Roberta Silman
When the performance ended and I sat there, silent, reveling with the rest of the audience in the goose bumps that inevitably occur after such an experience, I knew, in my bones, that no movie, however good, could be as good as this.
Read MoreFor anyone interested in classical music, “Motherless Child” is a novel to be savored. And there is no doubt that Zeitlin has gotten those details right. She is the widow of the great violinist and teacher, Zvi Zeitlin, who died this past May at 90.
Read MoreYou are hardly aware of the historical facts. Kate Grenville internalizes them so completely in her novel there is not a sentence that “stinks of history,” as a friend of mine once said about whole historical fiction genre.
Read MoreIn his novel, Sayed Kashua paints such a vivid picture of modern Jerusalem that I found myself longing to see that city again; he also portrays a whole spectrum of Arab life in Israel — from the poor families visited by the social workers to the ambitious Arab mothers and their sometimes feckless sons — with empathy and humor.
Read MoreOf the major 20th-century writers in English, Patrick White stands with the best, partly because he refused to repeat himself, and partly because he refuses to tell you everything, so that when you read him there is a sense of discovery.
Read MoreIn spare, exact prose Cristian Comencini lets this story unfold against an Alpine setting that is so vivid it, too, becomes a character in this strangely compelling novel.
Read More“The O’Briens” is a good sink-your-teeth-into read that explores the capricious nature of destiny with grace and humor and shows great compassion for its characters.
Read MoreIn “Gatz,” F Scott Fitzgerald’s words come at the audience like bullets because they are so relevant to so much of American life today. And create the kind of catharsis, that peculiar combination of pity and fear, that is the mark of truly great theater.
Read MoreA strange mix of characters who all have complicated pasts gives rise to a novel that blossoms — exactly as a flower does — into a complex drama that includes several points of view and a wide range of emotions.
Read MoreSome fiction can, literally, have the smell of too much research. And so, although I admire the ambition and scope of Audrey Schulman’s new novel, “Three Weeks in December,” I also feel that she made things harder for herself than she needed to.
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Arts Remembrance: To Sérgio with Love — Sérgio Mendes, 1941–2024