Michael Pearson

Michael Pearson is the author of a novel and six nonfiction books. His most recent title is Reading Life: On Books, Memory, and Travel. For ten years he directed the graduate program in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University and for three decades he taught courses on travel writing, narrative nonfiction, and American literature there. His numerous articles, stories, and essays have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Atlanta Journal, The Washington Post, The Literary Review, the Southern Literary Journal, and many others. He is currently writing his second novel and a memoir about his Irish grandfather.

Book Reviews by Michael Pearson

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“Patrick Radden Keefe’s collection Rogues is a tantalizing dirty dozen—enlightening, entertaining, and thought provoking.”

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In this utterly fascinating and ultimately disturbing book about modern Ireland, Fintan O’Toole, the Irish Times journalist, is at his best as a reporter and commentator.

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“This is a book to savor, to read slowly, to observe carefully, a book ideal for the insomniac . . .”

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Louise Nealon has been, fairly and unfairly, compared to Sally Rooney, and with her first novel, Snowflake, she seems poised for prizes and movie adaptations.

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“the kind of poetry that can make a reader wince with delight.”

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With his fourth novel, Wiley Cash demonstrates once again a breadth of compassion, an awareness of the intricacies of most of his character, and a willingness to end a story on an unexpected note.

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“Sally Rooney doesn’t repeat herself. Rather, she is a pentimento artist, building a familiar world in a way that makes it feel boldly new.”

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As with her four brilliant novels, Rachel Kushner’s The Hard Crowd, 19 essays from the last two decades, takes the reader on a wild ride.

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in Philip Roth: The Biography, Blake Bailey provides ample evidence of his understanding of modern American literature and the frailties and achievements of an ar

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“a compelling and rewarding journey.”

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The literary rumor mill portrays Naoise Dolan as the new Sally Rooney, and that suggestion alone might push a writer onto the bestseller list these days.

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“Rob Doyle’s writing leaves us with—'the sense, euphoric and terrifying, that everything was possible again.’”

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Some of the most important fiction in the opening decades of the 21st century has come from Ireland, and Paul Lynch is one of the leading lights of this postmodern Irish Renaissance.

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We are all actors in the comedy and drama of our own lives, caught in a story inherited from family, redrawn by fate, and reconstructed by us as we look dizzily backward.