Back when McWhorter started this book, the subject must have sounded a bit abstruse, but in a weird coincidence with reactionary politics, pronouns noBack when McWhorter started this book, the subject must have sounded a bit abstruse, but in a weird coincidence with reactionary politics, pronouns now feel hotter than climate change. After Trump’s executive order “Restoring Biological Truth,� government employees were ordered to scrub pronouns from their email signatures. Suddenly, “they� could get you fired.
“To mess with our pronouns,� McWhorter writes, “is to mess with our sense of the order of things, what’s up and what’s down � life itself.� We’re naturally possessive about our pronouns. But he acknowledges early on, “My positions on these matters do not stem from any ‘conservatism� with which I am sometimes associated.� Indeed, he’s a descriptive linguist, a scholar interested in observing the evolution of language, not railing against its perceived misuses.
That open-mindedness � even delight � is clear throughout his survey of the little words we use to refer to ourselves and others. In his fascinating first chapter, McWhorter leads us through the circuitous grammatical history of the first person as subject and object. “I and me are what one might call a hot mess,� he writes. “It’s always all about them.� The trouble started, he explains, with the increase in literacy and an attendant rise of uninformed snobbery. “Our sense of ‘good English� was shaped in the 1700s by people who knew essentially nothing of the languages� beyond Europe, which meant we ended up with nonsensical grammar rules that are “a tad flat-earther!�
“To wit, the idea of Billy and me went to the store as an error is, itself, a misperception, foisted upon endless generations of English speakers.�
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Home run. If you’re a classic baseball fan and a classicist, you’ll enjoy “The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball.� In nine innings � along with a pregame chaHome run. If you’re a classic baseball fan and a classicist, you’ll enjoy “The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball.� In nine innings � along with a pregame chapter and an extra inning � Professor Christian Sheppard lays out “lessons for life from Homer’s Odyssey to the World Series.�
“Every baseball game, if viewed from the right angle, reenacts an ancient myth,� Sheppard writes. “Carlton Fisk steps to the plate. Odysseus draws his bow. Two scenes separated by thousands of miles and thousands of years both present the same dramatic climax. A hero takes his chance to prove his excellence. He succeeds. Zeus illuminates the moment with lightning. The chorus of the crowd thunderously applauds. The hero has come home. Happiness ensues.�
This charming little book � charmingly designed by Greenleaf Book Group in Austin � runs from Homer to homers in pursuit of what matters most. “How to live?� Sheppard asks. “Follow the ball’s trajectory, like following an arrow shot from the bow of Odysseus, it will lead you toward an answer.�
“Pitching exemplifies prudence,� he coaches. The warrior of twists and turns knew that as he sailed home for Ithaca. “To face any situation like a pitcher is to make oneself aware of the entirety of the situation and to consider what in one’s repertoire of skills can be brought to bear.�
Oh, how I wish I’d had this book back in St. Louis when I was dragging some reluctant 9th graders through Homer’s epic.
“The Ancient Wisdom of Baseball� is alternately erudite, witty, scholastic and romantic � and scored with enough dad jokes to fill Wrigley Field. Sheppard talks freely about literature and history, heroic players and epic plays, and especially about his life as a father, all while extolling the pursuit of virtue, courage and justice. Sometimes, he steals a plate so fast you can barely spot it. “No more famous tale is told of Alexander the Great,� he writes, “than his late-inning relief pitching for St. Louis in Game 7 of the 1926 World Series in New York.�
In short, this is a self-help book for people who’d rather be playing baseball or outsmarting the Cyclops, which, according to Sheppard, are heroic feats that demand essentially the same skills.
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No teenybopper ever swooned over the pages of Tiger Beat as ardently as I once pored over every new issue of Spy magazine. Teaching undergraduates at No teenybopper ever swooned over the pages of Tiger Beat as ardently as I once pored over every new issue of Spy magazine. Teaching undergraduates at a little Christian college in the cornfields of Southern Illinois, I didn’t know many of the magazine’s gilded targets far away in Manhattan, but the blend of style and satire that editors Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen published was everything I yearned to be a part of.
This week I’ve been reading Carter’s chatty new memoir, “When the Going Was Good: An Editor's Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines.� It’s like a bound edition of my old vision board.
