In 1877, Mary “May” Cassatt is already making a name for herself in the French art scene, having had some paintings exhibited at the Salon, the establishment arbiter of the art world at the time. She is excited by the work of Edgar Degas, who has rebelled against the Salon and is a founder of […]
Told through the eyes of a sensitive child, Tower’s offbeat personal narrative immerses readers in the visceral confusion of a fractured family, rendered with vivid sensory details—the smell of apple juice and holding tight to a Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animal. The child’s imagination serves as a coping mechanism, with recurring Star Wars and Hundred Acre Wood metaphors […]
Lulu Gardner is a rule follower. As a high school business teacher and single mom to toddler Zoe, the 33-year-old has little time for risk-taking. There was a time when Lulu would sneak out late with her high school boyfriend, Tyler Demming, to play tennis after dark on Washington’s Bainbridge Island. But that was then, […]
“The sacred bones of a literary culture [are] being ground into dust by technology and AI and many other distractions,” writes essayist Allen. To help remedy this decay, she offers a set of appreciative essays on canonical European and Anglophone writers, focusing on the personalities of writers and how fictional and historical characters interact to […]
Readers who fell in love with Just Kids (2010), Smith’s National Book Award–winning memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, but were less taken with follow-ups—featuring a lot of elegant writing about very little—are advised to give her another shot. The question of that grave, seemingly Victorian young woman who materialized on a park bench […]
Don’t expect a have-a-good-cry-and-catharsis tale from Packer, who excels in diamond-hard dissections of tangled personal relations. She embeds the narrative in the perceptions of Eliot, who is blindsided when his wife, Claire, tells him that she wants her two best friends to take care of her in these final months, “instead of you.” It seems […]
Mason Kowalski is stuck in a dead-end job he hates, writing copy for his boss at a health-food company while taking care of his elderly grandmother in his free time. He regularly experiences stress, due to a generalized anxiety disorder, but he becomes alarmed when he also suffers vivid hallucinations and debilitating headaches. When Mason’s […]
Few writers have seen their work reinterpreted as much as Jane Austen’s. “We all encounter Austen differently and from the position of where and when we read her,” writes the scholar Jennie Batchelor in the book’s introduction. “How we read her changes as the world changes around us.” This anthology, a melange of fiction, poetry, […]
Every scenario seems implausible until it actually happens, as any military planner knows. When newspaper reporter Carmela Jean “CJ” Martino and her new husband, Lt. Joe Delano of the U.S. Marine Corps, get married in Waikiki on December 5, 1941, the pace of Japanese aggression feels distant, at best. CJ is more concerned about what […]
After moving from Portland, Oregon, to France for her father’s job, Tosh grows increasingly fond of Paris, even if her language skills need some work. Her sweet American neighbor Nick takes her on fabulous, quirky tours and introduces her to new friends who share her curiosity about the world; former debate team member Tosh loves […]