Previously Reviewed by The Virginia Quarterly Review
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A Sun Within a Sun: The Power and Elegance of Poetry by Claire Chi-ah Lyu
 If Baudelaire had the popular reach of Dr. Phil, this book would be an instant bestseller, so inspirational is its message, so articulate its conclusions. In evocative prose and far-reaching scholarship, Lyu attempts to distill the astounding, impulsive power of poetry -- its spiritual value, its...
Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew by Samuel Fromartz
 No wonder there now is a fledgling food reform movement calling itself Beyond Organic. After reading Organic, Inc. one begins to understand why some would feel a need to go "Beyond Organic." The current requirements for labeling a good as organic would, theoretically, permit frozen Twinkies at your ...
Recovering Your Story: Proust, Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner, Morrison by Arnold Weinstein
 Weinstein is a passionate and lucid teacher, one of the most graceful expositors
of literature in the nation. In this literary appreciation-cum-memoir, he puts
his gifts to work for an unpopular cause: the continuing relevance of the great
books that "read us," as he claims -- that recover...
When All Is Said and Done by Robert Hill
 Striking and spirited in its presentation, this short, rapid-fire novel reads like a hymn to the travails of love and work, marriage and babies, illness and sex, sexism and the '60s, Revlon and Bergdorf's. Its framework is a Jewish couple in an exclusive New York suburb, but its reach is clearly...
Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved by Gregory Orr
 Gregory Orr's new book is dazzling and timeless. Sure, the trappings of modern life appear at the edges of these poems, but their focus is so unwaveringly aimed toward the transcendent—not God, but the beloved—that we seem to slip into a less cluttered time. It's an experience usually reserved for...
All Will Be Well: A Memoir by John McGahern
 Irish novelist and short story writer John McGahern faces a daunting challenge
when writing a memoir: "[It] is impossible to know oneself, since we cannot see
ourselves as we are seen." Further, he acknowledges that "it may be almost as
difficult to understand those close to us, whether that...
Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories by Cristina Henriquez
 Henríquez, a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, presents a stunning debut
collection of eight stories and a novella, all of which take place in Panama.
Unlike so many stories set in an exotic locale, which tend to read like fictionalized
guidebooks, these bring the country to life with...
Let Me Finish by Roger Angell
At eighty-five, Roger Angell might seem to need four or five hundred pages for
his memoir. His has been a long, culturally engaged, celebrity-filled life. Associated
with The New Yorker for more than sixty years, Angell edited, worked with,
and befriended many of our leading writers...
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