Reviews

Her Well-Spent Adulthood: On Meghan Daum’s ‘The Unspeakable’

- | 2
In its own, understated, comic way, The Unspeakable is a very ambitious book, one that attempts to chart a personal evolution, while at the same time acknowledging that the idea of personal growth is at best absurd.
- | 2
● ● ●
Reviews

Writing Out West: On Charles D’Ambrosio’s Loitering

- | 2
What I admired most about these essays is the way each one takes its own shape, never conforming to an expected narrative or feeling the need to answer all the questions housed within. D’Ambrosio allows his essays their ambivalence.
- | 2
● ● ●
Screening Room

One Long Country Song: What Friday Night Lights Taught Me About Storytelling

- | 7
I watched Friday Night Lights in real time, as it aired. I wonder if it would have been as much of an influence if I had “binged-watched” all five seasons back-to-back in one or two months’ time. Instead, the show stretched out over the course of five years, 2006-2011, which for me were years when I had to throw out most of the fiction I wrote.
- | 7
● ● ●
Reviews

Scraps of Prayers: On Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing

- | 2
Yes, this book actually gave me nightmares. And yet I did not want to stop reading it.
- | 2
● ● ●
Reviews

The Sublime and the Odious: On Joseph Luzzi’s My Two Italies

- | 1
My Two Italies is a hybrid memoir, both a recollection of personal experience and growth and also a scholarly look at the long-standing divide between Italy’s north and south -- the north characterized by wealth and culture, and the south by poverty and crime. For Luzzi, the divide is personally felt.
- | 1
● ● ●
Reviews

Should We Talk About The Weather? Frankenstein, Fear, and the “Year Without Summer”

- | 1
Wood sees the eruption of Tambora and its devastating after-effects as a case study for rapid climate change, arguing that the years post-Tambora offer “a rare, clear window onto a world convulsed by weather extremes, with human communities everywhere struggling to adapt to sudden, radical shifts in temperatures and rainfall.”
- | 1
● ● ●
Reviews

What To Expect When 30 Women Write About Giving Birth: On Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers

-
There’s nothing watered-down about the stories in this volume: they are blunt, wistful, confessional, wise, loving, sorrowful, witty and sometimes eerie.
-
● ● ●
Reviews

Short Stories, Italian Style: On Francesca Marciano’s The Other Language

- | 2
A new dress, a change of scene, a spontaneous invitation: Marciano understands that these are the superficial actions people take in order to get at the deeper impulses they cannot name.
- | 2
● ● ●
Reviews

Lost In The Sierras: On Michelle Huneven’s Off Course

-
Off Course casts a very strong spell. The fairy tale theme is pervasive and like all good fairy tales, there is a sense of unease, of darkness unseen.
-
● ● ●
Reviews

Guerilla Grandma: On Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World

- | 4
Set in the New York art world, The Blazing World tells the story of Harriet Burden, an accomplished, middle-aged artist so frustrated by her lack of stature that she arranges for three younger male artists to show her work as their own.
- | 4
● ● ●
The Millions Interview

Writing The UnAmericans: An Interview With Molly Antopol

- | 1
I want to know who is in the most complicated place in the situation and then I’ll see how the environment is informing their lives.
- | 1
● ● ●
Year in Reading

A Year In Reading: Hannah Gersen

-
This year the books I liked best fell into two categories: tortoises and hares.
-
● ● ●
Lists Notable Articles

The Ultimate List: 25 Gifts That Writers Will Actually Use

- | 15
● ●
Reviews

Life and Counterlife: Roth Unbound by Claudia Roth Pierpont

- | 2
One thing that makes Roth Unbound interesting is that Pierpont was able to interview Roth in the first years of his retirement. You can feel Roth’s reflective, relaxed state of mind as he looks back on his career, cataloging his regrets and triumphs.
- | 2
● ● ●
Reviews

The Smile in the Bone: Lore Segal’s Half The Kingdom

-
Anyone who has ever passed time in a hospital will find something recognizable and true in Lore Segal’s new novel, Half The Kingdom.
-
● ● ●
The Millions Interview

The Pleasures And Perils Of Writing About Writing: An Interview With Dani Shapiro

- | 2
Initially I had a blog because everyone told me to have a blog. And when I started, I thought what can I regularly blog about that feels like a deep enough well? And the answer was: the process of writing. The creative process itself. What it takes to do the work, what are the pitfalls and the joys, the struggles and the privileges. We do what we do alone in a room. Yet we’re struggling with the blank pages.
- | 2
● ● ●
Essays

Playing Survivor on Novel Island

- | 1
“The babies know just what they need to do,” observed one seasoned mother, watching my son on the playground. He was standing at an iron gate performing what honestly looked like a series of leg-strengthening exercises. He was very focused, very serious. He didn’t need a sign reminding him not to start any new projects.
- | 1
● ● ●
Staff Picks

Lost Worlds: On Stephanie Vaughn’s Sweet Talk

- | 2
There is ambivalence toward authority throughout Sweet Talk, something more than the usual coming-of-age disillusionment, as Gemma confronts the dark side of military culture. It’s an ambivalence that feels especially relevant now, as Americans look back on a decade of war overseas.
- | 2
● ● ●