In lyrical prose, the collection of brief essays examines subjects both commonplace and profound.
REVIEW: Small Off Things: Meditations from an Anxious Mind by Suzanne Farrell Smith
Category: Reviews
An archive of our reviews of memoirs, essay collections, and other works of creative nonfiction.
REVIEW: Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived by Karen DeBonis
The memoir chronicles a mother’s transformational change as she advocates for her child through chronic illness.
REVIEW: The In-Betweens by Davon Loeb
The memoir is a beautiful and at times devastating account of the author’s coming of age as a mixed-race person.
REVIEW: Mailer at 100: Conversations, Correlations, Confrontations by Robert J. Beigiebing
Written to mark Norman Mailer’s centenary, the book offers insights into the literary icon’s craft, inventively and entertainingly told.
REVIEW: Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide by Juliet Patterson
The memoir examines a generational legacy of suicide, its impact on those left behind, and society’s attitudes about those who end their lives.
REVIEW: Stash: My Life in Hiding by Laura Cathcart Robbins
Written with honesty and grit, the memoir overturns stereotypes about addiction and recovery.
REVIEW: The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home by S.L. Wisenberg
A writer’s writer explores identity and what it means to be a woman in an essay collection that is funny, dark, and heartbreaking.
REVIEW: Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing by Abigail Thomas
A master memoirist mines ordinary life and spins it into prose revealing meaning in the passage of time.
REVIEW: The Memory of All That: A Love Story about Alzheimer’s by Mary MacCracken
The memoir thoughtfully explores the journey of caring for a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease and the struggle of caregiving.
REVIEW: Writing While Parenting by Ben Berman
The challenges of maintaining a writing life while parenting are the focus of an essay collection that also is a meditation on the writing craft.
