This page provides links to some of Michael Magras’s book reviews. Other links can be found on the main page.
In Memoriam, Alice Winn, Shelf Awareness, March 17, 2023
Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton, BookPage, March 6, 2023
Thomas Mann: New Selected Stories, Thomas Mann, trans. Damion Searls, Shelf Awareness, March 3, 2023
Abyss, Pilar Quintana, Shelf Awareness, February 24, 2023
Dangerous Love, Ben Okri, Shelf Awareness, February 17, 2023
Hourglass, Keiran Goddard, Shelf Awareness, February 10, 2023
Interview with Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass, Shelf Awareness, February 10, 2023
The Call of the Tribe, Mario Vargas Llosa, Shelf Awareness, February 3, 2023
Forbidden Notebook, Alba de Céspedes, Shelf Awareness, February 3, 2023
The Sun Walks Down, Fiona McFarlane, BookPage, January 30, 2023
The Guest Lecture, Martin Riker, Shelf Awareness, January 27, 2023
Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory, Janet Malcolm, Shelf Awareness, January 27, 2023
Remainders of the Day: A Bookshop Diary, Shaun Bythell, Shelf Awareness, January 20, 2023
A Dangerous Business, Jane Smiley, Shelf Awareness, January 6, 2023
The Thing in the Snow, Sean Adams, BookPage, January 6, 2023
Novelist as a Vocation, Haruki Murakami, Shelf Awareness, December 30, 2022
The Presence of Absence, Simon Van Booy, Shelf Awareness, December 30, 2022
Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Kevin Wilson, Shelf Awareness, December 9, 2022
Great Women Painters, Phaidon Press, Shelf Awareness, November 4, 2022
Dr. No, Percival Everett, BookPage, November 1, 2022
The Singularities, John Banville, Shelf Awareness, October 28, 2022
The Slowworm’s Song, Andrew Miller, Shelf Awareness, October 14, 2022
Dinosaurs, Lydia Millet, BookPage, October 11, 2022
The River You Touch, Chris Dombrowski, Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 7, 2022
Less Is Lost, Andrew Sean Greer, Shelf Awareness, September 23, 2022
Two Nurses, Smoking, David Means, Shelf Awareness, September 16, 2022
Lessons, Ian McEwan, BookPage, September 1, 2022
Autoportrait, Jesse Ball, Shelf Awareness, August 19, 2022
The Last White Man, Mohsin Hamid, Shelf Awareness, August 5, 2022
Mothercare, Lynne Tillman, Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 5, 2022
The Great Man Theory, Teddy Wayne, Shelf Awareness, July 15, 2022
Total, Rebecca Miller, Shelf Awareness, July 15, 2022
The Poet’s House, Jean Thompson, BookPage, July 12, 2022
Filmmakers on Film: How They Create, Craft and Communicate, David Jenkins, Shelf Awareness, July 8, 2022
Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh, Shelf Awareness, June 24, 2022
Hurricane Girl, Marcy Dermansky, Shelf Awareness, June 17, 2022
Horse, Geraldine Brooks, BookPage, June 14, 2022
The Kingdom of Sand, Andrew Holleran, BookPage, June 9, 2022
You Have a Friend in 10A, Maggie Shipstead, BookPage, June 9, 2022
Either/Or, Elif Batuman, Shelf Awareness, June 3, 2022
Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris, Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 27, 2022
Translating Myself and Others, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shelf Awareness, May 20, 2022
This Time Tomorrow, Emma Straub, Shelf Awareness, May 20, 2022
2 A.M. in Little America, Ken Kalfus, Washington Post, May 10, 2022
In Praise of Good Bookstores, Jeff Deutsch, Shelf Awareness, April 8, 2022
Heartbroke, Chelsea Bieker, Shelf Awareness, April 8, 2022
Young Mungo, Douglas Stuart, BookPage, April 1, 2022
Booth, Karen Joy Fowler, Shelf Awareness, March 11, 2022
Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo, BookPage, March 8, 2022
The Beauty of Dusk: On Vision Lost and Found, Frank Bruni, Shelf Awareness, March 4, 2022
Run and Hide, Pankaj Mishra, Shelf Awareness, March 1, 2022
Oscar Wilde: A Life, Matthew Sturgis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 18, 2022
Off the Edge, Kelly Weill, Minneapolis Star Tribune, February 18, 2022
The Swimmers, Julie Otsuka, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 13, 2022
The Books Of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk, Shelf Awareness, February 1, 2022
The Hummingbird, Sandro Veronesi, BookPage, January 21, 2022
Chasing History, Carl Bernstein, Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 7, 2022
The Fortune Men, Nadifa Mohamed, Shelf Awareness, January 4, 2022
Anthem, Noah Hawley, BookPage, January 4, 2022
Bright Burning Things, Lisa Harding, BookPage, December 3, 2021
The Trees, Percival Everett, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 28, 2021
Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 12, 2021
On Animals, Susan Orlean, Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 8, 2021
