In the Bay Area Reporter, Tim Pfaff has written a very funny, impassioned review of Overthrow. I think my favorite line in it is “the writing mostly doesn’t care what you think of it and shows off shamelessly,” choosing to quote which is no doubt a further instance of shamelessness on my part.
Category: Overthrow
Best seltzer to drink with my novel, & other book news
According to Mason Neil, who reviews books on Instagram by pairing them with drinks, Overthrow is best washed down with a can of White Claw hard seltzer.
Emily Homonoff interviewed me about Overthrow for the Reading with Robin podcast, and we talked a lot about my dog.
When James Conrad, from the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock, NY, was a guest on WAMC’s The Roundtable last week, he picked Overthrow as one of his books of the week.
Nicholas Dames, the literary fiction editor at Public Books, wrote about the Jamesianness of Overthrow, which is on his nightstand.
And a site called Read It Forward avers that Overthrow has a cool male protagonist who isn’t secretly an asshole.
“Overthrow” in California
Friends in California, please come to the bookstore events for Overthrow!
On Wednesday, September 18, at 6pm, at Book Passage, in the Ferry Building in San Francisco, I’ll read a little from the novel and be interviewed by Anna Wiener, author of the memoir Uncanny Valley, coming in 2020 from FSG.
And on Saturday, September 21, at 4pm, at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, I’ll read a little and be interviewed by Elaine Blair, longtime contributor to the New York Review of Books.
Both events are free, and at both I’ll sign (and stamp) books!
Other news about Overthrow: In the 15 September 2019 issue of the New York Times Book Review, the editors name Overthrow as one of “10 New Books We Recommend This Week.”
Bill Goldstein recommended Overthrow on New York’s NBC television station on 8 September 2019.
And Columbia magazine has put the novel on its fall 2019 reading list.
Bookforum; WGN Radio
There’s a lovely review of Overthrow in the September issue of Bookforum, which places the novel in the literary tradition and sees in it allegories of queer reading.
Over the weekend, I spoke with Amy Guth of Chicago’s WGN Radio about my recent article in the New Yorker on the history of unions and also, a little, about Overthrow (the segment with me starts at about 6:14).
If you’re in New York, please come to the reading at the Strand on Thursday, September 5, at 7:30pm! Admission is with purchase of the novel or of a $15 gift card.
Reviews in New Yorker & NPR; Q&A at Powell’s
I’m happy about two new reviews of Overthrow. On the New Yorker website, Garth Greenwell focuses on the novel’s style, which he sees as the book’s most crucial protagonist.
And at NPR, Annalisa Quinn focuses on the novel’s metaphoric treatments of technological surveillance.
Meanwhile, the website of Powell’s bookstore in Portland has published a self Q&A that I wrote for them, including the disclosure that I collect whaling stereoviews and a drawing that I made of my writing desk.