REVIEW: Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto by Sonya Huber
The craft book uses voice as an entry point for exploring content, structure and the act of writing itself.
REVIEW: Under My Bed and Other Essays by Jody Keisner
The nuances of life’s subtle and private forms of fear are masterfully explored in the essay collection.
REVIEW: Hysterical by Elissa Bassist
Women’s pain and the silencing of their voices are among the topics explored with both humor and fury in Elissa Bassist’s memoir in essays.
REVIEW: The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home by Alison Townsend
The Green Hour captures the places inhabited by the author, weaving meditative writing about natural beauty with recollections of the mother she lost in childhood.
REVIEW: Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia
The beautifully written memoir deftly expands both our knowledge of the writer and our own humanity.