Fight Night, Miriam Toews, BookPage, October 6, 2021
Together We Will Go, J. Michael Straczynski, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 26, 2021
In the Country of Others, Leïla Slimani, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 12, 2021
Keeping the House, Tice Cin, Washington Post, September 7, 2021
Beautiful World, Where Are You, Sally Rooney, BookPage, September 7, 2021
A Song Everlasting, Ha Jin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 5, 2021
Double Blind, Edward St. Aubyn, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 29, 2021
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, Richard Flanagan, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 15, 2021
Inside Comedy, David Steinberg, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 12, 2021
Godspeed, Nickolas Butler, Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 23, 2021
London’s Number One Dog-Walking Agency, Kate MacDougall, Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 2, 2021
Lorna Mott Comes Home, Diane Johnson, BookPage, June 30, 2021
The Great Mistake, Jonathan Lee, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 27, 2021
Light Perpetual, Francis Spufford, BookPage, May 18, 2021
Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 25, 2021
Of Women and Salt, Gabriela Garcia, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 13, 2021
Peaces, Helen Oyeyemi, BookPage, April 5, 2021
When Women Invented Television, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 26, 2021
How Beautiful We Were, Imbolo Mbue, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 9, 2021
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro, BookPage, March 2, 2021
The Committed, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 28, 2021
Zorrie, Laird Hunt, BookPage, February 9, 2021
My Year Abroad, Chang-Rae Lee, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 4, 2021
That Old Country Music, Kevin Barry, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 31, 2021
A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself, Peter Ho Davies, BookPage, January 4, 2021
Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 3, 2021
Leave the World Behind, Rumaan Alam, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 6, 2020
The Silence, Don DeLillo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 29, 2020
Paper Bullets, Jeffrey H. Jackson, Minneapolis Star Tribune, November 13, 2020
The Office of Historical Corrections, Danielle Evans, BookPage, November 9, 2020
Jack, Marilynne Robinson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 15, 2020
Adrianne Geffel, David Hajdu, BookPage, September 24, 2020
Daddy, Emma Cline, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 22, 2020
Homeland Elegies, Ayad Akhtar, BookPage, September 5, 2020
The Beauty of Living: E.E. Cummings in the Great War, J. Alison Rosenblitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 24, 2020
The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue, BookPage, July 21, 2020
Utopia Avenue, David Mitchell, BookPage, July 15, 2020
Antkind, Charlie Kaufman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 12, 2020
Friends and Strangers, J. Courtney Sullivan, BookPage, June 30, 2020
Swimming in the Dark, Tomasz Jedrowski, BookPage, May 7, 2020
Afterlife, Julia Alvarez, BookPage, April 3, 2020
The Last Days of Sylvia Plath, Carl Rollyson, Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 13, 2020
Actress, Anne Enright, BookPage, March 4, 2020
Apeirogon, Colum McCann, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 22, 2020
The Resisters, Gish Jen, and The Cactus League, Emily Nemens, BookPage, February 12, 2020
The Captain and the Glory, Dave Eggers, Times Literary Supplement, February 5, 2020
Children of the Land, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 24, 2020
The Truants, Kate Weinberg, The Economist, January 23, 2020
The Secret Guests, Benjamin Black, BookPage, January 13, 2020
Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone de Beauvoir, and Me, Deirdre Bair, Minneapolis Star Tribune, November 8, 2019
Nothing to See Here, Kevin Wilson, BookPage, October 30, 2019
Grand Union, Zadie Smith, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 13, 2019
The Topeka School, Ben Lerner, BookPage, October 1, 2019
The Secrets We Kept, Lara Prescott, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 21, 2019
Akin, Emma Donoghue, BookPage, September 10, 2019
When the Plums Are Ripe, Patrice Nganang, BookPage, August 13, 2019
Chances Are…, Richard Russo, BookPage, July 30, 2019
Delayed Rays of a Star, Amanda Lee Koe, BookPage, July 16, 2019
