Tag: book reviews

A new homeowner reads two novels that revolve around surreal home-invasion scenarios, and considers what it is about his house that scares him.

In a new book, Camille Laurens examines the life of the model for Degas’ masterpiece, “Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen.” But there’s still so much we don’t know.

In Esmé Weijun Wang’s book of personal essays, “The Collected Schizophrenias,” it’s the reader, not the writer, who is an unreliable narrator.

When a refugee flees to another country and claims asylum, she is, in effect, petitioning the state to listen to her story.

Recent books by economists who hope to “save capitalism” dismiss popular ideas as “just politics.” But why assume the popular is the enemy of the good?

In a new memoir, Sophia Shalmiyev attempts to reunite with her missing mother through scraps, signs, and surrogates.

In Elizabeth McCracken’s new novel “Bowlaway,” the past and future are mysteriously entangled.

When asked if there was “anything people don’t understand” about him, Gorey responded: “Yes. No. Yes. No.” A new biography by Mark Dery attempts to sort myth from reality.

Solarpunk, a new genre of science fiction, demands radical optimism of its writers and readers. It takes the apocalypse as given, but doesn’t assume the worst of people living through it.

In Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s fantastical short story collection, the strangest fantasy of all is that people try to act morally in a corrupt world.

“Winners Take All” is an indictment of the insular, Disneyfied world of Ted Talks, “thought leaders” and philanthropy as self-help for rich people. But does it go far enough?

In two recent books about immigrant families seeking asylum in the U.S., the authors’ attempts to help become part of their subjects’ stories.

A woman out of her mind, locked in an apartment. This, I believed, was the optimal, and probably only, condition under which art could be made.

New books about the opioid crisis — “Dopesick,” “Fight for Space” and “American Fix” — have different ideas about who’s to blame and what to do next. Our critic says regulating supply can have deadly consequences, and we need to address users’ pain.

Joan Morgan’s “She Begat This” looks back at how Lauryn Hill crashed through hip-hop’s glass ceiling, while our critic looks at how the author and a cadre of black women writers did the same for hip-hop music journalism.

In Mario Chard’s “Land of Fire,” was it the truth or a lie that killed the migrants in the desert? And what if that’s the wrong question? What if we say it was a horse?

The invisible language of film permeates Christian Kracht’s “The Dead,” prose that is neutral and shot through with so much darkness, you occasionally can’t find the light.

Memoir is always a betrayal. When writing about life in queer subcultures, the harm of honesty can feel even greater.

Michiko Kakutani is interested in how the distinction between fact and fiction has blurred — and how this makes us all complicit.

A lot of women loved Hemingway. Should you?

Ukrainian author and poet Serhiy Zhadan writes about resisting corruption and coping with loss in a society that is spiraling senselessly into conflict.

In the New York Review of Books, Bill McKibben uses his review of David Sax’s new book, The Revenge of Analog to meditate on the enduring joys of playing board games or writing things with paper and pen, and how they keep us grounded in our humanity.

“When it came time for July to speak, she stood up and started singing. She was large-eyed and lithe. I don’t remember what song it was—something she had written herself, I believe. I was startled. Who was this woman?”

In 1961, Joan Didion reviewed J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey for The National Review.