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NonfictionEssays

The Memory Palace

Review by Deborah Mason

A memory palace is a memorization technique used by figures as diverse as Cicero, international memory champions and the late, great Sherlock Holmes. Practitioners visualize placing images representing information they want to recollect in a familiar setting that they can revisit whenever their memory needs a nudge. The Memory Palace: True Stories of the Past, by award-winning podcaster and screenwriter Nate DiMeo, however, is a more intimate and complex edifice than any mnemonic device. Instead of facts and figures, DiMeo’s memory palace is inhabited by the moving true stories that illustrate how human beings throughout history, whether famous, infamous or unknown, felt the same emotions and had the same imperfections that we have and humans will always have.

Like DiMeo’s podcast of the same name, The Memory Palace’s stories—numbering nearly 50 in this volume—are briskly told, varied, unexpected and often paradoxical, giving us a sideways view of human nature. William Mumler, a 19th-century con artist photographer who stumbled upon a technique to make “ghosts” appear behind his subjects, gave genuine comfort to spiritualist Mary Todd Lincoln as she grieved the death of her child. William James Sidis, a boy genius who, at age 11, gave a Harvard lecture on the implications of the fourth dimension, could have been an academic celebrity, but instead sought seclusion to pursue his passion: collecting streetcar transfers. Carla Wallenda, the last surviving child of the founders of the Flying Wallendas high wire troupe, witnessed over several decades the gruesome deaths of her father, husband, cousins, aunt and uncle—but until her death at the age of 85, never felt so alive as when she was on the tightrope.  

DiMeo ordered the stories in no particular way, and he suggests that The Memory Palace could be a “dipping book.” But there’s a benefit to reading it in order: In his final seven stories, he seamlessly interweaves episodes from his family’s lives in a way that illuminates both the individuals chronicled in his “cabinet of curiosities” and the project of the book and podcast as a whole. Readers will feel a shiver of recognition and understanding—making a second or third visit to DiMeo’s memory palace both irresistible and gratifying.

The Memory Palace collects stories from Nate DiMeo’s award-winning podcast about historical people—famous and unknown alike, all breathtakingly human.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistory

The Cure for Women

Review by Anna Christensen

When Charlotte Perkins Gilman published “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892, it was a resounding hit among Victorian readers. What many did not know was that the story was a fictionalized account of Gilman’s own experience with the madness-inducing “rest cure” popular among doctors at the time, used to subdue any sort of mental or emotional complaint brought to their attention by women—or by their husbands. Gilman, in the throes of postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, had undergone the treatment, which unsurprisingly offered her no relief, while in the care of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell. She did eventually find relief, however—not at the hands of the male doctors who brushed off her symptoms, but with the help of one of the first eminent female physicians in America, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi.

Lydia Reeder’s monumental The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever recounts the incredible life and achievements of her subject. Somewhere between Jacobi’s adventures in wartime Paris during her medical school days, her unrelenting efforts to open the doors of first-class medical schools to women, and her dogged work for women’s suffrage, she conducted research into women’s menstrual cycles by collecting data from women themselves—the first time any doctor or scientist had done so. As demonstrated by Gilman’s case, Jacobi treated her patients by listening to them and accepting them as fellow partners in their own health.

Jacobi’s research compelled other women to follow; Reeder notes that today, 60% of practicing physicians under the age of 35 are women. Yet it is possible to draw a direct line from the now obviously absurd and cruel “cures” Victorian doctors prescribed for women and the many ways that women’s health care remains lacking 150 years later. Neuroscientists are still confronting research effected by biological determinism and gender essentialism that echo the Victorian belief that women’s abilities are limited by their biology. By restoring Jacobi’s fascinating story to the forefront of the historical imagination, Reeder returns to us a much-needed, inspiring voice that is equally suited to our current moment in time.

 

Lydia Reeder celebrates the female physician who debunked sexist Victorian-era medicine in The Cure for Women.
NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistory

The Icon and the Idealist

Review by Anne Bartlett

It’s not as if birth control methods weren’t used in the olden days. Condoms, pessaries and douches didn’t magically appear in the late 19th century. But something did change significantly at that time in the United States: The Comstock Act of 1873 effectively criminalized the distribution of contraceptive devices and information about their use. The result was several generations of vituperative battles over a practice that had previously been routine for many, though seldom discussed in public.