“Looking back, I honestly don’t know what I was thinking,� Carter confesses with humility that’s equally winning and insincere. “Who was I to start a magazine that poked holes in the bloated egos of the city’s grandees?�
Huddled in his office at Life magazine, he and Andersen jotted down 100 potential story ideas for a new publication of “wit, satire, and what Kurt called literate sensationalism.� Inspired by Looney Tunes, London’s Private Eye, The Washington Post’s Style section and Mad magazine, they wanted “a bemused detachment but witheringly judgmental.�
Despite a flock of blue-blooded investors, Carter and Andersen never had enough money. They borrowed furniture for their tiny offices. The staff writers earned just a little more than $5,000 a year. (Although Christopher Hitchens liked the idea of Spy, he wasn’t willing to write for the fee they could pay.)
Nevertheless, when the first issue appeared in 1986, “its sheer shock value made Spy an....
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Near the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,� Nick says, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy � they smashed up things and creatures Near the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,� Nick says, “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy � they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money.�
The book, subtitled “A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,� reads like a spicy office memoir if your officemates travel by private jet and your boss asks for a rally of 1 million people. Wynn-Williams recounts her seven years in the social media empire now called Meta. Beginning in 2011, she worked as an adviser to Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg “as they were inventing how the company would deal with governments around the world.�
“It started as a hopeful comedy and ended in darkness and regret,� Wynn-Williams writes. “I watched hopelessly as they sucked up to authoritarian regimes like China’s and casually misled the public.�
Daisy Buchanan, you may remember, hit Myrtle with a car and then let Gatsby take the fall. From what Wynn-Williams describes, it sounds like Facebook ran over millions of Myrtles and then fled the scene to let parents, citizens and governments clean up the mess.
Working at Facebook, she claims, was “like watching a bunch of fourteen-year-olds who’ve been given superpowers and an ungodly amount of money,� but that’s not fair. Fourteen-year-olds would never behave like this.
Wynn-Williams’s tale of how she was allegedly treated by her boss while on maternity leave with life-threatening health problems is appalling.
But her complaints about the company’s reflexive secrecy and deceit are what should trouble the rest of us who still have to deal with the influence of Meta. She alleges, for instance, that senior managers devised “a cover-up� to contradict news reports that Facebook and Instagram allowed advertisers to exploit kids� darkest insecurities.
Other allegations range from creepy instances of inappropriate behavior to dangerous acts of political interference. Speaking of her bosses, she writes: “They put staff in with the Trump campaign to help them stage the war of misinformation, trolling, and lies that won him the election� in 2016.
Another terrifying section claims that Facebook’s “lethal carelessness� allowed the platform to be used to spread hate speech and propaganda that destabilized Myanmar and led to....
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A dozen years ago, John Kenney’s debut novel, “Truth in Advertising,� began with an anecdote about a high school kid who concocted a paraplegic VietnaA dozen years ago, John Kenney’s debut novel, “Truth in Advertising,� began with an anecdote about a high school kid who concocted a paraplegic Vietnam vet and passed him off as the hero of his term paper for modern history. Fittingly, that fraudulent young man went on to become a depressed advertising writer.
In Kenney’s new novel, “I See You’ve Called in Dead,� the body drops just a few feet away, at a slightly different angle. This time around, the narrator, Bud Stanley, is a depressed obituary writer at the world’s largest wire service, and the hero he invents is himself.
One cold night, while circling the drain that’s become his life, Bud writes his own ludicrously spectacular obituary under the headline, “Bud Stanley, 44, former Mr. Universe, failed porn star, and mediocre obituary writer, is dead.� After noting that Mr. Stanley was killed in a hot-air balloon crash, he highlights his accomplishments as one of Gladys Knight’s original Pips, the first man to perform open-heart surgery on himself, the inventor of toothpaste and a member of the Jamaican bobsled team. It’s just a lark, a morbid way to get drunk on his own fermented despair. But then � oops � he accidentally publishes his little gag on the wire service, which sends the fake obituary to news organizations around the globe.
