Staff Reviews

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A series of personal reflections that charts the author’s changes and losses in writing, love, politics, and heritage. Full of personal scenes that capture both golden and ruined qualities of past remembrance, Chee’s writing has a smooth, painterly, and cinematic flow. There is gorgeous distance in these nonfiction pieces that allows the reader to see the author’s transformation in his personality and his work, maturing as an artist and individual with the specificity of the protagonist of a novel. My favorites from this collection are: “The Writing Life,” “After Peter,” “My Parade,” and “The Autobiography of My Novel.”

— Matthew Moore