Very Nice, Marcy Dermansky, Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 5, 2019
The Great Unexpected, Dan Mooney, BookPage, July 1, 2019
White, Bret Easton Ellis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 8, 2019
Patsy, Nicole Dennis-Benn, BookPage, June 5, 2019
The Farm, Joanne Ramos, BookPage, May 7, 2019
The Other Americans, Laila Lalami, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 5, 2019
Normal People, Sally Rooney, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 26, 2019
Lost and Wanted, Nell Freudenberger, BookPage, April 1, 2019
kaddish.com, Nathan Englander, Houston Chronicle, March 18, 2019
Memories of the Future, Siri Hustvedt, Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 15, 2019
The Wall, John Lanchester, Houston Chronicle, March 5, 2019
Landfall, Thomas Mallon, BookPage, March 1, 2019
Where Reasons End, Yiyun Li, Houston Chronicle, February 6, 2019
The Falconer, Dana Czapnik, BookPage, February 1, 2019
Hark, Sam Lipsyte, BookPage, January 15, 2019
At the End of the Century, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Houston Chronicle, December 3, 2018
All the Lives We Never Lived, Anuradha Roy, BookPage, December 1, 2018
A Ladder to the Sky, John Boyne, BookPage, November 13, 2018
The White Darkness, David Grann, Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 26, 2018
Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver, Houston Chronicle, October 19, 2018
Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami, Houston Chronicle, October 11, 2018
The Clockmaker’s Daughter, Kate Morton, BookPage, October 9, 2018
Your Duck Is My Duck: Stories, Deborah Eisenberg, BookPage, September 25, 2018
Transcription, Kate Atkinson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 25, 2018
French Exit, Patrick deWitt, BookPage, September 1, 2018
Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart, Houston Chronicle, August 29, 2018
The Shakespeare Requirement, Julie Schumacher, BookPage, August 1, 2018
Baby, You’re Gonna Be Mine, Kevin Wilson, BookPage, August 1, 2018
Clock Dance, Anne Tyler, BookPage, July 1, 2018
Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over, Nell Painter, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 15, 2018
Good Trouble, Joseph O’Neill, Houston Chronicle, June 6, 2018
A View of the Empire at Sunset, Caryl Phillips, BookPage, May 22, 2018
Virgin, Analicia Sotelo, Houston Chronicle, May 1, 2018
Welcome to Lagos, Chibundu Onuzo, BookPage, May 1, 2018
You Think It, I’ll Say It, Curtis Sittenfeld, Houston Chronicle, April 24, 2018
The Only Story, Julian Barnes, Houston Chronicle, April 11, 2018
Woman of the Ashes, Mia Couto, BookPage, April 10, 2018
Memento Park, Mark Sarvas, and The Italian Teacher, Tom Rachman, Newsday, March 9, 2018
Wrestling with the Devil, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 2, 2018
The Sparsholt Affair, Alan Hollinghurst, BookPage, March 1, 2018
Chicago, David Mamet, Houston Chronicle, February 26, 2018
Feel Free, Zadie Smith, Houston Chronicle, February 6, 2018
A Girl in Exile, Ismail Kadare, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 4, 2018
The Monk of Mokha, Dave Eggers, Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 26, 2018
The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 7, 2018
Phone, Will Self, Houston Chronicle, January 5, 2018
Silence: In the Age of Noise, Erling Kagge, Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 29, 2017
Elmet, Fiona Mozley, BookPage, December 5, 2017
Fresh Complaint: Stories, Jeffrey Eugenides, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 26, 2017
Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American Politics, Lawrence O’Donnell, Minneapolis Star Tribune, November 10, 2017
The King Is Always Above the People, Daniel Alarcón, Newsday, November 8, 2017
Future Home of the Living God, Louise Erdrich, BookPage, October 22, 2017
Dunbar, Edward St. Aubyn, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 8, 2017
Here in Berlin, Cristina García, BookPage, October 1, 2017
Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan, Houston Chronicle, September 28, 2017
Forest Dark, Nicole Krauss, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 16, 2017
The Ninth Hour, Alice McDermott, Houston Chronicle, September 15, 2017
Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward, BookPage, September 1, 2017
New People, Danzy Senna, BookPage, August 1, 2017
The Confusion of Languages, Siobhan Fallon, BookPage, July 1, 2017
The Accomplished Guest, Ann Beattie, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 11, 2017
So Much Blue, Percival Everett, Houston Chronicle, June 9, 2017
Memoirs of a Polar Bear, Yoko Tawada, Kenyon Review Online, June 9, 2017