That’s a genuinely funny premise, though it chills the already withered heart of any journalist to see how quickly a career can be cremated in a moment of carelessness or rage. Naturally, Bud’s employer is furious. What he’s done might be a felony. His editor likes him � pities him � but this juvenile prank puts Bud beyond salvation. “You know what the crime of it was?� his editor asks. “It wasn’t a very good obit.�
An investigation is launched; he’s suspended without pay. Kenney gets off some easy shots at the usual HR inanity. He’s so cool with the retorts that he never even messes up his hair. As Bud takes one more walk through the newsroom, his officemate notes, “You look well for a dead man.�
Versions of that witty line recur across these pages like gravestones in Mount Auburn Cemetery � the rich variety somehow redeeming the repetition. Which is fortunate because there’s....
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On Monday, Dawn had another lockdown at her school, the second one in two weeks: a student with a gun, again. There’s my dear wife huddled on the flooOn Monday, Dawn had another lockdown at her school, the second one in two weeks: a student with a gun, again. There’s my dear wife huddled on the floor in her darkened classroom texting me. It was such an outrageous addition to this week that it almost struck her as more irritating than frightening.
Then yesterday, an old friend sent Dawn and me a wooden box of chocolates from Burdick’s, which was such a random and extravagant act of kindness that it lured us from the gloom for a few delicious moments.
I’ve been thinking how important such moments are. Some books can serve as little boxes of chocolates, too. Over the last few days, I sneaked away from several demanding novels to find solace in “Bob the Robin,� by a photographer and gardener named Tony Putman. Presented as “a love letter to Britain’s favourite bird,� this nature memoir goes down warm and gentle, like a bowl of farina in print.
“I discovered that I was at peace when I was using my camera,� Putman writes. “Every negative thought, every problem, was blocked out when I was thinking about my next shot.� That salubrious hobby runs parallel with his keen attention to animals, particularly birds.
In 2019, a new robin approached him, and they established a remarkable rapport. “If he was in the middle of a song, he might look at me to acknowledge my presence or he might completely ignore me,� Putman writes. “When I wanted him to move to a better location for a photo, he would simply follow me wherever I went.� The bird eats mealworms from Putman’s lips.
Putman’s Facebook followers christened the bird “Bob.� Over the next several years, Bob the Robin and Putman the Gardener became media celebrities, but that doesn’t really matter to Putman nor, I suppose, to Bob.
“Sometimes in life you get to meet someone you feel at one with,� Putman writes. “It’s not always something you understand or can explain, but it’s there, and you both feel it.� Okay, not exactly Montaigne, but you do feel it because Putman is such an achingly sincere writer. His long friendship with an English robin � different from our American robin � is plainly, unapologetically heartwarming.
Across this story, printed on airy pages with several lovely color plates at the center, we follow these two companions through the rhythms of the seasons. There are moments of family joy and sadness. The covid pandemic intervenes, but the natural world provides an oasis for Putman and his feathered friend.
“I was very happy that he chose to stick around,� he writes. “There was a calmness about him right from the start.� The same could be said about this tender book.
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Five years after the pandemic shut down the world, covid is still proving to be a novel virus for American fiction. Of course, there are classic storiFive years after the pandemic shut down the world, covid is still proving to be a novel virus for American fiction. Of course, there are classic stories of isolation and grief, such as Michael Cunningham’s exquisite "Day." In the work of other writers, covid has mutated in surprising ways. Last year, for instance, Regina Porter used the closures as the basis for her sharp social satire, "The Rich People Have Gone Away.�
And now, Amity Gaige follows the long shadow of the pandemic into the woods where she finds an imperiled nurse named Valerie Gillis on the Appalachian Trail. “Heartwood,� Gaige’s fifth novel, is a thriller that could work without a recollection of the pandemic but draws its resonance from our shared memory of that ordeal.
“No one hikes two thousand miles because they’re happy,� Valerie says. “Everybody’s got a reason to hike the trail. � What was mine? Well, I suppose it was to heal.�
A born caregiver, Valerie “became a nurse to fix things.� But in a hospital under viral siege � “in an absolute vacuum of dignity� with twice as many patients as she was supposed to have and the alarm constantly blaring “CODE BLUE� � Valerie and her colleagues found themselves “crushed between empathy and impotence.�
To recover from that trial � that impossible choice between being a hero or falling apart � Valerie took a five-month leave of absence to walk the Appalachian Trail. She was doing it alone with the logistical support of her husband, Gregory. But along the way, Valerie realized she didn’t love Gregory anymore, and, ever the stickler for honesty, she told him. Soon after, somewhere in the wilds of Maine, in “a claustrophobic wall of foliage,� she vanished.
