Articles by Emily St. John Mandel
January 19, 2012
Dark Pensées: Fraser Nixon’s The Man Who Killed 2
Fraser Nixon’s debut novel is a fast, sharp piece of work. Novels with plots and titles like this one are easily filed under crime fiction, but this is one of countless instances where artificial divisions of genre do readers a disservice.
December 17, 2011
Year in Reading: Emily St. John Mandel 2
There’s a body in the first chapter, but the real story here isn’t the crime; it’s the extent to which we’re willing to lie to ourselves, to ignore the obvious, in pursuit of happiness or companionship or love.
November 30, 2011
Naples and The Gallery 2
John Horne Burns’ The Gallery was his first book, a chronicle of the chaos and beauty and horror of occupied Naples in 1943 and 1944. It’s an interesting hybrid: a novel in which stories alternate with an elegant travelogue, and the travelogue appears to be the author’s memoir: “I remember that at Casablanca it dawned on me that maybe I’d come overseas to die.”
November 23, 2011
Staff Pick: Steve Erickson’s Zeroville 5
Zeroville is a work of surpassing strangeness and beauty. Vikar is possesed by movies, and he’s come to the promised land. He has a tattoo of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift on his shaved head, a red tear drop inked below an eye.
September 28, 2011
Very Bad Things: A Pessimistic Reading List 9
Troubling works of fiction for troubled times.
September 16, 2011
Staff Pick: Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock 0
In Kenneth Fearing’s 1946 noir novel, a Manhattan writer is given the unenviable task of tracking himself down.