At the vanguard of the fight for safe, effective and accessible birth control in the early 20th century were two dedicated activists, Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett. Author Stephanie Gorton tells the story of their interconnected lives in The Icon and the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America, a compelling dual biography that has striking parallels to the contemporary abortion debate.

Despite a common goal, the two women loathed each other. Sanger, the “icon” now remembered as the mother of Planned Parenthood, spearheaded a mass movement that broke laws and made questionable compromises. Dennett, the “idealist,” played a more genteel inside game, lobbying Congress for a permanent change to the Comstock Act.

Obviously, they should have coordinated their efforts. But Dennett made a foolish mistake about Sanger early on, and Sanger never forgave her. Gorton adeptly shows how their contrasting backgrounds and personalities fed a grudge that helped shape our current world. The fact that you’ve probably heard of Sanger but not of Dennett tells you who prevailed at the time. But, as Gorton notes, the debate about whether court challenges or statutory change is the wiser long-term strategy has been renewed after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

Gorton doesn’t shy away from the fact that both women allied themselves with the racist and xenophobic eugenics movement, which put “a scientific sheen on white supremacy and ableism.” Dennett and Sanger, she writes, “were intent on disrupting a specific form of oppression and yet were active in perpetuating another.” Wherever readers fall on the impact and morality of the two reformers, after reading Gorton’s fair-minded biography, it’s indisputable that their efforts helped an increasing number of ordinary Americans use birth control more safely and effectively. As Gorton writes, “Dennett and Sanger were instrumental in forcing lawmakers to recognize the kind of world Americans actually lived in, one where fertility control was nearly universally practiced.”

 

The Icon and the Idealist is a compelling, warts-and-all dual biography of the warring leaders of the early 20th-century birth control movement: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

The City Sings Green

Review by Alice Cary

The City Sings Green & Other Poems About Welcoming Wildlife is an inspirational treasure trove that introduces young readers to the concept of rewilding, showing how cities and communities around the world are repairing some of the environmental damage caused by human habitation. Focusing on 11 intriguing examples, Erica Silverman has created a unique blend of poetry, science, civics and activism. 

Each story is compelling: a honeybee highway in Oslo, Norway; a Los Angeles school that tore up their asphalt playground to create a natural oasis; and cities in Australia that built rope bridges over highways so that western ringtail possums might safely cross. Silverman introduces each short lesson with a poem celebrating an ecological achievement, accompanied by a prose explanation of the specific details. It’s a winning combination that succinctly informs and delights, while helpful back matter provides additional resources. Both the poetry and prose of The City Sings Green are widely accessible.

Ginnie Hsu’s cheery illustrations are an ecological feast, filled with bright colors that readily convey the benefits of each endeavor. Her art is particularly immersive, leaving readers feeling as though they’ve practically taken a walk through many of the places described, often seen from an animal’s point of view.  

The City Sings Green is inspiring, and likely to encourage budding environmentalists to more closely consider the intersection between humans and nature. 

The City Sings Green is inspiring, and likely to encourage budding environmentalists to more closely consider the intersection between humans and nature.
Mystery & SuspenseThriller

The Close-Up

Review by Lauren Emily Whalen

A hotly anticipated debut novel, complete with a princely advance and a dreamy move to Los Angeles, equals lifelong success, right? Not quite. Books flop, money dries up and the city’s bright lights conceal both its dark underbelly and what those in the limelight will do to stay famous. Pip Drysdale’s marvel of a thriller, The Close-Up, follows Zoe Ann Weiss, a writer as witty as she is messy, as she gets entangled in a high-profile, high-stakes relationship that could lead to a bestselling second book—if no one kills her first.