You think you know where this is headed. Trust me, you don’t....
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In his acceptance speech for the 2021 Nobel Prize in literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah extolled storytelling that sees what “the hard domineering eye cannIn his acceptance speech for the 2021 Nobel Prize in literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah extolled storytelling that sees what “the hard domineering eye cannot see, what makes people, apparently small in stature, feel assured in themselves regardless of the disdain of others.� Such writing, the Zanzibari novelist said, requires a way of looking that “makes room for frailty and weakness, for tenderness amid cruelty, and for a capacity for kindness in unlooked-for sources.�
“Theft,� the first novel Gurnah has published since winning the Nobel, offers an example of such compassionate, revelatory seeing. Even the structure of this story works against the hierarchical nature of plot � that common sense that this character is central and those merely peripheral. There’s something almost disorienting about Gurnah’s narrative as he moves from one person to the next, willfully thwarting our desire to settle on a protagonist.
Oh, he’ll get there eventually, but he’s not to be rushed as he examines the lives of an expanding family of characters in Tanzania in the late 20th century.
“Theft� is a quieter, more delicate novel than Gurnah’s “Afterlives,� which The Washington Post named one of the top 10 books of 2022. That novel contends directly with the injuries of European colonialism; in “Theft� the wounds have healed over, but the telling limp remains. Here, Gurnah is interested in the ways that abuse is stored in the body, where it either calcifies into malice or metabolizes into compassion.
The story begins with Raya, a beautiful teenage girl married off to a contractor in his 40s who forces himself on her every night. “He was charming with other people,� Gurnah writes, “but he reserved his cruelty for her and took pleasure in it, and she feared that one day his viciousness would become violent.� When their son, Karim, is 3, Raya says enough and moves back to her parents� house. Gossips be damned, she must protect her son. And yet, soon Raya discovers. . .
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In 2009, Colum McCann published a curious book called “Let the Great World Spin� that had everybody looking up. The novel, which went on to win both aIn 2009, Colum McCann published a curious book called “Let the Great World Spin� that had everybody looking up. The novel, which went on to win both a National Book Award and the International Dublin Literary Award, presents several apparently disparate stories while a tightrope-walker modeled after Philippe Petit tiptoes between the twin towers on a wire.
Fifteen years later, McCann is back traversing a much longer, more fragile wire. But now, it’s not high over our heads; it’s running along the bottom of the ocean. The line that winds through “Twist� is a transcontinental fiber-optic cable that carries the great world’s messages, news, images, voices and ideas at the speed of light.
The narrator, Irishman Anthony Fennell, introduces himself as a minor novelist and occasional playwright who needs to shake off the lethargy that’s atrophied his talent. At 47, his life has not been going well. His career is dormant. He hasn’t spoken to his teenage son in years. “How long,� he wonders, “had I been walking around in the same set of clothes?�
Hoping to arrest his descent into alcoholism, he accepts an assignment from a magazine editor to write about deep-sea cable-repair operations. That technical subject sounds likely to inspire more drinking � even Anthony admits, “I had no interest in cables� � but he’s determined to deliver “a story about connection, about grace, about repair.�
A more skeptical magazine editor might have pulled the plug right there at that first hint of grandiloquence. Instead, Anthony flies to Cape Town with a generous budget and waits. The moment a major cable snaps off the west coast of Africa, he’ll be ready to....
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Unhappy anniversary. Now that he’s kneecapped medical research, affirmed the importance of bribery and handed over Americans� financial data to a SoutUnhappy anniversary. Now that he’s kneecapped medical research, affirmed the importance of bribery and handed over Americans� financial data to a South African billionaire with a fondness for fascists, Donald Trump is ready to bring his legendary sagacity to European geopolitics.
The timing is perfect. Three years ago today, Russia recognized the faux Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic. Three days after that violent charade, Putin invaded Ukraine under the guise of protecting his fellow patriots.
Earlier this month, official U.S. Party Animal Pete Hegseth prematurely handed over chunks of Ukraine to Russia. But he was quickly forced to walk back those comments. The only person allowed to woo Vladimir with a bouquet of Ukrainian cities is his besotted beau, Donald Trump.
