September 2, 2024 Issue

When I read a book review, I want to know two things: what the book's about and how it’s written. For me, the “how” is more important than the “what.” I’ll read a stylishly written book on almost any subject. These days, New Yorker reviewers rarely address form. The only exception is James Wood. Case in point is Kathryn Schulz’s “Living Under a Rock,” in this week’s issue. It’s a review of Marcia Bjornerud’s Turning to Stone. Schulz beautifully describes it: 

In its pages, what Bjornerud has learned serves to illuminate what she already knew: each of the book’s ten chapters is structured around a variety of rock that provides the context for a particular era of her life, from childhood to the present day. The result is one of the more unusual memoirs of recent memory, combining personal history with a detailed account of the building blocks of the planet. What the two halves of this tale share is an interest in the evolution of existence—in the forces, both quotidian and cosmic, that shape us.

This is the kind of book I’d be interested in reading. What is the writing like? Schulz offers a hint:

Bjornerud is a good enough writer to render all of this perfectly interesting. She has a feel for the evocative vocabulary of geology, with its driftless areas and great unconformities, and also for the virtues of plain old bedrock English. (“There is nothing to be done in bad Arctic weather but wait for it to get less bad.”) 

That’s it, that’s all she says regarding the book’s prose. Not even one extended quotation to give the reader a taste of Bjornerud’s style. 

The best New Yorker book reviewers – John Updike, V. S. Pritchett, George Steiner, Helen Vendler, Whitney Balliett, Janet Malcolm – were all great quoters. Now only James Wood continues the practice. All the rest are so in love with their own voices, they’d rather paraphrase than quote. It’s a great loss.