Zoe always dreamed of being a writer, and that dream came true . . . for a while, until her debut failed and her advance funds ran out. Now, Zoe works in a flower shop to make ends meet while her agent rejects pitches for her still-under-contract follow-up and her dad frequently begs her to move home to London. Just before Zoe’s 30th birthday, she has a chance reunion with Zach, a sexy bartender she spent three breathless days with years ago, who is now an action star with a to-die-for LA bachelor pad. Zoe finds inspiration for her second book in their rekindled romance (there’s just the little problem of the NDA she signed). But when she’s stalked by someone reenacting the events of her debut novel—in which the heroine dies at the end—Zoe finds herself fighting, and writing, for her life.

Drysdale’s four previous novels have been bestsellers in Australia, and the author grew up on three continents (per her bio, she “became an adult in New York and London”). Her protagonist, Zoe, has a believably world-weary air and a distinctively jaded voice, with nascent hope swimming just under the surface. The decisions she makes are often rash, heavily influenced by ambition, love, lust and all the other intense emotions endemic to those who move to Hollywood with stars in their eyes. You may not agree with Zoe Ann Weiss, but you will love watching her navigate Drysdale’s deceptively glamorous LA. With its colorful supporting characters (especially Daisy, an aspiring actor who manages Zoe’s flower shop) and spectacularly twisty plot, The Close-Up is a fantastic addition to the neo-noir subgenre.

World-weary and distinctively jaded, The Close-Up is a fantastic, Los Angeles-set neo-noir.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

The Bishop’s Villa

Review by Thane Tierney

It might seem simple, sitting on the couch with Netflix on and your belly full, to envision the heroics you’d accomplish if war broke out in your homeland: You’d join the armed forces, or whatever constituted the resistance. You’d break the chains of your oppressors, just like Star Wars, or go rogue, living off your wits and aiding the forces of good, just like Mad Max. Of course you would. Of course you would. 

But life isn’t a Hollywood movie, and as the real stories of World War II are lost to living memory, it takes someone with a sharp eye and an emotionally perceptive heart to bring the nuance of enduring an occupation into focus. Italian author Sacha Naspini has done so triumphantly in his second novel to be translated into English, The Bishop’s Villa. Naspini is from Grosseto, a town in southern Tuscany that holds a dubious distinction: It was Europe’s only Catholic diocese to have been rented out by its bishop as a prison camp during the Holocaust. For eight months toward the end of the war in the European theater, the Roccatederighi seminary housed about 100 Jews, many of whom were sent on to Auschwitz. 

The Bishop’s Villa’s fictional protagonist, who stands in for everyman, is a cobbler in Grosseto named René. It’s not his war; he’s just trying to keep his head down and make it through, like most of the townsfolk. But when his friend (and unrequited love) Anna flees to join the resistance, his relationship with her lands him in hot water with the local collaborators, and he finds himself an unwilling “guest” at the bishop’s villa. Though he’s beaten and interrogated, René holds out hope. “What,” he reflects, “can you do to a man who looks at you calmly when you threaten him with death? You can chew his bones clean, but you can’t touch his soul, which means you will never win.”

René’s gut-wrenching story of survival caroms between moments of unexpected kindness and unfathomable cruelty as the final days of the war play out. Naspini is to be commended for helping us to recall a story that played out thousands of times across a continent, a scenario that we dare not forget lest it be repeated. 

Sacha Naspini’s The Bishop’s Villa is a gut-wrenching story of survival set in Grosseto, a Catholic diocese in Tuscany which was rented out by its bishop as a prison camp during the Holocaust.
FictionSpeculative FictionLiterary Fiction

The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Review by Matthew Jackson

Every new Haruki Murakami book is an event, but The City and Its Uncertain Walls has a special importance for longtime readers of the Japanese master. This weighty tome is not just his first novel in six years, but also a return to one of his earliest works: 1985’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. In the book’s afterword, Murakami relates how he reworked the ideas of that early book, reflecting on 40 years of writing life in the process. Without giving too much of this glorious novel away, what emerges from those four decades of thought is a striking, moving meditation on the price of isolation, the nourishment of stories and how the most important things in our lives reach us in slow, unexpected ways. 

