Busting borders: the gut-punch fiction of Don Winslow
The American crime writer Don Winslow opened the 2019 Toronto International Festival of authors with an insightful conversation about writing, genre, and the U.S. war on drugs.
Thieves in the night: “The Body-Snatcher” by Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1884 chiller “The Body-Snatcher” is a tale of supernatural horror with moral overtones.
Anatomy of melancholy: Kevin Barry’s Night Boat to Tangier
Kevin Barry’s third novel features two career criminals waiting at a seedy Spanish port for the arrival of the estranged daughter of one of them.
Harold Bloom, proponent of the literary sublime, dies at age 89
Harold Bloom antagonized academics and cultural theorists, but remained a staunch advocate of transcendence through literature.
On regarding the lives of others: Benjamin Moser’s biography of Susan Sontag
Benjamin Moser’s biography of Susan Sontag presents its subject as a mass of contradictions.
Copy of D.H. Lawrence novel from landmark obscenity trial remains in U.K.
A copy of D.H. Lawrence’s notorious novel, marked up by a British judge’s wife, will remain in the U.K. following a successful crowdfunding campaign.
Shocking and frankly aversive: “A Member of the Family” by Muriel Spark
Muriel Spark’s pitiless treatment of her characters is on full display in the merciless irony of “A Member of the Family.”
Long and short: Ducks, Newburyport and the art of the aphorism
In addition to being a sprawling and complex work of fiction, Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport offers a master class in the art of the aphorism.
White water rafting along the stream of consciousness: Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport
In its entirety, Ducks, Newburyport represents a towering fictional edifice that is as engaging and readable as it is formally ambitious.