Ryan Michael Williams

Imperial by William T. Vollmann

By Ryan Michael Williams

Vollmann attempts to capture the lives of his subjects as fully as possible -- it is better by far to listen to the voices and stories of outcasts, eccentrics, poor people, and the powerless. [18 September 2009]

Potato by John Reader

By Ryan Michael Williams

With tremendous enthusiasm for his humble subject, Reader recaps the historical usefulness of the potato, but adds little to overall understanding of the impact the potato has had on labor and society. [13 May 2009]

I Go To Some Hollow by Amina Cain

By Ryan Michael Williams

At her best, Cain does a remarkable job of precisely evoking the way her characters feel as they give themselves over to the experience of some small, mundane mystery. [30 April 2009]

Wetlands by Charlotte Roche

By Ryan Michael Williams

For all its abundant sexual frankness, the novel’s primary focus is not on the erotic, but on the scatological. [12 April 2009]

Castle & Pieces for the Left Hand

By Ryan Michael Williams

Neither book fully transcends the level of genre exercise, and both lose steam once the limits of Lennon’s formal concerns become apparent. [9 April 2009]

In the United States of Africa by Abdourahman A. Waberi

By Ryan Michael Williams

In David and Nicole Ball’s translation, Waberi’s prose reads as both riotously funny and lyrically lush, offering big laughs as well as multifaceted subtleties of expression. [2 March 2009]

Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris

By Ryan Michael Williams

Harris spins an engrossing tale of the collision between artistic ambition and studio politics, all set against the backdrop of the dramatic cultural upheaval of America in the '60s. [20 February 2009]

Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan

By Ryan Michael Williams

Immersed in minutiae, O'Nan succeeds by observing details as a means for exploring the hearts and minds of sympathetic, ordinary characters in times of crisis. [26 January 2009]

Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain by Kirsten Menger-Anderson

By Ryan Michael Williams

Menger-Anderson captures the passion of contemporary medical researchers -- but has trouble empathizing with the phrenologists, electrocshock therapists, and lobotomists of generations past. [21 January 2009]

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

By Ryan Michael Williams

This posthumously-published masterpiece is an expansive, teeming city, chaotic and vibrant, beautiful but rough around the edges, home to both gleaming towers and squalid holes. [21 November 2008]

The Last Fish Tale by Mark Kurlansky

By Ryan Michael Williams

After centuries of stubborn and eccentric independence, the fishing village microcosm of Gloucester, Massachusetts, is now poised on the brink of economic and cultural disaster. [10 November 2008]

Tycoon’s War by Stephen Dando-Collins

By Ryan Michael Williams

Although these accounts of Walker’s military adventures are often engrossing, they only serve as distraction, attempting to present him as a hero. [6 November 2008]

My Sister, My Love by Joyce Carol Oates

By Ryan Michael Williams

A strange hybrid of cultural parody and psychological realism, in which Oates’s broadly drawn characters gradually take on realistic emotional complexity. [30 September 2008]

Clawing at the Limits of Cool by Griffin & Washington

By Ryan Michael Williams

The greatest strength of this book comes in Griffin and Washington's perceptive analysis of the cultural meanings of the public images projected by both musicians. [26 September 2008]

Consuming Consumables: 2666: A Novel [1 December 2008]