Alan Cheuse

Book Review: 'The Black Snow,' Paul Lynch

By Alan Cheuse • Jun 10, 2015

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Book Review: 'The New World'

By Alan Cheuse • May 6, 2015

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Two to make a marriage and two to make a novel about a marriage. Reviewer Alan Cheuse has just picked up the new book by Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz. Alan says it leads readers on an inventive journey for both hearts and minds. It's called "The New World."

Book Review: Rachel Kushner, 'The Strange Case Of Rachel K'

By Alan Cheuse • Apr 17, 2015

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Rachel Kushner's novel, "The Flamethrowers" was one of the best and most widely praised books of 2013. Now she has three works of short fiction collected and published under the title of "The Strange Case Of Rachel K." Alan Cheuse has our review.

These 'Voices In The Night' Whisper Of Wonders

By Alan Cheuse • Apr 14, 2015

Beautifully made fantastic tales such as Steven Millhauser writes don't begin from nothing. As in the tradition of Nikolai Gogol, Italo Calvino and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (to name a few revered creators of fiction that carries us beyond the normal), most of them grow out of everyday incidents and lead us right up to the line between the ordinary and the magical. And sometimes they help us to cross over.

Book Review: 'The Discreet Hero'

By Alan Cheuse • Mar 17, 2015

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Nobel Prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa has just published a new novel. It's called "The Discrete Hero," and it's translated by Edith Grossman. The new title prompts our reviewer Alan Cheuse to make a confession.

Book Review: 'Satin Island' By Tom McCarthy

By Alan Cheuse • Feb 27, 2015

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Now, "Satin Island." It's the title of the new book by Tom McCarthy, the acclaimed experimental novelist. It is a novel, but our reviewer Alan Cheuse says it might be more apt to call it a critique of modern life, dressed in a novel's clothing.

Book Review: Ross Ritchell's 'The Knife'

By Alan Cheuse • Feb 23, 2015

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Book Review: 'The Evening Chorus'

By Alan Cheuse • Feb 16, 2015

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If you like dark and lyrical love stories, Alan Cheuse has a suggestion for you. It's a novel by the Canadian writer Helen Humphreys, set during World War II and its aftermath. It's called "The Evening Chorus."

Joyce Carol Oates Wades Into Troubled Waters With 'The Sacrifice'

By Alan Cheuse • Dec 26, 2014

With great energy and a cold eye for contemporary American race relations, here comes Joyce Carol Oates with a new novel that shows off her muck-raking credentials. The Sacrifice faces squarely an incident that took place in upstate New York nearly thirty years ago in which a young black girl named Tawana Brawley claimed that a group of white males, mostly police officers, kidnapped her and gang-raped her over a number of days.

Book Review: 'A Map Of Betrayal'

By Alan Cheuse • Dec 2, 2014

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Most spy thrillers are about coldhearted people betraying one nation for another. But a new novel from Ha Jin was inspired by spy who, when he was caught, insisted he was looking out for two countries. Alan Cheuse has a review of "A Map Of Betrayal."

'Lila' Sets The Stage For Marilynn Robinson's Earlier Works

By Alan Cheuse • Oct 20, 2014

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Martin Amis' 'Zone Of Interest' Is An Electrically Powerful Holocaust Novel

By Alan Cheuse • Sep 17, 2014

When I picked up Martin Amis' new novel, The Zone of Interest, it felt as though I had touched a third rail, so powerful and electric is the experience of reading it. After years of playing the snide card and giving his great store of talents to the business of giving other people the business, Amis has turned again to the matter of Nazi horrors (he tried to deal with it in a gimmicky way in his 1991 novel Time's Arrow), and the result is a book that may stand for years as the triumph of his career.

Book Review: 'Angels Make Their Hope Here'

By Alan Cheuse • Jul 22, 2014

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDRED. I'm Audie Cornish.

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McMurtry Takes Aim At A Legend In 'Last Kind Words Saloon'

By Alan Cheuse • May 27, 2014

In a prefatory note to The Last Kind Words Saloon, his first novel in five years, Western writer supreme Larry McMurtry states that he wants to create a "ballad in prose." And he borrows a line from great moviemaker John Ford: "When legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Written In Secret Behind The Iron Curtain, 'Corpse' Is Revived

By Alan Cheuse • Dec 25, 2013

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A Coming Of Age Story For The (Ice) Ages

By Alan Cheuse • Oct 9, 2013

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Book Review: 'Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish'

By Alan Cheuse • Jul 16, 2013

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Book Review: 'Skinner'

By Alan Cheuse • Jul 8, 2013

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

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And I'm Audie Cornish.

Book Review: 'The Mehlis Report'

By Alan Cheuse • Jul 1, 2013

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

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And I'm Audie Cornish.

Book Review: 'A Nearly Perfect Copy'

By Alan Cheuse • May 10, 2013

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Allison Amend is out with her third book. It's a novel called "A Nearly Perfect Copy." It features richly detailed characters, including an art dealer gone bad, and it's set in both Paris and New York. Our review Alan Cheuse found it all quite delectable.

Book Review: 'Where Tigers Are At Home'

By Alan Cheuse • Mar 15, 2013

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Under Ogawa's Macabre, Metafictional Spell

By Alan Cheuse • Feb 18, 2013

It used to be a truism among critics of British poetry that Keats and most of his fellow Romantic poets worked in the shadow of John Milton. I'm not making a perfect analogy when I suggest that most contemporary Japanese writers seem to be working under the shadow of Haruki Murakami, but I hope it highlights the spirit of the situation.

A Wintry Mix: Alan Cheuse Selects The Season's Best

By Alan Cheuse • Dec 7, 2012

It's that time of year again — the leaves have fallen, the dark comes early, the air brings with it a certain chill — and I've been piling up books on my reading table, books I've culled from the offerings of the past few months, which because of their essential lyric beauty and power stand as special gifts for you and yours.

Book Review: 'Dear Life'

By Alan Cheuse • Nov 19, 2012

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And I'm Robert Siegel with good news for short story fans.

A Midcentury Romance, With 'Sunlight' And 'Shadow'

By Alan Cheuse • Sep 26, 2012

New York, New York, it's a wonderful town! And Mark Helprin's new near-epic novel makes it all the more marvelous. It's got great polarized motifs — war and peace, heroism and cowardice, crime and civility, pleasure and business, love and hate, bias and acceptance — which the gifted novelist weaves into a grand, old-fashioned romance, a New York love story that begins with a Hollywoodish meet-cute on the Staten Island Ferry.

Book Review: 'The People Of Forever Are Not Afraid'

By Alan Cheuse • Sep 21, 2012

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Now, an insider's view of the Israeli Defense Force. In the new novel, "The People Of Forever Are Not Afraid," author and veteran Shani Boianjiu tells the story of three young women serving in the IDF. Alan Cheuse has our review.

Book Review: 'God Carlos'

By Alan Cheuse • Sep 11, 2012

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