Articles by Emily St. John Mandel
May 18, 2011
Migrations: A Reading List 6
Migration in its various forms is at the heart of a great many of my favorite plots in fiction. But beyond that it seems to me that migration, as an idea of motion, is inextricable from good fiction. Your characters must change—they must move, psychically at least, from point A to point B—and the plot must move forward.
April 28, 2011
A Guest in the Night City 1
If the night city is a territory, Nightshift NYC stands as an essential guide.
April 14, 2011
Staff Pick: Two Crime Novels 12
The most recent books I’ve read in the genre confirm my long-held suspicion that attempting to categorize books by genre does readers a disservice; these books are no less literary than any of the other great books I’ve read this year, they just have crimes and/or guns in them.
March 28, 2011
Heartland of Darkness: Timothy Schaffert’s Midwestern Trilogy 6
It seems to me that we could be almost anywhere, in any place far off the beaten track. Schaffert’s Bonnevilla is so sketchily rendered that it’s easy to project the places you’ve known over it.
March 14, 2011
The Chameleon Machine 8
Digital readers and paper books have little in common. But both objects have considerable merit, and this is why I think we should combine the two.
February 22, 2011
Mold, Gin, and the Apocalypse: Lars Iyer’s Spurious 1
I feel some kinship with Lars, the narrator of Lars Iyer’s Spurious, a debut novel and a meditation on friendship, failure, the apocalypse, messianism, and mold.