The unnamed narrator of The City and Its Uncertain Walls is a man caught between reality and an alternate world dominated by a strange Town surrounded by an impenetrable wall. When we meet this narrator, he’s reminiscing about both a teenage romance with an odd ending and the Town itself, which he once visited to work in a dark library as a Dream Reader. With the love story from his youth and his time in the Town dominating his mind, he sets out to change his life and find fulfillment working in a new, more conventional library. 

Many things about Murakami’s work are striking, but what stands out most when you dive into this book is his unmatched narrative patience. He does not rely on breakneck pacing to drive you from page to page. Instead, he moves the story forward steadily, with a confidence and wit that keeps you longing to read on. In his trademark assured, graceful prose, Murakami has produced a work of tremendous ambition that on a sentence-by-sentence level feels like sitting down with a friend to hear them tell a very strange story. It’s another masterwork from one of our finest living novelists, and a must-read for Murakami devotees.

Haruki Murakami’s latest masterwork, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, is a moving meditation on the price of isolation, the nourishment of stories and how the most important things in our lives reach us in slow, unexpected ways.
NonfictionNatureMemoir

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

Review by Stephenie Harrison

It’s been over a decade since Amy Tan published her last novel, but there’s a good reason for that. In 2016, while hard at work on her next literary endeavor, Tan found her psyche and creative drive overwhelmed by the political turmoil consuming the country. When writing fiction failed to provide refuge, Tan sought it elsewhere: Making good on a long-held promise to learn to draw, she began taking nature journaling classes and found herself captivated by the birds she observed. Soon, the hobby turned into a full-on obsession, leading Tan to transform her backyard into an ideal sanctuary for local birds so she could document and sketch the fauna that visited her yard.

Written in her hallmark heartfelt and lively prose, The Backyard Bird Chronicles curates excerpts from Tan’s personal birding journals from 2017 to 2022, sharing anecdotes about her hunt for the perfect squirrel-proof seeds and feeders, the awe she felt sighting her first great horned owl, and the comedy of baby birds learning to feed. Each entry is complemented with Tan’s own drawings.

Tan’s childlike wonder at the birds she observes is contagious, but the book goes beyond a compendium of avian observations: You’ll also find introspection and rumination on universal questions about mortality, empathy, racism and our connection (and responsibility) to nature. Because her journals were written without any intention of publication, there is something truly exhilarating about the candor of Tan’s thoughts; her unguarded presence on the page sparkles with cleverness and compassion. It is the rare reader who will be immune to her unbridled enthusiasm and her message that sometimes life’s sweetest pleasures are its simplest.

The Backyard Bird Chronicles showcases a master novelist in a new light. These pages will be a buoyant balm to the soul for inquisitive readers.

Read our interview with Amy Tan about The Backyard Bird Chronicles.

There is something truly exhilarating about the candor of The Backyard Bird Chronicles, a curated collection of excerpts from novelist Amy Tan’s personal birding journals that sparkles with cleverness and compassion.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

The Beautiful Game

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Valeria “Magic” Salomon is the star of the Overlords, the best boys soccer team in Utah. As Yamile Saied Méndez’s The Beautiful Game opens, expectations are high: The Overlords are defending state champions, and Coach and his assistant José are determined to conquer Nationals this year. 

Valeria is confident in her abilities and ready to revel in a glorious victory lap, but she’s also sad her absentee father won’t be at the State Cup to cheer her on. “If he loved me,” she thinks, “why wasn’t he by my side for all the important events in my life?” And it’s not as if she can relax at home. Coach is her abuelo and rules her life with a grouchy iron fist. He also doesn’t defend her from snidely sexist José, which certainly taints her futbol experience. 

On game day, Valeria gives it her all, but alas: The team flubs an important play; Abuelo learns his estranged daughter in Argentina has passed away; and Valeria gets her first period and publicly bleeds through her white shorts. José blames her for the loss and ousts her from the team, while Abuelo and the Overlords betray her with their silent assent. 

Just like that, Valeria finds herself adrift and desperate to find a way to keep playing soccer. Thankfully, she secures a spot on a girls team, the Amazons, but is nervous about fitting in. Will she win over Coach Blume? Can she adjust to positive reinforcement and true teamwork? Who is she if she’s not the star? 