Perhaps no one understands what a ghastly farce this war is better than Ukrainian writer Olena Stiazhkina. She was a professor at Donetsk National University in 2014 when Russians, dressed up as protesters, began rioting in eastern Ukraine.
Being a writer and a historian, she began to record what she was seeing and experiencing in her native city. “At some point, I realized I was writing the history of a slow descent into hell,� she says. “What’s it like when Russians come to ‘save Russian speakers,� and then kill them?�
Her answer to that grotesque question is “Ukraine, War, Love: A Donetsk Diary,� which covers about six months in 2014. Most days Stiazhkina offers us eyewitness reports; often she provides wry political analysis; and frequently she’s a Ukrainian reincarnation of Kurt Vonnegut.
Her tone shifts as quickly as a mob’s mood � from defiant to fatalistic, sarcastic, stunned and silly. Anne O. Fisher’s brilliant translation not only makes those hairpin turns, but her English sentences feel laced with Slavic cool.
Despite the brutal beatings and random shootings all around, Stiazhkina never loses her sardonic sense of humor about living in the fantastical “Donetsk People’s Republic�: “The new government entity exists only in the Russian media and the minds of its creators,� she says. For Americans now falling down a similar hole of disinformation, her book serves as a road map into our own Alice-in-Wonderland future. After all, just three days ago, Trump went full Mad Hatter and accused Ukraine of starting the war.
One of the best and most harrowing moments in the diary takes place in April when Stiazhkina is arrested along with her favorite bookseller, who’s such a talkative over-sharer that it’s impossible to buy a mystery novel from her without first hearing who the killer is.
The two women are chained in a makeshift holding-tank waiting for the guards to decide if they should be executed. After an hour, the captain walks in. “It was the face of my student Vasnetsov,� Stiazhkina writes. He had not been a particularly good student, but her willingness to keep him in school had kept him out of the mines � and alive.
“‘Whoops,� said Vasnetsov, blushing furiously. ‘There’s been a small mistake.’� He unchains the women and lets them go home, but Stiazhkina won’t back down. On the street, she warns her former pupil: “You still have an incomplete.�
Another of my favorite sections � about a mother and her drunken son � sports the tragicomic ring of an I.B. Singer story. Such perfectly crafted anecdotes lean heavily on Stiazhkina’s skill as a fiction writer: her flawless timing, her ear for suspense, her ability to catch details that quickly place us in the scene.
“There’s still a lot that’s comical,� she admits, before describing Russian propaganda designed to depict an internal uprising against defeated American soldiers � who are always Black men, by the way, “because how can you tell if some random dead white guy is American or not?�
As the bombings and killings swirl, Stiazhkina’s elderly father breaks down, haunted by childhood memories of World War II. “What are these bandits here for?� he cries. “Who asked them to come? My home... My home.�
Such moments of naked pathos are braided through this angry, witty diary. “War isn’t how it’s described in books,� Stiazhkina writes in this rare book that describes what war is like in all its vicious absurdity.
“It’s impossible to believe it’s really happening, to completely believe it, all the way down to your core. ‘It’s not happening to us. It’s not happening to me. All of this isn’t happening to me....� As long as you’re alive, it’s impossible to believe it.� Stiazhkina is in Kyiv now � still alive and still writing. Believe it.
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On April 1, Pushkin Press will release this international bestseller in an English translation by David Colmer.
“The Hedgehog’s Dilemma� alludes to a On April 1, Pushkin Press will release this international bestseller in an English translation by David Colmer.
“The Hedgehog’s Dilemma� alludes to a parable in Arthur Schopenhauer’s “Parerga and Paralipomena� about a group of porcupines that must struggle to stay warm without pricking each other. In the same way, Schopenhauer suggests, human beings must negotiate the tension between intimacy and repulsion.
At the opening of Tellegen’s little book, a lonely hedgehog would desperately like visitors, except it would take so much work to bake a cake, and it’s so awkward to think of things to say, and the guest will just find fault with his house, and probably nobody wants to visit him anyhow, and by page 23, I knew I’d found my hedgehog doppelgänger.
