For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] For all the antagonizing, ruminating, and even moralizing that comes with defining the parameters of literary fiction, perhaps the one point of (near-) universal agreement debators enjoy is over the notion that such a book should be in some way realistic, should faithfully reflect life and those who live it. How this is to … Read more
[ad_1] In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial, by Mona Chollet, is a revelatory collection of histories and experiences that have been carefully ignored across centuries of time. Even a devoted reader will find it difficult to think of a book besides Chollet’s that does … Read more
[ad_1] Among the array of ignorant comments some Americans make about immigrants is one that anyone is lucky to live here. Setting aside this country’s terrible history (and very flawed present), such reductionist remarks ignore the significant costs of leaving one’s home country. Sindya Bhanoo’s debut story collection, Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, confronts these tolls head-on, … Read more
[ad_1] I’ve heard people claim that they wish that they were religious in the fundamentalist mode, because it would be so much easier. Easier, they mean, because while the non-believer is a grown-up person who understands that God—like Santa; or like notions of fairness and romance—is dead, the believer still trusts with childish naivety in … Read more
[ad_1] Maybe it’s odd to compare your husband’s cancer diagnosis to the plot of Lost. Maybe it’s odd to recognize the absurdity of death’s first partial hold on us in the structure of a television show. Yet this is precisely what Kathryn Davis does in her memoir: she sees that “the system governing [cancer’s] bestowal … Read more
[ad_1] In Rebecca Kauffman’s fourth novel, Chorus, family relationships, especially those between siblings, are dissected to expose all their messy and glorious complexities. Kauffman accomplishes her dissection of the Shaw family through a linked-story structure. The narrator’s role rotates among the seven Shaw siblings and their father and spans from 1911 to 1959, though not … Read more
[ad_1] “Branding.” Authors hear that word a lot: what’s your brand, how are you branding yourself, does X fit with your brand? Over the course of a writing career, many authors focus on a particular genre, era, or setting to brand their work. But even when you’re perfectly happy in your genre and your brand—like … Read more
[ad_1] My knowledge of Tamil is limited to my father’s voice. It is not his first language but it’s the one, to him, forever linked to literature. I recognize the lilt and sounds of the Tamil language but am unable to read it written, or even parse out individual spoken words. It is with gratitude … Read more
[ad_1] Some people live without needing literature. They summer in vacation homes, host parties, marry sweethearts with perfect smiles, bear children who will become not followers but influencers, and pass peacefully in their sleep with smooth faces. The rest of us read books. We chase romance at bonfires and dive bars, trudge through blizzards for … Read more
[ad_1] When we first meet Mira, the protagonist of Sheila Heti’s stunning, elegiac new novel Pure Colour, the universe is a roughly hewn first draft destined for the rubbish bin. Mira has just been accepted to study at the American Academy of American Critics. She works at a lamp store surrounded by bijoux glass. Her … Read more