DM: Thanks for taking time from your very busy life to be interviewed. You are an associate dean at Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, executive director of the Blackstone & Burke Center for Law & Liberty, and editor of Southern Literary Review. You blog at The Literary Lawyer. Your books include Literature and Liberty (2014), Oliver […]
“Unsheltered,” by Barbara Kingsolver
January 22, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith In her latest novel, Unsheltered (Harper Collins, 2018), Barbara Kingsolver pokes a sharp pen deep into the nest of the American dream, stirring up a mound of undelivered promises and discontented characters who scurry about like angry ants. Perhaps, as some critics say, the novel’s characters serve too much as mouthpieces […]
January Read of the Month: “Where the Crawdads Sing,” by Delia Owens
January 3, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith With gorgeous imagery and breathtaking detail, Delia Owens perfectly captures the exquisite song of the North Carolina coastal marsh and all its creatures in her debut novel, Where the Crawdads Sing. Not since Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides has there been a love song to the low country as poignant. And […]
“How We Came To Be,” by Johnnie Bernhard
December 11, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith Forget the Father Knows Best clichés of the 1950s—they are so yesterday. Set in contemporary Houston and Austin, How We Came To Be (Texas Review Press, 2018) is a witty, insightful study of the forging of a twenty-first century family. A finalist in the 2017 International Faulkner-Wisdom Competition, the novel was […]
“The Guy in the Box,” by Iain S. Baird
November 29, 2018 by 2 Comments
Reviewed by Donna Meredith True confession. I have long been a fan of Iain Baird’s writing, so I approached his new short story collection, The Guy in the Box, with high expectations. Baird more than met them. I was already familiar with a number of these stories because they won awards in the Seven Hills […]