Reviews

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Flesh by Hungarian-British author David Szalay was recently announced as the winner of the 2025 Booker Award. Although the Booker board called it “a propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unraveled by a series of events beyond his…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin was published in 1982 and was recently discovered by a friend, who recommended it to me. It is a well-drawn portrait of the Solo-Miller family, an affluent New York family steeped in tradition and guided…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Two weeks ago, I had knee replacement surgery, so my posting will be limited through the rest of the month. Here’s a great big book to hold you over in the interim. Meanwhile, happy holidays – yes, all…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Granddaughter is a pretty straightforward novel by German writer Bernhard Schlink, translated by Charlotte Collins. The time is contemporary Germany, and Berlin book store owner Kaspar comes home to find wife Birgit dead in the bathtub, apparently by drowning.  They…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History – and How it Shattered a Nation by Andrew Ross Sorkin is a spellbinding deep dive into the irrational exuberance of the Roaring Twenties, the amassing of wealth and wild stock…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Remembering & forgetting: a memoir and other pieces of my life by Miriam Spiegel Raskin is a short but impactful book by a woman who, in 1939, at the age of eight, fled Germany with her parents, Julius and Fannie Spiegel,…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. An Education: How I changed My mind about Schools and Almost Everything Else is an eye-opening and deeply personal memoir, intricately wound up with the story of how our nation has been swept up with and jerked around by…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life” by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof is a large but rich memoir of an extraordinary career in journalism.  Perhaps you remember Kristof’s coverage of the slaughter in Darfur, the bloody civil war and mass…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück  by Lynne Olsen is an extraordinary telling of a little-told Nazi horror story, barely hinted at by the subtitle, “How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler’s All-Female Concentration Camp.”  This goes beyond any book…

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog. Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins is a mighty book, in length (544 pages) and in the majesty of the natural world that is its backdrop.  The writing is often captivatingly poetic and deeply philosophical. Each of the major…