In one of my favorite scenes � they’re all very short � the hedgehog and a visiting badger sit silently at the kitchen table:
“The badger told him that he had a list of things to talk about at home, but he’d forgotten to bring it and couldn’t remember what was on it. ‘I think it’s in a drawer,� he said. ‘When I get home I’ll have a look. But then it will be too late.’�
“‘Yes,� said the hedgehog.�
This droll little book is cheaper than therapy and more fun than Schopenhauer. (But I probably need all three.)
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I’ve fallen head over heels for Septimus. He’s the fretful hero of Maryrose Wood’s snuggly new novel, “Bad Badger: A Love Story.� Wood may be writing I’ve fallen head over heels for Septimus. He’s the fretful hero of Maryrose Wood’s snuggly new novel, “Bad Badger: A Love Story.� Wood may be writing for readers ages 7-10, but this is a book you’ll want to savor with a cup of tea before the kids get home from school.
When we meet Septimus, he’s living alone in a cottage by the sea. He should be content with his favorite omelette pan, his kayak and his fine platter of complex-smelling cheeses, but instead he’s self-conscious about his very unbadgerish life.
There’s just no getting around it: “Septimus was bad at being a badger.� Somedays, he wonders, “What if I’m not a badger at all?�
On a happier note, he has a new friend. Most Wednesdays, a seagull lands on his windowsill. Gully, as Septimus calls her, rarely says anything except “Caw,� but that doesn’t stop Septimus from carrying on lively conversations. “All badgers like to dig,� Wood notes, “but few had the deep curiosity about their fellow creatures that Septimus did.�
Still, does a friendship between two such different animals have a future? And what can Septimus do when Gully ghosts him? (The scene involving an ornery snail who works � very slowly � as a private investigator is deliciously funny.)
“Perhaps,� Wood writes, “there was always a sense of mystery about the ones we care for, no matter how fond we are, or how well we imagine we know them.�
Giulia Ghigini’s deadpan illustrations are as soft as seagull down. And the quaint manners and gentle humor of “Bad Badger� suggest the author has spent time in the Hundred Acre Wood, but Septimus’s adventures are all his own.
This is a lovely novel � full of warmth, flecked with anxiety quelled with patience and insight. At a time when so many new children’s books strike the creepy rictus of a self-empowerment preacher, “Bad Badger� offers wisdom the only way it should ever be offered: subtly and through the heartfelt experiences of a furry animal. My grandnephew, Leo, is only 13 days old, but I’m already impatient to read this to him.
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In 2011, Karen Russell cast a spell over readers with her uncanny debut novel, “Swamplandia!� She wasn’t kidding about that exclamation point. The stoIn 2011, Karen Russell cast a spell over readers with her uncanny debut novel, “Swamplandia!� She wasn’t kidding about that exclamation point. The story involves a plucky 13-year-old girl determined to revive her family’s alligator park.
“Swamplandia!� went on to become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. That year, Russell’s novel was up against an unfinished manuscript by an author who’d died in 2008 and a revised version of a novella published in the Paris Review almost a decade earlier. Historically speaking, being above ground with a new, finished novel has been a great advantage when it comes to winning a Pulitzer. But, alas, that year, in its inscrutable wisdom, the Pulitzer board decided not to give a prize for fiction.
What might have been?
The question of possibilities both forgotten and denied snakes through Russell’s second novel, a tempest of a tale called “The Antidote.� Her signature conceits gather again in these pages � a determined girl, a tincture of wizardry, a slash of violence � but this story is dazzlingly original and ambitious. Hovering in the atmosphere somewhere between Colson Whitehead’s “Underground Railroad� and Susanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,� “The Antidote� is a historical novel pumped full of just enough magic to make it rise without bursting the bubble of our credulity.
It fell across our city like a curtain of black rolled down, We thought it was our judgment, we thought it was our doom.
So sang Woody Guthrie about the cataclysmal dust storm that struck on April 14, 1935. On Black Sunday, as the disaster has since been known, a blizzard of dirt churned across America’s desiccated plains, destroying farms, burying homes and plunging the nation further into economic depression.
“The Antidote� opens in the howling wind of that Black Sunday. One of the book’s narrators, Antonina, is locked in a jail cell in a Nebraska town called Uz. You don’t need to catch the allusion to Job’s homeland to know this is a place being severely tested. “I woke up,� Antonina says, “to a sound like a freight train tunneling through me. An earsplitting howl that seemed to shake the stone walls. My body trembled like a husk on the cot. My fingers clawed into the mattress. For those early moments in the dark I was nothing but the fear of....
