Authority: Essays by Andrea Long Chu (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). Reviewed by Nick Havey. “It is, therefore, logistically challenging to be a critic today because capitalism, the expansiveness of the modern cultural sphere, and the endangered nature of criticism as a profession make it nigh impossible to engage critically (or with any real authority) on any topic. Chu makes this argument using some of the best examples of modern criticism: her own writing. Her essay about A Little Life is so intellectually detailed — not only considering the novel but also Yanagihara’s other work, which contextualizes the book and paints a concerning picture of the author’s perspective — that it ends up offering the reader more to think about than the relatively empty tome (which clearly considers itself weighty and poignant) did.”

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (W.W. Norton & Company). Reviewed by Anne Cassidy. “I can’t think of another author who writes so unflinchingly about our responsibility to the environment or who speaks so honestly of pain and fear. Though the book ripples with lyricism, however, it has some suspenseful moments. Macfarlane isn’t afraid to admit when he’s frightened, a revelation that makes us trust him all the more. ‘It seems absurd that I’m about to paddle this, unthinkable that the river will not flip me, spin me, drown me...’ Even though I held proof of Macfarlane’s survival in my hands, I still found myself wondering if he’d make it out alive. And maybe that’s the point. If rivers are threatened, then we are, too.” 

In a Yellow Wood: Selected Stories and Essays by Cynthia Ozick (Everyman’s Library). Reviewed by Karl Straub. “To describe these Ozickian sentences as ‘well-crafted’ is to mistakenly file them among the small beer and delicates, for her prose yardages (in the stem-winding manner of her beloved Henry James) are more than just a mundane job well done. Her Jamesian combination of linguistic prowess and sociological insight is on such an elevated plane that it skates eerily close to verbal mysticism.”

Anima Rising: A Novel by Christopher Moore (William Morrow). Reviewed by Drew Gallagher. “In this latest romp, his 19th, he takes us to pre-World War I Vienna — arguably the epicenter of artistic brilliance at the time — and then proceeds to take dozens of creative liberties with history. At the story’s opening, Gustav Klimt is making his way home after a night of carousing when he happens upon a dead, nude woman floating in the Danube Canal. Klimt, who built his reputation by painting naked women (most of them alive), is fascinated by the pale creature and pulls her to shore. Not wanting to draw attention to his late-night wandering or involvement with the body, Klimt decides not to call the police. When he detects a faint pulse in the clearly-not-a-corpse corpse, hilarity ensues.”

Penelope’s Bones: A New History of Homer’s World through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Hauser (University of Chicago Press). Reviewed by Bob Duffy. “Penelope’s Bones considers mortal queens, sorceresses, Amazons, prophetesses, nymphs, and goddesses. Ten appear in The Iliad and five in The Odyssey, among them Helen (whose seduction and flight with Paris starts the war depicted in The Iliad), Briseis (the captive whose seizure by Agamemnon ignites the stubborn wrath of Achilleus), Andromache (the wife of Trojan hero Hector), and Olympian goddesses Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. She treats each as an archetype, or at least as an embodiment of a social role or pursuit associated then and now with female agency: daughter, wife, queen, seducer, matriarch, mother, bride, and so on.”

The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple (Bloomsbury Publishing). Reviewed by Elizabeth J. Moore. “The great centers of learning fell, Persian (and, centuries later, English) superseded Sanskrit as the lingua franca, and India’s cultural influence on the outside world diminished. The Indosphere is still with us in many ways, however. In Dalrymple’s reckoning, ‘Over half of the world’s population today lives in areas where Indian ideas of religion and culture are, or once were, dominant.’ But that’s not the extent of it.”

What Is Wrong with Men: Patriarchy, the Crisis of Masculinity, and How (Of Course) Michael Douglas Films Explain Everything by Jessa Crispin (Pantheon). Reviewed by Cara Tallo. “Is she using these films like a delicious, squeeze-cheesy sauce on the broccoli of social anthropology? Sure. Does it work? Surprisingly, it mostly does. Her decision to organize the book by topic (sex, race, and economics) rather than timeline makes it a bit tricky in places to track the overlay of the movies’ themes with broader cultural trends. And she seems content to leave the parallels between the patriarchal past and its present implicit, which I found an interesting choice. But in the end, what Crispin presents is arguably more valuable than a straightforward interrogation of gender inequality. It’s a powerful lesson on the human cost of valuing money over morals and competition over collaboration.”

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