The Finkler Question – Howard Jacobson
It’s difficult to discuss stereotypes with caricatures, to discuss death with characters who could never live.
“For a work that serves in part as an incredible testament to maternal determination, the details of ROOM are brutally honest and never close to saccharin.”
The Four Fingers of Death – Rick Moody
“Moody renders the American West of the future as a place that has suffered massive socio-economic shock, a junkyard that gathers the dusty detritus of a once-great empire.”
“Other People We Married, Straub’s debut story collection, is one of the funniest and saddest books I’ve read in some time. It’s also one of the best.”
The Private Lives of Trees – Alejandro Zambra
“For all his melancholy, Julián is a fragile and brilliant creation, one whose own laws for living mirror the strictures of the novel.”
Jessica Francis Kane in conversation with Alex Shephard What is there to say about a massacre? This is the question that Kurt Vonnegut poses at the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five. It’s also a question that we, as a nation, have been asking ourselves since the tragic shooting in Tucson which left six dead, including a […]
“We see the effect two souls can have on one another when one soul wants the other to be something other than it is; to wit, itself.”
“Salvation City finds redemption in its beautifully nuanced depiction of those years in which the overarching emotional landscape is one of devastation, intensity, beauty, grief and betrayal.”
Joanna Smith Rakoff in conversation with Alex Shephard Joanna Smith Rakoff’s 2009 debut A Fortunate Age is one of the best novels about being in your twenties in New York City in recent memory. Perhaps more importantly, the novel, which follows five graduates of my and Rakoff’s alma mater, Oberlin College, is about trying to […]
How to Read the Air – Dinaw Mengestu
“Mengestu never lets us read the air on our own.”