A Slow-Burning Tale of Sub-Arctic Cold in ‘White River Crossing’
Gold is the driving force behind the action in Ian McGuire’s new novel.
Category
Books & Fiction
A Newlywed Goes Missing in John Banville’s ‘Venetian Vespers’
'Venetian Vespers' is proof yet again that John Banville is a wizard with the English language.
Finding Amelia Earhart Through the Noise, and the Decades
What the author has unearthed is the world of “Earhart hunters,” who have spent decades trying to solve the mystery.
A Daughter Makes the Case for John Cheever in ‘When All the Men Wore Hats’
Cheever reinforced his brand as the “bard of the suburbs” (most particularly, Westchester County, where many of his characters lived).
Murder in New York, With Side Dishes of Curry and Pluck, in ‘Midnight Taxi’
The Midnight Taxi, a debut legal thriller-mystery novel by Yosha Gunasekera, a Sri Lankan-American attorney, is a charming tale of a cab driver falsely accused of killing a fare in her own vehicle.
Exploring the Highs and Lows of the Writing Life in Susan Orlean’s Eloquent ‘Joyride’
In case we don’t get the point, Orlean (author of 'The Orchard Thief' and 'The Library Book'), reminds us numerous times that she falls into one of two categories of writers: “those who have something they want to say to the world, and … those who believe the world has something to tell them. I’m wholly of the second sort.”
Despite Moments of Wit and Ingenuity, ‘The Copywriter’ Is a Tough Read
So, a novel? A memoir? A chapbook? This is a book of poetry, with a plain tomato soup of a story within it. A can of Campbell’s can be just the thing on a cold day. But The Copywriter is not a novel—or at least not just that. What Poppick is striving for is a different kind of written art.
The Rise and Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty in ‘King of Kings’
Despite mass anti-government protests that brought thousands of Iranians into the streets—along with the rising number of dead left by the police and SAVAK—President Jimmy Carter visited the shah only weeks before the revolution, toasting his regime for making Iran “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.”