More on: book review

Rifraff By Stephen Cushman (Lousiana State University Press, 2011) A Walk in Victoria’s Secret By Kate Daniels (Lousiana State University Press, 2011) Bone Fires: New & Selected By Mark Jarman (Sarbande Books, 2011) Every Riven Things By Christian Wiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)   CENTRAL TO MOST SPIRITUAL, personal, or religious beliefs—whether one of…

Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks (Viking Press, 2011) Faith by Jennifer Haigh (Harper, 2011) The Color of Night by Madison Smartt Bell (Vintage, 2011) The Sojourn by Andrew Krivak (Bellevue Literary Press, 2011) THE CHRISTIAN NOVELIST,” Flannery O’Connor writes, “is distinguished from his pagan colleagues by recognizing sin as sin. According to his heritage he…

The Portal of Beauty: Toward a Theology of Aesthetics By Bruno Forte Eerdmans, 2008 Earthly Visions: Theology and the Challenges of Art By T.J. Gorringe Yale, 2011 Faith, Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination By Malcolm Guite Ashgate, 2010 Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality By Belden C. Lane Oxford,…

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010) The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011) The Pale King by David Foster Wallace (Back Bay Books, 2011)   Strangeness and oddity will sooner harm than justify any claim to attention, especially when everyone is striving to unite particulars and find at least some general…

Entering the House of Awe By Susanna Childress New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2011 The Ninety-Third Name of God By Anya Krugovoy Silver Louisiana State University Press, 2010 Sky Burial By Dana Levin Copper Canyon Press, 2011   IT’S CERTAIN there is no fine thing / Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring,” writes Yeats…

My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer PERHAPS IT’S BEST to open with categories, with what this new book of Christian Wiman’s isn’t. My Bright Abyss isn’t a memoir, although elements of Wiman’s personal life emerge. Stories of his faith, marriage, family, grandmother, battle with blood cancer, and career as a poet weave themselves…

Blessed Are Those Who Yearn New Poetry in Review The Glacier’s Wake by Katy Didden (Pleiades Press, 2013) God Loves You by Kathryn Maris (Seren Books UK, 2013) Incarnadine by Mary Szybist (Graywolf Press, 2013)   AT THE END of Paradiso, Dante, after confessing his inability to describe the vision of Love he sees, nonetheless…

Without Sanctuary Aftermath and Visions in Contemporary American Fiction What Happened to Sophie Wilder by Christopher R. Beha (Tin House Books, 2012) Enon by Paul Harding (Random House, 2013) I Want to Show You More by Jamie Quatro (Grove Press, 2013) THE SPONTANEOUS and unremembered wanderings of an amnesiac are often called a fugue state. But the word…

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography by Richard Rodriguez (Viking, 2013) White Girls by Hilton Als (McSweeney’s, 2013) Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury, 2013) THE DUSK OF A SUMMER EVENING in London’s Hyde Park, years ago. Richard Rodriguez, a Mexican-American, is misidentified by a woman he’s passing on the street. She smiles. “Arabie?” The author…

The New Atheist Novel: Philosophy, Fiction and Polemic after 9/11     by Arthur Bradley and Andrew Tate (New Directions, 2010) The Children Act by Ian McEwan (Nan A. Talese, 2014) Fury by Salman Rushdie (Random House, 2001) The Book Against God by James Wood (Picador, 2004)   HEAVY RHETORIC MIXED WITH biblical exegesis and reductive…