House of Names, Colm Tóibín, Shelf Awareness, June 6, 2017
Augustown, Kei Miller, BookPage, June 1, 2017
Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 7, 2017
The Leavers, Lisa Ko, BookPage, May 2, 2017
Compass, Mathias Énard, Shelf Awareness, April 25, 2017
Anything Is Possible, Elizabeth Strout, Houston Chronicle, April 21, 2017
Marlena, Julie Buntin, BookPage, April 1, 2017
Exit West, Mohsin Hamid, Shelf Awareness, March 31, 2017
Lenin on the Train, Catherine Merridale, Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 24, 2017
Ill Will, Dan Chaon, BookPage, March 1, 2017
Ghachar Ghochar, Vivek Shanbhag, Shelf Awareness, February 21, 2017
Last Day on Earth: Stories, Eric Puchner, Houston Chronicle, February 17, 2017
Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 12, 2017
4 3 2 1, Paul Auster, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January 29, 2017
Enigma Variations, André Aciman, Shelf Awareness, January 20, 2017
Homesick for Another World, Ottessa Moshfegh, Houston Chronicle, January 18, 2017
Little Labors, Rivka Galchen, Kenyon Review Online, January 16, 2017
Of All That Ends, Günter Grass, Shelf Awareness, January 3, 2017
Human Acts, Han Kang, BookPage, January 1, 2017
Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, Brad Ricca, Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 30, 2016
Gesell Dome, Guillermo Saccomanno, San Francisco Chronicle, December 8, 2016
Moonglow, Michael Chabon, Houston Chronicle, November 18, 2016
Swing Time, Zadie Smith, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 13, 2016
The Terranauts, T.C. Boyle, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 4, 2016
Amateurs, Dylan Hicks, Kenyon Review Online, November 4, 2016
Thus Bad Begins, Javier Marías, BookPage, November 1, 2016
The Hidden Keys, André Alexis, Shelf Awareness, October 28, 2016
Hag-Seed, Margaret Atwood, Shelf Awareness, October 21, 2016
Everything I Found on the Beach, Cynan Jones, Kenyon Review Online, October 21, 2016
The Red Car, Marcy Dermansky, BookPage, October 1, 2016
The Angel of History, Rabih Alameddine, Houston Chronicle, September 30, 2016
The Wonder, Emma Donoghue, Houston Chronicle, September 16, 2016
Nutshell, Ian McEwan, Shelf Awareness, September 13, 2016
Here I Am, Jonathan Safran Foer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 4, 2016
Perfume River, Robert Olen Butler, BookPage, September 1, 2016
The Hatred of Poetry, Ben Lerner, Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 22, 2016
The Return, Hisham Matar, Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 15, 2016
The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear, Stuart Stevens, and The Hopefuls, Jennifer Close, BookPage, July 1, 2016
Jackson, 1964, Calvin Trillin, Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 28, 2016
Barkskins, Annie Proulx, Houston Chronicle, June 10, 2016
Smoke, Dan Vyleta, BookPage, May 24, 2016
The Noise of Time, Julian Barnes, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 15, 2016
LaRose, Louise Erdrich, Houston Chronicle, May 6, 2016
The Mirror Thief, Martin Seay, BookPage, May 1, 2016
Imagine Me Gone, Adam Haslett, Miami Herald, April 29, 2016
Orson Welles, Vol. 3: One-Man Band, Simon Callow, Philadelphia Inquirer, April 10, 2016
Innocents and Others, Dana Spiotta, The Iowa Review, March 14, 2016
The Violet Hour: Great Writers at the End, Katie Roiphe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, March 13, 2016
Sudden Death, Álvaro Enrigue, San Francisco Chronicle, March 10, 2016
High Dive, Jonathan Lee, Houston Chronicle, March 4, 2016
In Other Words, Jhumpa Lahiri, Minneapolis Star Tribune, February 9, 2016
Good On Paper, Rachel Cantor, BookPage, February 1, 2016
Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War, Ian Buruma, Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 16, 2016
The Portable Veblen, Elizabeth McKenzie, BookPage, January 1, 2016
Like Family, Paolo Giordano, BookPage, December 1, 2015
Paris At War: 1939-1944, David Drake, Minneapolis Star Tribune, November 20, 2015
Avenue of Mysteries, John Irving, Chicago Tribune, November 19, 2015
Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise, Oscar Hijuelos, BookPage, November 1, 2015
Slade House, David Mitchell, Houston Chronicle, October 31, 2015
Submission, Michel Houellebecq, San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 2015
Fortune Smiles, Adam Johnson, BookPage, September 1, 2015
Kissinger’s Shadow, Greg Grandin, Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 22, 2015
Saint Mazie, Jami Attenberg, BookPage, June 1, 2015
The Harder They Come, T.C. Boyle, The Iowa Review, April 21, 2015
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