Articles by Emily St. John Mandel
January 16, 2013
Shadows and Electricity: Juliann Garey’s Too Bright To Hear Too Loud To See 0
Greyson Todd is a man on a wire. He has excelled as a studio executive in Hollywood, and has everything that one’s supposed to want: a kind and supportive spouse, a lovely child. Money, beautiful house, glamourous career. But he’s been hiding a bipolar disorder for two decades, and it’s getting harder and harder to breathe.
December 9, 2012
A Year in Reading: Emily St. John Mandel 2
It’s a mesmerizing, precisely-written, sad, and very violent tale, with unexpected flashes of humor.
November 29, 2012
A Younger, Stranger America: On Harry Houdini’s The Right Way to Do Wrong 0
The collection functions as a glimpse into a fascinating world of low-rent, high-risk stunt performing that’s largely faded away.
November 27, 2012
Invisible Borders: Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke 0
Hamid’s first novel, recently re-released, was published not long after Pakistan tested its first nuclear weapons, and the arms race between Pakistan and India form the jittery backdrop to a harrowing story of a man’s descent.
October 18, 2012
Back in the USSR: On Maurice DeKobra’s The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars 0
This is the kind of book that gets described as “a delightful romp” in press materials, and that’s not an inaccurate description of a book that functions beautifully as both send-up of high society and globe-spanning adventure story, but the novel has a deathly serious core.
October 15, 2012
Strange Long Dream: Justin Cronin’s The Twelve 3
Once again Cronin has superbly handled the difficult task of writing a character-driven adventure story. The vampires remain terrifying, but they’re arguably less terrifying than the humans who have decided to collaborate with them in order to survive.