The Beautiful Game is a compelling, heartfelt story about second chances, complex family dynamics, and the joy and pain of growing up. Fans of Méndez’s Furia, recipient of the 2021 Pura Belpré Young Adult Author Award, will be thrilled the author has once again created a memorable young futbol-focused protagonist with loads of talent and grit. After all, “the game is brutal. But it’s also beautiful. It breaks your heart, but then it gives you a chance to put it back together.”

The Beautiful Game is a compelling, heartfelt story about second chances, complex family dynamics, and the joy and pain of growing up.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Tamales for Christmas

Review by Alice Cary

Tamales for Christmas transports readers right into Grandma’s kitchen, filled with warmth, comfort and creativity. . “Her kitchen is the heartbeat of our familia, loud and cramped and perfumed with delicious smells,” states the book’s narration. Grandma is based on author Stephen Briseño’s grandmother and her cooking skills, legendary among her numerous children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  

With the holidays approaching, Grandma sells her tamales to make money for Christmas gifts, and the bright, saturated colors of Sonia Sánchez’s art immediately infuse a festive spirit into this big-hearted tale. Gray-haired Grandma always has a smile on her face, delighted as she enlists her entire family’s help with her project. Each spread oozes joyous commotion: pots steam on the stove, children run from room to room, Grandma’s busy hands layer the corn husks. Her work begins in the fall and lasts until Christmas, sometimes before dawn as well as at night. There’s an ongoing tally of the tamales she makes, starting with 15 dozen and ending at 1,000 dozen—12,000 tamales! Young readers will enjoy keeping track of the count, as well as the repeated refrain, “With masa in one hand, corn husks in the other,” used to describe the matriarch’s efforts. 

While heroic and quick to help out neighbors, Grandma is also human. As the months pass, she keeps making her specialty, even on Halloween night. She whips up a big feast for Thanksgiving—no tamales, however—and finally takes a well-earned break in early December, propping her feet up on the couch, “long enough to play a game, weave stories that get everyone laughing so hard our eyes tear up and our sides hurt.”

Briseño never loses sight of the holiday spirit. As the narrator says, “We finally enjoy the best present Grandma could have given us. Each other.” Both story and art shine in Tamales for Christmas, making readers feel as though they’re part of this big, loving family. 

Both story and art shine in the festive Tamales for Christmas, making readers feel as though they’re part of the book’s big, loving family.
Children's & YAPicture BookChildren's

Thank You, Everything

Review by Alice Cary

Thank You, Everything is a unique picture book meant to be enjoyed over and over: It may easily become a favorite of preschoolers as well as young elementary students. One morning, a child wakes up, eats breakfast and receives a box containing a mysterious treasure map that launches a grand journey. Told with minimal prose, this intriguing tale opens up the world to readers in a multitude of fascinating ways, leading them on a grand adventure that lasts for months and involves travel by bicycle, train, bus, plane, raft and hot-air balloon.

Icinori—the design and illustration duo of Mayumi Otero and Raphael Urwiller—use a bold yet limited color palette that favors shades of turquoise and rust to create wildly stylized, dynamic illustrations. Their graphic designs are eye-catching throughout, whether portraying a glass of water, jungles of wild animals or winding pathways reminiscent of an M.C. Escher painting. The pacing is perfect, prompting readers to appreciate and take close-up looks at small details (a bath towel, a canteen, a caterpillar) while also admiring big, beautiful landscapes (a bustling city, a dark forest lit by a full moon, a mountainside strewn with boulders, a mysterious palace).

The narrative, translated from French by Emilie Robert Wong, is equally distinctive. Just as Goodnight Moon uses a repeated refrain, the explorer in this picture book, as the title suggests, thanks each and every thing encountered, starting simple (“Thank you, alarm clock) and getting progressively more intriguing (“Thank you, volcano”). This delicious blend of art and prose is both soothing and exciting, and will encourage young imaginations to soar. The mystery of the final destination—where a surprise awaits—will keep readers engaged from start to satisfying conclusion.

