In Claire Keegan’s fiction, each sentence matters and each, sometimes very ordinary, action has real consequences.
Book Review: Colette’s “Chéri” and “The End of Chéri” — Tales of Love and Morality
A superb new translation in one volume of the two Chéri novellas, regarded as Colette’s masterwork.
Book Appreciation: A.B. Yehoshua’s “Mr. Mani” — A Great Work of Fiction
A.B. Yehoshua was anything but a provincial Israeli writer. He was literary giant whose imaginative gift was so striking and diverse that you never knew what he would do next.
Book Review: “Hemingway’s Widow” — Not a Pretty Story
We now have a book that virtually closes the circle on Hemingway’s women, a biography that will be treasured by the author’s fans and scholars.
Book Review: “Letters to Camondo” — An Essential Testament to Jewish Memory and History
This is an extraordinarily beautiful book, its present tense prose creating “an atmosphere of literature,” in Virginia Woolf’s words, its honest probing as illuminating as anything you will read about what it means to be Jewish.
Book Review: Elizabeth Warren and Alexander S. Vindman — Gifted with a Moral Compass
The idea of America is elusive and sometimes, like right now, in danger of disappearing. That is why I have found myself turning for comfort to two books that can give us some perspective as to how to move forward.
Documentary Review: PBS’s “Hemingway” — Inside an American Legend
If you love fiction you should devote several hours to watching Hemingway. Ken Burns and Lynn Novick have brought a special tenderness to this series, something deeper and more compelling than previous Burns documentaries.
Book Review: Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” — Closing the Circle, Perfectly
This is a great work, more linear than Tom Stoppard’s earlier dramas, yet filled with such intelligence and compassion that it will be read and seen for years and years and, perhaps, over time be regarded as his richest, most haunting play.
Book Review: “Renato!” — Novelist Eugene Mirabelli, Creator of Inwardness
What a pleasure it is to revel in this work, which expresses enduring values in such an original way.
Book Review: Colum McCann’s “Apeirogon” — Showing a Path Forward
Although some of Apeirogon is painful, this novel can inspire you to think differently and even to act, which is surely welcome after this horrible year in which we have all felt so helpless.