Memoirs transcend personal experience
She leans in and tells me a story. There are two sisters, she says, both in their 70s. Each possesses a ferociously "true" version of a shared childhood scene. All...
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Review: ‘The Signature of All Things’ by Elizabeth Gilbert
Success is a glory, a phenomenon, a sly intoxication. It is also a haunting, a probable curse. For how is one to dream beyond the answered dream? How might one...
Review: ‘The Color Master’ by Aimee Bender
We gathered in a circle in the side room and talked about mirrors, and still water, and wells, and feeling understood, and opals, and then we did a creative-writing exercise...
Review: ‘The Engagements’ by J. Courtney Sullivan
Among the N. W. Ayer & Son advertising slogans that shaped the way 20th century Americans thought — "When It Rains It Pours" (Morton Salt), "Reach Out and Touch Someone"...
Review: ‘The Interestings’ by Meg Wolitzer
Caution: This review of "The Interestings" — a supremely engrossing, deeply knowing, genius-level enterprise — is in danger of becoming all about me. I blame the author, Meg Wolitzer. I...
Review: ‘The Interestings’ by Meg Wolitzer
Caution: This review of "The Interestings" — a supremely engrossing, deeply knowing, genius-level enterprise — is in danger of becoming all about me. I blame the author, Meg Wolitzer. I...
‘Mary Coin’ imagines ‘Migrant Mother’s’ life
A photograph, Marisa Silver writes at the end of her new novel, "Mary Coin," is "an alchemy of fact and invention that produces something recognizable as the truth. But it...
‘Reply to a Letter from Helga’: A love letter from Iceland
"Old Lady Age" is doing her job on Bjarni Gíslason of Kolkustadir. The elderly Hay Officer's knees are stiff, his thoughts circle and he is restless with the need to...
Book review of American Dervish
Readers of "American Dervish," the debut novel by Ayad Akhtar, might best approach the book understanding three things. To begin with, Akhtar is a first-generation Pakistani-American who has long aspired,...
Book review of American Dervish
Readers of "American Dervish," the debut novel by Ayad Akhtar, might best approach the book understanding three things. To begin with, Akhtar is a first-generation Pakistani-American who has long aspired,...