Message in a Klein Bottle
/Celebrated young novelist Jesse Ball’s latest, The Way through Doors, twists and pulls at the nature of narrative itself. Lianne Habinek threads the labyrinth.
Read MoreThe Flâneur
/Arthur Phillips’ new novel, The Song Is You, takes a sentimental bachelor’s soundtrack and sets it to adult themes of family tragedy. Sam Sacks listens to hear whether the opus reveals new growth in the novelist—and whether it will grow on the reader.
Read MoreRescue Pieces
/Much critical buzz has accompanied Philipp Meyer’s debut novel American Rust (there’s talk of a Pulitzer)—Karen Vanuska cuts through the hype and attempts to nail down the thing itself.
Read MoreAmen to That
/Anne Easter Smith’s The King’s Grace builds its plot around the mystery of the Princes in the Tower—and borrows its conceit from Josephine Tey’s classic A Daughter in Time. Finch Bronstein-Rasmussen examines the book and the mystery.
Read MoreBook Review: Lowboy
/John Wray's Lowboy enters the New York subway system. Steve Donoghue follows it.
Read MoreForeign Items, Quality Various
/China’s burgeoning modern literature – by citizens and expats alike – presents challenges to Western audiences (and sometimes to Chinese censors). Sam Sacks samples 3 recent novels.
Read MoreFrank Lloyd Wright Annex
/T.C. Boyle is the latest writer to dramatize the story of the women in Frank Lloyd Wright’s life. Caedmon Haas tours The Women and blueprints how well Boyle’s latest biographical novel stands up.
Read MoreWho Moved My Charioteer?
/In How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer tries to anatomize the choosing brain. Lianne Habinek – with an assist from some guy named Plato – anatomizes the anatomizer.
Read MoreOn Finding That My Novel Can Be Bought on Amazon.com for $0.01
/Here today, gone tomorrow – remaindered on Amazon.com the day after that! Martha Moffett turns in a cautionary tale of the tangled fate of one novel.
Read MoreThe Sounds Are Not the Flowers
/In her new novel Lark and Termite, Jayne Anne Phillips grapples with the challenge of using intricate language to convey wordless innocence. Sam Sacks is sympathetic to her goal, but he can’t help thinking of William Faulkner …
Read MoreGoing Off Course with Melville and Liebling
/Two seemingly dissimilar figures in the American literary landscape – Herman Melville and A. J. Liebling – shared at least one thing aside from a way with words: they weren’t afraid of a little digression now and then. John G. Rodwan Jr. follows along for the stories.
Read MoreBook Review: The Holy City
/Patrick McCabe's new novel imagines the life of Irish playboy Christopher McCool. Sam Sacks reviews The Holy City.
Read MoreLike Diamonds on Display
/Karen Vanuska finds plenty to praise in Louise Erdrich’s The Red Convertible: New and Selected Stories—as well as some loose bolts and steam under the hood.
Read MoreNo Sign of Horror in the Heavens
/Mary Borden’s long-forgotten 1929 memoir of World War I, The Forbidden Zone, takes its readers into the harrowing world of a front-line trauma nurse. Joanna Scutts joins her in the trenches and assesses the damage.
Read MoreA Drink-Man Among Drink-Men
/“Write while I’m sober?” legendary pint-puller Brendan Behan once growled, “What arse would want to read that?” His opinion has been shared by literary men through the ages, but perhaps none with more fidelity than Kingsley Amis; John G. Rodwan, Jr. bellies up to the bar and spends time with some of the 20th century’s most tippling typers.
Read MoreThe Evidence of Absence
/Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives took the literary world by storm, and his latest posthumous release, 2666, is five times as long and ten times as ambitious. Find out what tales dead men tell as Sam Sacks tackles this immense and problematic monster.
Read MoreYoung Bull and Old Jack
/Before Mexico, Tangier, or even rehab, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs were deeply involved in a real-life murder plot. Now the book they wrote about it finally gets its day in court and Andrew Martin delivers his literary verdict on And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks.
Read MoreLaughter in the Darkness
/What is it about Booker and Nobel judges that make one reach for Chambers Biographical Dictionary only to hurl it across the room in despair? Sam Sacks seeks the source of prize-winner Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger.
Read MoreIt’s a Mystery: All Hail the Queen
/With this cheery account of the reigning royalty of murder mysteries, P.D. James, Irma Heldman inaugurates her monthly mystery column in these webpages. Irma once delighted fans of her “On the Docket” column under the pen-name O.L. Bailey, and Open Letters proudly welcomes her back to the beat she made her own!
Read MoreThe Same Indifference
/In The Same Man, David Lebedoff maintains that Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell were Doppelgängers, both in their art and their ethics; John G. Rodwan Jr. begs to differ.
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