Category: Micro-Reviews

Given my background in crime writing, it’s amazing I’ve gone this far in life without reading Patricia Highsmith. I’m happy to correct that mistake now. This book is a simple, straightforward anti-hero character study about a guy who’s doing everything he can to get away …

Here’s a unique premise: a spaceship lands on Earth, and a notable American is promptly murdered. One of the visitors stands trial for the crime. This is a brisk, enjoyable courtroom drama. It’s not (pardon the cliche) out of this world, but it’s curiously digestible. …

I’m told this novel is loathed by many and loved by many more. Is it wishy-washy to fall squarely in the middle of that range? The story: classics students at a New England college immerse themselves so deeply in their studies that a bacchanalia inevitably …

In 2008, A Canadian journalist and Australian photographer are kidnapped by bandits in Mogadishu, leading to an ordeal that many people wouldn’t survive. This is a harrowing memoir of a kidnapping and confinement, but it’s also a striking account of a person both doomed and …

I was halfway through reading this book when a friend informed me that this “true story” of a 4,000-mile trek across Asia to escape a Russian gulag during World War II was alleged to have been made up. I kept reading anyway before looking into …

Taylor Helzer was raised a devout Mormon, a wunderkind of the faith, fast-tracked for a life on the pulpit. So how does he go from religious prodigy to stockbroker and New Age dabbler and then to conman and mass murderer? Claire Booth’s treatment of Helzer’s …

In an era full of war-reporter memoirs, this is one of the better ones. It comes across as honest and objective, which is an accomplishment given the emotional nature of the author’s job. Born and raised during “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland, Ferguson learns about …

This slim volume is a transcription of Gray’s stage monologues about his time on the set of THE KILLING FIELDS in Thailand in the early 1980s. As an almost aggressively introspective New York stage actor scrambling for film jobs, Gray is out of place in …

Of the more than 90 screen versions of Shakespeare’s second-most-famous tragedy, this one, from 2015 and featuring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, is among the most cinematic. Suffused with first-half scene jumping, stunning visuals and blood-soaked action, this is clearly a movie, not a play. …

Here’s a heavy novel about exile, friendship and family. As a young Libyan student in England in the 1980s, Khaled has literary dreams. But history has other ideas. After a protest at the Libyan embassy, there’s no going home. Now he has to make his …