Alan Bennett's Inimitable Voice Just Keeps 'Keeping On'
When Alan Bennett's whopping 700-page omnibus of picked-up pieces landed on my desk, I considered giving it a pass. But how could I resist after happening upon this diary entry from 2005, which reads...
View Article'Winter' Balances Dark Days With Flashes Of Joy And Light
Ali Smith is flat-out brilliant, and she's on fire these days. Writing in the heat of outrage following England's divisive Brexit vote, she opened a seasonal quartet of novels last year with Autumn , a...
View Article'This Could Hurt' Is A Workplace Saga With Heart
Jillian Medoff's new novel is an office dramedy involving an elaborate coverup in a corporate HR department that has nothing to do with financial or sexual transgressions. In other words, it isn't...
View Article'The Friend' Is No Shaggy Dog Story
One of the great joys of reading is discovering a new writer whose work speaks to you — whether an unknown debut novelist or a seasoned author whose many books you've somehow missed. Case in point:...
View Article'I Am' Living Life To The Fullest, Despite Its Perils
About halfway through her first book of nonfiction, Edinburgh-based author Maggie O'Farrell explains her latest project to her mother: "I'm trying to write a life, told only through near-death...
View ArticleMore Than Just Nostalgia, 'Time Pieces' Is A Multilayered Memoir Of Dublin
John Banville, the notoriously self-critical Irish writer known for his elegant precision and icicle-sharp wit , has reached the age of nostalgia and redress. In Time Pieces, a lovely quasi-memoir and...
View ArticleMemory Is Mutable, Understanding Elusive In 'Memento Park'
Fathers and sons. You could fill a library with books about the paternal ties that bind — or fray: Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Ivan Turgenev's Fathers and Sons , Philip Roth's Patrimony , Mario Puzo's The...
View Article'The Sparsholt Affair' Finds Truth Somewhere Between Satire And Sentiment
One of the most frequently hailed signs of social progress in the last 50 years is the growing acceptance and mainstreaming of homosexuality in the Western world. No novelist has chronicled this...
View Article'Sharp' Is A Dinner Party You Want To Be At
What do I love about this book? For starters: Dorothy Parker. Rebecca West. Hannah Arendt. Mary McCarthy. Nora Ephron. Janet Malcolm. With Sharp, Michelle Dean has essentially gathered ten 20th century...
View ArticleBeautiful But Heartrending, 'The Only Story' Looks Back At Love Gone Wrong
In a year that hasn't exactly been full of joyful tidings, Julian Barnes' latest novel struck me as one of the saddest books I've read in some time. Beautifully done, but heartrending. It isn't about...
View ArticleIn 'My Ex-Life,' A Snappy, Enjoyable Look At Love's Many Splendors
No one writes about close friendships and unconventional domestic arrangements between gay men and straight women with as much charm and flair as Stephen McCauley. When his first novel, The Object of...
View Article'Warlight' Illumines Family Secrets In Ondaatje's Latest
The title of Michael Ondaatje's atmospheric new novel — Warlight — refers most directly to the dimmed lights that guided emergency traffic during wartime blackouts, but it applies equally to the cloak...
View Article'Empire At Sunset' Provides A Mesmerizing View Of Jean Rhys
Caryl Phillips' latest novel, based on the troubled life of the writer Jean Rhys, is a lush exploration of the costs of colonialism, the limited possibilities for non-conformist women, and egregious...
View ArticleAn Epic Conversation Draws To A Close In 'Kudos'
Here's one advantage to discussing Rachel Cusk's trilogy of conversational novels: Because they're essentially plotless, there's little need to worry about spoiler alerts. The surprises and rewards of...
View Article'Rest And Relaxation' Is As Sharp As Its Heroine Is Bleary
Imagine taking a sabbatical, not just from your job, but from your life. How about going even further and taking a yearlong break from yourself and the world, courtesy of an extended nap? That's the...
View ArticleBonding Over Bog Bodies In 'Meet Me At The Museum'
Meet the charmer of the summer, an epistolary novel about two strangers dismayed by where their lives have taken them. Dissatisfied farmer's wife Tina Hapgood and lonely museum curator Anders Larsen...
View Article'His Favorites' Is An Artful Argument For #MeToo — And More
Kate Walbert's most powerful novel yet is a case study in the perversities of power imbalances. This slim but by no means slight novel continues Walbert's explorations of how society's sexual biases...
View Article'Sight' Is A Penetrating Vision Of Motherhood, Science And More
Jessie Greengrass' Sight is one of those books that critics rave about, yet many readers wonder why. Here's why: Shimmering sentences and long paragraphs that unspool like yellow brick roads, winding...
View ArticleUnderstated And Over-Frank, 'French Exit' Is Just The Right Amount Of Funny
Patrick deWitt's novels don't so much skewer genres as turn them askew. His latest is the third of a trilogy of literary hijinks that began with The Sisters Brothers (2011), a gleefully gruesome, wonky...
View Article'The Real Lolita' Investigates The True Crime Story Of Sally Horner
Sarah Weinman, an editor and writer of true crime stories, doubles up on her literary sleuthing in The Real Lolita, investigating the 1948 kidnapping and rape of 11-year-old Sally Horner by a convicted...
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