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Gratefully, Adichie is back to fiction with “Dream Count,� a rich, complicated book that spans continents and classes. The story jets between America Gratefully, Adichie is back to fiction with “Dream Count,� a rich, complicated book that spans continents and classes. The story jets between America and Nigeria while rotating, section by section, through the experiences of four Black women. Moving through a comedy of manners and a hall of horrors, their stories overlap and intersect in ways that suggest the vast matrix of the African diaspora.
Chiamaka � known as Chia � opens the novel by saying, “I have always longed to be known, truly known, by another human being.� The plaintive vulnerability of that confession vibrates through the next 400 pages as we meet Chia’s female friends, relatives and servants. Despite their diverse stations, in lives stretched more than 5,000 miles around the globe, they all crave the kind of intimacy that eludes them. There may be many stories here, but every single one contends with the unreliability, the unavailability and even the violence of men. That theme could be limiting or redundant, too familiar to be engaging, but the extraordinary sympathy of Adichie’s storytelling makes “Dream Count� deeply compelling.
Chia is the daughter of a wealthy man, which gives her the freedom to pursue an interest in travel writing long before she has any actual assignments. But the covid pandemic has snuffed out that career � along with all other activities. Cocooned in her parents� house in Maryland, Chia Zooms with friends and family. “Every morning,� she laments, “I was hesitant to rise, because to get out of bed was to approach again the possibility of sorrow.�
Chia’s mother warns her that at 44, she’s running out of time. “I did not have a husband and I did not have a child,� she admits wryly, “a calamity more confounding because it was not for lack of suitors.� Still, overwhelmed with paranoia and regret, Chia begins Googling past boyfriends, what a friend calls her “body count� but Chia thinks of as her “dream count.� It’s an exercise that satisfies her curiosity � and ours � even as it opens up old wounds. There’s....
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Maybe it’s not the most sophisticated critical laurel, but Eric Puchner’s new novel, “Dream State,� made me miss my subway stop.
That rarely happens.
FaMaybe it’s not the most sophisticated critical laurel, but Eric Puchner’s new novel, “Dream State,� made me miss my subway stop.
That rarely happens.
Falling asleep on the subway and waking up when my book hits the sticky floor? Yes, that happens with alarming frequency. But looking up from the pages and realizing that, in every sense, I’ve been transported away from where I live is a rare pleasure.
I suspect that’s also the quality that inspired Oprah to choose “Dream State� as the next title for her book club.
Although Puchner’s novel is a long, deep ride that traverses half a century, it never labors under the weight of its broad scope. Instead, with every chapter, the story feels animated only by the spontaneous possibilities of moments in which loyalty is respected or ignored, passion resisted or sated. That vast procession of Schrödinger’s cats, stretched out over the decades, gradually coalesces into a family history that feels monumental.
There’s lots to be done before the wedding, of course, so Charlie makes sure his best friend, Garrett, drops by to help. The trouble is, Garrett is a brooding figure with “one of those pitiable mold-length beards, less a fashion choice than a flag of surrender.� Puchner, who treats him tenderly even while laying out his considerable flaws, notes that Garrett’s “heart was...
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Early in Ada Calhoun’s debut novel, “Crush,� the narrator asks, “Why were so many tales about women’s sexuality so depressing?�
Even if you can’t stillEarly in Ada Calhoun’s debut novel, “Crush,� the narrator asks, “Why were so many tales about women’s sexuality so depressing?�
Even if you can’t still taste the arsenic on Madame Bovary’s lips, you know she’s right.
Women may � for the moment � be allowed to vote, own property and wear pants, but how they pursue and experience erotic pleasure remains more closely supervised than the purification of uranium. Of course, they’re free to step outside the confines of monogamy whenever they want, so long as they keep walking toward the waves.
In several nonfiction books, including “Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give� and “Why We Can’t Sleep,� Calhoun has been a reliable source of wit and insight on the way women respond to intimate and economic pressures. Now, her first work of fiction is not so much a revolution as a turn of that screw. “Crush� is the story of a middle-aged woman � vaguely Calhoun-shaped � who struggles to balance the demands of career, marriage and motherhood with the disruptive desire for passion.
