Death by Landscape
/Annie Dillard’s distilled, introspective voice described marvels in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but can it power a novel? John Cotter tacks down The Maytrees.
Read MoreSome Assembly Required
/Michael Ondaatje’s Divisadero is a jarring experience, composed offractured images and plot strands. Karen Vanuska helps us put itspieces together.
Read MoreUseful Disasters
/Like The Kite Runner before it, A Thousand Splendid Suns ownsreal estate on the top of the bestseller list. Sam Sacks dares tounlock the secret of Khaled Hosseini.
Read MorePeer Review: Sex on the Beach
/In our monthly feature, Sam Sacks clambers over the mountain ofreviews of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, spotting perspicacity,purple prose, and possible pickpocketing along the way.
Read MoreFumbling Men
/Don DeLillo’s new novel Falling Man confronts our naked desire to understand 9/11. Jeff O’Keefe tells us how it fares.
Read MoreH.H. Kirst and the Problem of Evil
/What do we do with great novels by a writer who was also a Nazi? Steve Donoghue investigates the terrible conundrum of H.H. Kirst.
Read MoreThe Evasionist
/Sam Sacks reviews the fun and flawed new novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and tries to answer the question on everybody’s lips: what exactly is Michael Chabon doing?
Read MoreMount Wharton
/Steve Donoghue converses with the critics in his review of Hermione Lee’s page-turning but harrowingly huge biography of Edith Wharton
Read MoreLimitless Apocalypse
/Karen Vanuska reviews Jim Crace’s post-apocalyptic novel The Pesthouse, in which Americans seek salvation by emigrating to Europe. Hmm, think Crace might be trying to tell us something…?
Read MoreThe Bard of Everybody
/In a review of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s restoration of the famous First Folio, Garrett Handley investigates the maddening vagaries that have always confronted the Bard’s editors.
Read MoreTwain in Vain
/Sam Sacks reviews Jon Clinch’s Finn, a novel about Huck Finn’s father, and decides that it owes a heavy debt to a literary figure apart from Mark Twain.
Read MoreShall We in That Great Night Rejoice?
/Steve Donoghue assesses all of twentieth century literature. That’s correct: all of twentieth century literature. Don’t believe it…?
Read MoreChilde Harold's Children
/Sam Sacks looks into the breakout debuts of young novelists to determine how youth, ambition, and general cluelessness affect the writing of these early works.
Read MoreThe Poison Tree
/Sam Sacks reviews The Castle in the Forest, Norman Mailer’s new novel about evil and Hitler and, amazingly, not about Norman Mailer.
Read More