Thank You, Everything is a delightful book filled with wonder and gratitude, feelings that will linger with readers long after they close its cover.

Thank You, Everything is a delightful book filled with wonder and gratitude, feelings that will linger with readers long after they close its cover.
Children's & YAPicture BookMiddle GradeChildren's

Stopping by Jungle on a Snowy Evening

Review by Jill Lorenzini

Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is so well known and so often quoted that its beauty has almost become staid from overuse: It could use a refresh. In this picture book, author Richard T. Morris and illustrator Julie Rowan-Zoch have taken Frost’s words off the shelf, given them a dusting, added a kid and a hippopotamus, and created a delightful, charming and clever tale. Stopping by Jungle on a Snowy Evening is an irreverent homage that will leave all readers smiling. 

Stopping by Jungle on a Snowy Evening begins with a little boy riding a blue hippopotamus through the wintry woods as he recites Frost’s famous opening, but with a hippopotamus instead of the poem’s “little horse.” However, he is interrupted by the poet himself, who climbs out of his window to correct him. Their conversation becomes increasingly ridiculous as the child imagines even more bizarre answers to the poet’s logical objections. Things get delightfully out of hand, ending in complete chaos and an unlikely inspiration for yet another famous poem. Richard T. Morris narrates with an easy, conversational and factual tone. While Frost and his young rewriter come from very different places, their chatty exchanges feel more collaborative than conflicting. 

Julie Rowan-Zoch’s cartoon-like depiction of the protagonist is immediately familiar and loveable: curious, imaginative and a little cheeky, wearing a backwards hat and slide sandals. In contrast, Frost is drawn in a more traditional style. Rowan-Zoch’s bold, clever art mashes both their worlds together; a classically painted snowy forest scene right out of Frost’s original poem is delightfully invaded by snakes, jungle birds and a karate hippo. As Frost’s world unravels—snow falls in the jungle, cookies fall from the sky—the exasperated poet’s appearance also becomes more and more ragged. Reality and imagination smash together, and the result is perfect hilarity.

Stopping by Jungle on a Snowy Evening is a rare find. It’s a combo of old and new, clever and classic, innovative and familiar—perfect for any fathomable storytime scenario. Even more rare, there isn’t a single thing this reviewer would change about it. Two thumbs up.

Stopping by Jungle on a Snowy Evening is a rare find. It’s a combo of old and new, clever and classic, innovative and familiar—perfect for any fathomable storytime scenario.
Children's & YAMiddle GradeChildren's

Take it From the Top

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

Theater kids of all ages will adore Take It From the Top, Claire Swinarski’s effervescently heartfelt and cathartic tribute to the joys and dramas that come with life in the limelight. 

Each year, Eowyn and best friend Jules tread the boards at Lamplighter Lake Summer Camp for the Arts in the Wisconsin Northwoods. They instantly bonded in their first year, but now as they enter their sixth—at 13 years old—a once rock-solid friendship bolstered by elaborate plans for a shared future (they’ll be famous together!) has become a tenuous truce at best.

Eowyn’s not sure why Jules is icing her out, so she buries her feelings in intense audition prep for the big end-of-summer production, in which she’s determined to get a lead role. Jules is prepping too . . . but what if they both score big parts? Can a friendship that’s painfully broken be healed in time for a harmonious opening night?

As in her middle grade debut, epistolary mystery What Happened to Rachel Riley?—a BookPage Best Middle Grade Book of 2023 and 2024 Edgar Award nominee—Swinarski has created a story rife with realism, empathy and well-drawn characters navigating their figuring-themselves-out years. She also plays with structure to excellent effect, alternating Eowyn’s perspective in the present with Jules’ in the years leading up to this pivotal sixth summer. 

It’s a genuine treat to follow along as the talented, hardworking tweens in Take It From the Top strive to understand others’ perspectives and translate their onstage performances into how they address real life. As Eowyn muses, “Up there on the stage . . . You could be someone you weren’t. Or maybe you could be someone you really were.” Bravo!

It’s a genuine treat to follow along as the talented, hardworking tweens in Take It From the Top strive to understand others’ perspectives and translate their onstage performances into how they address real life.

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