Reviews
NON-FICTION
Review by Christopher Hitchens
I have the distinct feeling that people do not buy Ann Coulter’s
creed-screeds and speed-reads in order to enhance their knowledge of
history or their command of syllogism. [more]
Review by Simon Jarvis
The Parallax View offers a show of organization. It has an introduction,
parts, “interludes”, and so on. But no reader will seriously
think that it would matter if the interludes were parts or the parts
interludes. It could all come anywhere, because it is all shot from a Lacanian
pistol. [more]
Review by Simon Kovar
Most of us can probably accept that Western states often fail to live up
to their stated ideals – this much is a truism about state power – but
does Chomsky live up to his own standard? [more]
Review by Hugh Lawson-Tancred
In reality, to read Berlin is to gain a fascinating insight into the relationship
between the ideological environment of the late eighteenth, early nineteenth
and mid-twentieth centuries, and, by contrast, that of the early twenty-first. [more]
FICTION
Travels in the Scriptorium by Paul Auster 
Review by Suresh Ariaratnam
It is not just Auster’s characters that migrate; technical recapitulation
– such as the blurring of narrator and author, and the book within
a book – occurs aplenty. This feels like seeing a magician doing
variations on a card trick. Yes, it’s clever, but the more you see
it, the less power it has over you. [subscribe]
Murder in Byzantium by Julia Kristeva
Review by Adi Drori-Avraham
When her father died unexpectedly in a Bulgarian hospital in which experiments
were allegedly conducted on elderly patients, Julia Kristeva resolved
to turn her hand to writing detective novels. That this notoriously
baffling critic and psychoanalyst has been writing ‘whodunit’ narratives
– Murder in Byzantium is her fourth novel to date – is something
of a mystery in itself. [subscribe]
POETRY
Review by Stephen Hart
Gianuzzi and Smith’s fine bilingual Selected takes poems
from all the periods, and provides a good sense of the variety of
Vallejo’s
work, ranging from the post-Romantic The Black Heralds, the vanguard Trilce,
the political poems set in Paris and those inspired by the Spanish
Civil War. [more]
Nocturne in Chrome and Sunset Yellow by
Tobias Hill
Review by Kathryn Maris
Though powerful and well-crafted poems can be found throughout, the first
half of Tobias Hill's fourth collection is stronger than the second.
A highlight is a tour-de-force called ‘Repossession’, a long
and dynamic narrative in blank verse that attends to the themes of
domestic and urban life that form the basis of this collection. [subscribe]
Averno by Louise Glück
Review by Niccoló Milanese
In her tenth volume of poetry, the American poet Louise Glück
re-imagines the portal, this time through the myth of Persephone
and her mother Demeter. [subscribe]
