Book Reviews

Saturday Review: “Caught in the Teeth of Love” a review by Jim Coby in NCLR Online 2021
of Nathan Ballingrud’s Wounds: Six Stories from the Borders of Hell. (2019) Last time Coby wrote about Ballingrud was in 2021.

Saturday Review: “The Tao of Disability” by Mike Hamer in NCLR Vol 2. Iss. 2. (1995)

A review of A Whole New Life by Reynolds Price (1994)

Over the summer, we’re sharing some reruns of older book reviews.

“Disability, whenever it comes, is always a mystery.”

Saturday Review: “The Regional Poet and the World” a review by Karen K. Mason in NCLR Online 2013
Robert Morgan. October Crossing (2009) and Terroir (2011)
Scott Owens. Something Knows the Moment (2011) and For One Who Knows How to Own Land (2012)

Saturday Review: “Always Timely, No Matter The Time” a review by Ashley Daughtridge in NCLR Online 2021.
Kati Gardner. Brave Enough (2018)
David Brendan Hopes. The Falls of Wyona: A Novel (2019)

Daughtridge starts the review stating, “Though taking place over half a century apart, both [books] upend prejudicial stigmas related to current social issues:”

Saturday Review: “A book of pages waiting to be turned” a review by Christina G. Bucher of Minnie Bruce Pratt collection The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems. (2003) from NCLR 15 (2006).

Since it is summer, we’re rerunning older book reviews. This week, we honor the memory of Minnie Bruce Pratt, who passed away early this month.

Saturday Review: “A Little Mercy Left In The World After All” a review by Jim Coby in NCLR Online 2017
Matthew Griffin. Hide. (2016)
Michael Keenan Gutierrez. The Trench Angel. (2015)
Reviewer Coby writers, “Comes now a pair of eloquent and engaging books from first time North Carolinian novelists Matthew Griffin and
Michael Keenan Gutierrez, each tackling the subject of love in his own unique voice.”

Saturday Review: “Giving Fictional Shape To History” a review by Kristina L. Knotts of Robert Morgan’s As Rain Turns to Snow and Other Stories. (2017) in NCLR Online 2018
About this 2017 collection, Knotts wrote, “More so than some of Morgan’s previous fiction, many of these stories look at the difficulties posed by chronic illness and aging, but all show Morgan’s impressive range as a writer.”

Saturday Review: “Love Just The Way It Is” a review by Sally F. Lawrence of
Elizabeth Spencer’s Starting Over:Stories. (2014) in NCLR Online 2015. “As a master of the short story form, Spencer continues to offer her readers fresh perspectives about familial connections in Starting Over.”

Saturday Review: “Love and Death in North Carolina Poetry”: a review by Catherine Carter

Jessica Jacobs. Take Me With You, Wherever You’re Going 2019.
Wayne Johns. Antipsalm 2018.
Eric Tran. The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer 2020.

Saturday Review: “People As Part, Community As Sum” a review by John Hanley
De’Shawn Charles Winslow. In West Mills. (2019)
Anna Jean Mayhew. Tomorrow’s Bread. (2019)
“… while In West Mills asks us to examine how a community can be a foundation for its inhabitants, Tomorrow’s Bread asks us what happens when that foundation is stripped away,”