For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] Author of the Arab American Book Award-winning When We Were Arabs, Massoud Hayoun has two novels out this year: Building 46, which was released in May, and Last Night in Brighton, which will be released this week. Together, these two make up the Ghorba Ghost Story Series, which is a curious categorization for books … Read more
[ad_1] Take a chill pill” is a harmless enough—albeit rude—imperative: Calm down. Relax. Hush. But the phrase quickly transforms from harmless to insidious with a brief Internet search. Not only can you buy Chill Pills® for “natural relief” from anxiety and insomnia, but “chill pill” is, historically, a slang term for ADHD medication. The phrase … Read more
[ad_1] Jamil Jan Kochai was sitting with his parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins on the second story of his aunt’s home in Logar, Afghanistan, sipping tea and taking in the evening breeze around sunset, when his phone buzzed, and he saw that he was tagged in a tweet by the National Book Foundation. But before … Read more
[ad_1] As a queer ex-Catholic from New England now living in the Midwest, reading Jeanna Kadlec’s memoir, Heretic, felt like staring at a reversed image. She’s a lesbian ex-Evangelical Christian that moved from the Midwest to Boston, and her debut explores the ways Evangelicalism–especially white American Evangelicalism–shaped her early life, sense of self, and ultimately … Read more
[ad_1] Fatimah Asghar’s debut novel, When We Were Sisters, reads exactly like you want your poems to. It’s vivid, lyrical and taut. A poet, screenwriter and, now, a novelist, Asghar weaves personal history and the struggle for identity in a coming of age story. Much like Asghar, the protagonist, Kausar is femme, queer, Muslim, South … Read more
[ad_1] Chicago-based novelist Deborah Shapiro’s third novel Consolation came out October 18, with an event The Seminary Co-op on November 1st. Her first novel, The Sun in Your Eyes, was published by William Morrow in 2016, and her second, The Summer Demands, by Catapult in 2019. However, she decided to create her own imprint, B-side … Read more
[ad_1] For years, I’ve read Kristine Langley Mahler’s essays and have come to expect inventive structures, sentences that are taut and on-target, and a meticulous attention to detail. These signatures are no doubt present in her debut essay collection, Curing Season: Artifacts, which explores and catalogs four years of the author’s adolescence spent in suburban … Read more
[ad_1] When we select a book from the shelf and open its pristine pages, we might believe the process of producing that book was smooth, even dreamy. We might imagine the author sat down, and the words arrived to her perfectly formed, the characters coherent, the plot sure-footed. Sara Lippmann would likely disagree with you. … Read more
[ad_1] Short story author and novelist Elizabeth McCracken has just published a book, The Hero of This Story, in which the main character is Natalie Jacobson McCracken, educator, writer, and former editor-in-chief of Boston University alumni magazine, Bostonia. Elizabeth herself is the narrator of this novel. And, also, the daughter of Natalie. In the novel. … Read more
[ad_1] It’s Not Nothing is the kind of novel that you can’t help but to savor. Every sentence, every turn of phrase is liable to catch you off guard—knock you off center—crack you up or kill you. In it, protagonist Rosemary Candwell shuffles in and out of bars, hourly jobs, and institutions, trying to grasp … Read more