Beauty Marks: Patricia Volk's Lessons In Womanhood
I've loved Patricia Volk's writing ever since I read her evocative 2002 memoir, Stuffed, which told the story of her grandfather — who introduced pastrami to America — as well as the rest of her...
View Article'Equilaterial': Martians, Oil And A Hole In The Desert
Equilateral is a weird little novel, but any reader familiar with Ken Kalfus expects his writing to go off-road. Kalfus wrote one of the best and certainly the least sentimental novels about New York...
View ArticleGodwin's 'Flora': A Tale Of Remorse That Creeps Under Your Skin
Gail Godwin says one of the inspirations for her new novel, called Flora, is Henry James' ghost story The Turn of the Screw. Both stories take place in isolated old houses, and both revolve around...
View ArticleComing To 'Americanah': Two Tales Of Immigrant Experience
First things first: Can we talk about hair? Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a big knockout of a novel about immigration, American dreams, the power of first love, and the shifting...
View ArticleAfter WWII, A Letter Of Appreciation That Still Rings True
In the fall of 1945, my father was honorably discharged from the Navy. He was one of the lucky ones. He'd served on a destroyer escort during the war, first in convoys dodging U-boats in the Atlantic...
View Article'Beside Ourselves' Explores Human-Animal Connections
Note: The audio and text of this review describe a major plot point that is not revealed until partway into the book.If you know Karen Joy Fowler's writing only from her clever, 2004 best-seller, The...
View ArticleIn 'TransAtlantic,' The Flight Is Almost Too Smooth
Here we go into the wild blue yonder again with Colum McCann. In his 2009 novel, Let the Great World Spin, McCann swooped readers up into the air with the French aerialist Philippe Petit, who staged an...
View ArticleAmerican Mystery Finds A New Voice On 'The Bohemian Highway'
It's been a while since I've heard a distinctive new American voice in mystery fiction: That Girl With the Dragon Tattoo dame seems to have put our homegrown hard-boiled detectives in the deep freeze....
View ArticleThe Only Surprise In Rowling's 'Cuckoo's Calling' Is The Author
Call it "The Mystery of the Missing Book Sales"— and I don't think we'll be needing to bring Sherlock Holmes in to solve this one. In April, a debut mystery called The Cuckoo's Calling was published....
View ArticleWith 'Arrangements' And 'The Rest,' Two Debut Novelists Arrive
The novel I've been recommending this summer to anyone, female or male, who's looking for the trifecta — a good story that's beautifully written and both hilarious and humane — is Seating Arrangements,...
View Article'Love Affairs' Of A Hip, Young Literary Hound Dog
Before I read Adelle Waldman's brilliant debut novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., I had about as much interest in reading about the hip, young literary types who've colonized Brooklyn as I do in...
View ArticleA Gossipy, Nostalgic History Of A Publishing 'Hothouse'
In the world of book publishing, ravaged though it may be, the name Farrar, Straus & Giroux still bespeaks literary quality. It's a publishing house that boasts a roll call of 25 Nobel Prize...
View ArticleFrom McDermott, An Extraordinary Story Of An Ordinary 'Someone'
Endurance, going the distance, sucking up the solitude and the brine: I'm not talking about the glorious Diana Nyad and her instantly historic swim from Cuba to Key West, but of the ordinary heroine...
View ArticleIntroducing 'Miss Anne,' The White Women Of A Black Renaissance
Ten years ago, literary scholar Carla Kaplan released an acclaimed edition of the letters of Zora Neale Hurston. In the course of researching Hurston's life, Kaplan became curious about the white women...
View ArticleMeet Ben's Sister Jane, History's Forgotten Franklin
"Her days were days of flesh." That's just one of a multitude of striking observations that Jill Lepore makes about Jane Franklin, the baby sister of Ben. What Lepore means by that line of near-poetry...
View ArticleIf You're Looking To Read 'Lady Things,' Choose Jezebel Over Jones
Dizzy dames don't age well. An attractive young thing doing prat falls is disarming; an older woman stumbling around for laughs spells hip replacement. Sad to say, Bridget Jones has hung on to her...
View ArticleDickensian Ambition And Emotion Make 'Goldfinch' Worth The Wait
"Dickensian" is one of those literary modifiers that's overused. But before I officially retire this ruined adjective (or exile it to Australia, as Dickens himself would have done), I want to give it...
View Article'Self-Help Messiah' Dale Carnegie Gets A Second Life In Print
"Make the other person feel important.""Let the other fellow feel that the idea is his.""Make people like you." Those are some of the peppy commands that have sent generations of Americans out into the...
View ArticleA 'Marriage', A Divorce, A Dying Dog And Essays Done Right
Pity the poor essay collection. Unlike its close, more creative neighbor — the short story collection — or its snooty relation, The Novel, the humble essay collection is the wallflower of the literary...
View ArticleThanksgivukkah Stress Getting You Down? Here's A Literary Escape Plan
Mark your calendars: According to some scholars, the next time it might happen is the year 79,811. I'm talking, of course, about the hybrid holiday of Thanksgivukkah, a melding of Thanksgiving and the...
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