The theme of this week is reappearances What I read this week This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin As precise and epic in scope as the most celebrated Russian novels, This Is Where the Serpent Lives is a modern history of Pakistan whose characters will likely haunt
The theme of the week is heroines of the telephone company What I read this week Vigil by George Saunders Is Vigil George Saunders's best work or third best work or fifth best work? No. But do his sentences still sing, each and every one of them? Even
The theme of the week is fictional characters named for other fictional characters What I read this week The End of Romance by Lily Meyer Lily Meyer has said that the heroine of her second novel is named Sylvie Broder, after Broder, the protagonist in Isaac Bashevis Singer's
The theme of the week is how-to. But first... This is the worst part. I hate to do this. But I just re-upped my account for this newsletter on Ghost (it would have been nice if they'd given me a warning first!) for more than $1000 for the
The theme this week is creepy old men. What I read this week Discipline by Larissa Pham Here's how I described this book to a friend: what if Rachel Cusk's Outline trilogy was a bit more American and contained a little bit of murder? It'
The theme this week is cabins in the woods. What I read this week Murder Bimbo by Rebecca Novack You have to understand that the early readers edition of this debut novel had a black cover with white writing that said SOMEBODY HAD TO DO IT. "It" is
The theme of this week is consumption. And corgis. What I read this week The Hitch by Sara Levine This might be the only book I'll ever read in which I know a dog death is coming but I soldier on anyway. For those who are concerned, the
What I read this week Possession by A.S. Byatt I first tried to read A.S. Byatt's Booker Prize-winning novel about all kinds of intrigue in academia when I was in high school. What a bad idea. So much of the book is about the tedium of
What I read this week The Sisters by Jonas Hassen Khemiri What if The Virgin Suicides was narrated by only one neighborhood boy, and it was more about the boy than the Lisbon sisters, and the neighborhood boy's name was Jeffrey Eugenides? The Sisters is a story of
What I read this week The White Hot by Quiara AlegrÃa Hudes I'm not going to be able to do this one justice. I usually try to listen to the audio version of books in which the prose isn't the main thing. I save the plot-heavy
It's anticipation time... What I read this week What We Can Know by Ian McEwan When I say What We Can Know is Ian McEwan's best novel since Atonement, I should admit that I haven't been meticulous about keeping up. I believe I had
Forgive me for skipping last week's newsletter! I've been reading submissions for for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award, and I didn't want to use this space to write about what I read. That will be under wraps until this spring. I also took