Michael Schaub
Michael Schaub is a writer, book critic and regular contributor to NPR Books. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Portland Mercury and The Austin Chronicle, among other publications. He lives in Austin, Texas.
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Sunil Yapa's new novel follows a group of characters through the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. Critic Michael Schaub praises Yapa's ambition, but says his execution is amateurish.
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Herman Wouk says his new memoir will be his last book — at 100, he says, he is at last free of a lifelong to-do list. Critic Michael Schaub says the book is surprisingly short, but packed with charm.
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Ricardo Piglia's new novel is a brainy, postmodern, sometimes funny take on the classic detective novel. Critic Michael Schaub says it has echoes of DeLillo and Pynchon, but is wholly original.
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Karen Olsson's novel follows a woman who returns home to care for her ailing father, but also in the hopes that she can get him to open up about how the Iran-Contra scandal ended his career.
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Musicians Kristin Hersh and Vic Chesnutt were friends and tour buddies for years before his death from an overdose in 2009; Don't Suck is Hersh's haunting memoir of her lost friend and his pain.
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Each of the ten narrators in Ceridwen Dovey's new book is an animal affected by human warfare. Critic Michael Schaub says the book lacks the imagination it would need to pull off its high concept.
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No one escapes unscathed in Joy Williams' brilliant, brutal new story collection. Critic Michael Schaub calls Williams our poet laureate of loss, whose work is full of hope and perverse joy.
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Author Tracy Daugherty's new biography of Joan Didion is an honest attempt to construct a coherent narrative about her — but critic Michael Schaub says it doesn't completely work.
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Adam Johnson's new story collection spans the globe from former East Germany to post-Katrina Louisiana. Reviewer Michael Schaub says the book is uneven but enlightening, and brilliant at its best.
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Helen Phillips' surreal, dark, funny new novel follows a young woman named Josephine, who gets a job at a mysterious agency. Critic Michael Schaub says the book works as both love story and thriller.