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Articles by Andrew Solomon: Book Reviews & Commentary


May 2023

The Covenant of Water: Abraham Verghese’s Sweeping New Fable of Family and Medicine

“The Covenant of Water” follows three generations of a close-knit and haunted family in southwestern India.

Mar 2022

How a Mystery Illness Cost One Writer a Decade of Health

“I thought I couldn’t remain in the box that was my body anymore — and yet I had to.”

Apr 2021

Devoted to the Deaf, Did Alexander Graham Bell Do More Harm Than Good?

Immune to the beauty of sign language, Bell never saw deafness as anything more than a deficit.

Oct 2019

How Moving to France and Having Children Led a Black American to Rethink Race

He epitomizes a conundrum, viewing himself as part of multiple societies to which he has incomplete claims.

Aug 2018

If You Could Add One Book to the High School Curriculum, What Would It Be?

“Obedience to Authority” relates how easily adults abdicate responsibility, and illuminates the horror that ensues when we placidly do as we are told.

Mar 2018

Coming of Age as Performance Art: An Outsider in 1970s Japan

Ian Buruma’s memoir, “A Tokyo Romance,” recaptures his youthful experiences in the avant-garde film and theater world of the postwar city.

Nov 2017

Perfectly Normal

How conflating ‘ideal’ and ‘average’ spawned flawed concepts of identity.

Oct 2017

Fatal Genes

To what extent is information about an unpreventable genetic disease that has not yet caused any symptoms a gift and to what extent is it a burden?

Jan 2017

Diving Into Hell

Merkin is capable of being at once melodramatic and finely nuanced; she has so many good phrases about depression that it’s hard to choose among them.

Nov 2016

Best Books of 2016

Writers choose their best reads of 2016.