Staff Picks
August 25, 2010
Staff Pick: This is England 0
by Lydia Kiesling
At the start, the film’s world is shaped by Thatcher and the Falklands and council housing and having no money; the youth, as is their wont, are acting out and wearing silly clothes.
August 19, 2010
Staff Pick: Larry Watson’s Montana 1948 0
by Emily St. John Mandel
I spent a great deal of time on tour this summer, reading at bookstores from southern California to New Hampshire, and I encountered Larry Watson’s Montana 1948 toward the end of all this, a hot day in Ann Arbor when I had some time to kill before an event.
August 18, 2010
Staff Pick: Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap 3
by Patrick Brown
Like a highly erotic Cheever novel, The Slap skewers the middle class while giving them their humanity and even, at times, a bit of sympathy.
June 28, 2010
Staff Pick: Nick Reding’s Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town 1
by Emily St. John Mandel
The scope of Methland is vast. Nick Reding looks at every angle of the meth epidemic, from the political machinations affecting the sale of ephedrine to the Mexican drug cartels that move the drug across borders. The narrative focus of the book, however, is on a single small town.
May 27, 2010
Staff Picks: Andrey Platonov’s Soul 3
by Garth Risk Hallberg
These eight stories reveal Platonov as an incomparable stylist and an utterly singular sensibility. Indeed, as in only the greatest art, the two form a perfect unity.
May 19, 2010
Staff Pick: Emma Straub’s Fly-Over state 3
by Emily St. John Mandel
I have a well-documented weakness for indie publishers, and Fly-Over State was published by one of the indiest entities I’ve ever come across.
