Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother' Inspires The Story Of 'Mary Coin'
I shied away from Marisa Silver's new novel because of its book jacket: a reproduction of Dorothea Lange's iconic Depression-era photograph called "Migrant Mother." You know it: the woman's strong face...
View ArticleA Fiendish Fly Recalls Kafka In 'Jacob's Folly'
Man awakens to find out he has turned into an insect. And the Double Jeopardy question is, "What is Kafka's The Metamorphosis?" Well, what other response could there possibly be? Kafka all but cornered...
View Article'Lean In': Not Much Of A Manifesto, But Still A Win For Women
Sheryl Sandberg tells an anecdote in her new book, Lean In, about sitting down with her boss, Mark Zuckerberg, for her first performance review as chief operating officer at Facebook.
View ArticleThe Apathy In 'A Thousand Pardons' Is Hard To Forgive
Jonathan Dee likes to write about rich, good-looking people falling apart — and who among the 99 percent of us can't enjoy that plot? In The Privileges, the dad of the family was a Wall Street trader,...
View Article'Burgess Boys' Family Saga Explores The Authenticity Of Imperfection
In 1846, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a famous essay called "The Philosophy of Composition," in which he sounds like an interior decorator. I say that because in the essay, Poe insists that all good writing...
View ArticleBeauty 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 ArticleOut Of Lahiri's Muddy 'Lowland,' An Ambitious Story Soars
Geography is destiny in Jhumpa Lahiri's new novel, The Lowland. Her title refers to a marshy stretch of land between two ponds in a Calcutta neighborhood where two very close brothers grow up. In...
View Article