A more cavalier critic might declare this a genuine trend: “Crush� makes a chummy companion to Miranda July’s “All Fours,� which was a finalist for a National Book Award last fall. Both novels feel tantalizingly autobiographical and subordinate storytelling to a wry critique of the sexual confines of marriage. What’s more, both novelists have developed voices that borrow from the confessional techniques of performers like Tig Notaro and Hannah Gadsby. Calhoun’s book, despite its enthusiasm for literary quotations, feels distinctly verbal � like an audiobook on paper.
The narrator of “Crush� introduces herself by assuring us that she learned her lesson early when she was called “a slut� in middle school. “The social retribution for having succumbed to lust,� she says, “taught me one of the highest-stakes lessons of womanhood: Desire must be....
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Anne Tyler’s new book is called “Three Days in June,� but it can happily be read during one day in February. A svelte, finely constructed novel, it’s Anne Tyler’s new book is called “Three Days in June,� but it can happily be read during one day in February. A svelte, finely constructed novel, it’s a story of self-sufficient loneliness that seems to defy the conventions of romantic comedy until it finally, gloriously gives in.
We meet the narrator, Gail Simmons, on one of those ordinary days that swerves off the road into a telephone pole. A flinty woman who cuts her own hair, Gail is an administrator at a girls school in Baltimore. On a Friday morning toward the end of the year, the headmistress casually calls her into the main office to let her know she’ll be absent the following Monday. And, oh, there’s one more thing she should mention: Gail, 61, will be pushed out of her job next year.
“Face it,� the headmistress says, “this job is a matter of people skills. You know that! And surely you’ll be the first to admit that social interactions have never been your strong point.�
It’s a credit to Tyler’s deft handling of perspective that despite how thoughtlessly this news is delivered, the headmistress seems to have a point. There’s something decidedly prickly about Gail. Her interior life is a chorus of critical observations on others� grammatical gaffes, sartorial missteps and excessive noise. “Someday,� Gail says, “I’d like to be given credit for all the times I have not said something that I could have said.� Even though we’ve known her for all of three pages, it’s hard to imagine her stroking a potential school donor or coddling some lazy legacy freshman.
“No one had ever told me before that I lacked people skills,� Gail thinks, before conceding, “Not in so many words.�
Still, her boss’s comments are too much. Shocked and hurt, Gail quits right then and walks out of the school without even cleaning her desk. “Someone could send it all to me later, I thought. Or throw it out; what did I care?�
Tyler fanatics like me will remember the opening of....
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Given the monastic pacing of Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional,� I suppose it’s appropriate that we’ve had to wait patiently for it. Wood’s fellGiven the monastic pacing of Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional,� I suppose it’s appropriate that we’ve had to wait patiently for it. Wood’s fellow Australians have been praising this story about a small abbey of nuns since the novel was published in 2023. Last year, it was a finalist for Britain’s Booker Prize. And now, as though publishing were operating by steam ship, “Stone Yard Devotional� has finally arrived in the United States.
It’s just as extraordinary as the whispers from abroad suggested. But don’t recommend it to your book club because if some of your members don’t like it � and some certainly won’t � you may not have the stamina to tolerate them any longer.
The unnamed narrator of “Stone Yard Devotional� is a woman of a certain age who’s joined a remote Catholic order � or, if not joined, at least moved in. With a caustic sense of wit and an unrelenting critical eye, she’s hardly the typical postulant. She’s troubled by “the savagery of the Catholic Church.� Shoveling compost is the closest she ever gets to prayer. She’s nauseated by sisters prattling on about how they “fell in love with Jesus.� Nobody asks, but she confesses that she’s an atheist.
And yet, for all the narrator’s self-conscious rejections of religion, “Stone Yard Devotional� is a deeply spiritual novel. Marilynne Robinson’s Calvinist heart might protest, but this tale of sojourn among the nuns is founded on the same rock of introspection that anchors the “Gilead� series. It’s a years-long night wrestling with an angel capable of dislocating a thigh or a life. Wood’s narrator pursues fundamentally spiritual concerns: What is our purpose? Can we be forgiven for acts of callousness and neglect? Why are we here?
Why the narrator is here in this abbey is a source of persistent mystery at the center of “Stone Yard Devotional.� On her first visit, she says, “The place has the feel of a 1970s health resort or eco-commune, but is not....
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