For The Book Obsessed
[ad_1] When the great Patrick Modiano says he is writing a detective story, rest assured it won’t be a Sherlock-esque exhibition of armchair deductions or Poirot-like psychoanalysis of a criminal. Most likely, there won’t even be a crime. Jean Eyben, the narrator of Modiano’s Invisible Ink, is barely a detective. He really only spent a … Read more
[ad_1] In Frazer Lee’s Greyfriars Reformatory, Emily Drake has no memory of what she did to get sent to the imposing brick institution she first sees looming before her through the window of a prisoner transport bus. It will be her prison until and unless she submits to experimental psychological treatment designed to cure her … Read more
[ad_1] Nikki Giovanni—one of the great poets of any generation—still has much to impart in Make Me Rain, her hybrid autobiography of poems and prose. Given the tumultuous aspects of 2020, the disruptions and dislocations of quotidian and public life, there’s a refreshing discordance in reading Giovanni’s newest and especially personal collection. Throughout the book, … Read more
[ad_1] Antonin Artaud was one of the foundational voices in establishing the modern avant garde. His famous writings on The Theater and Its Double, and Theatre of Cruelty, place him alongside Breton and Brecht in creating the contemporary understanding of avant-garde practice. This new collection, Artaud the Mômo, draws from his last period of writing, … Read more
[ad_1] Burning Worlds is Amy Brady’s monthly column dedicated to examining how contemporary literature interrogates issues of climate change, in partnership with Yale Climate Connections. Subscribe to her monthly newsletter to get “Burning Worlds” and other writing about art and climate change delivered straight to your inbox. Called the “greatest political novelist” of our time by the New Yorker, … Read more
[ad_1] The following is an excerpt from Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel The Ministry for the Future. It is a work of fiction. Courtesy of Hachette Book Group. Following the great Indian heat wave, the emergency meeting of the Paris Agreement signatories was fraught indeed. The Indian delegation arrived in force, and their leader Chandra Mukajee … Read more
[ad_1] The many hauntings of a mother’s body coalesce in Hinge, a new poetry collection by Molly Spencer. With stories ranging from the ancient myths of Persephone and Demeter to the modern folklore of Peter Pan, Hinge examines a girl’s dreams alongside a mother’s fears. In Spencer’s poetry, pain is chronic in the body, persistent … Read more
[ad_1] In 1902 at The Brookhants School for Girls, The Story of Mary MacLane is found on the bodies of Flo and Clara, two girls, in love, stung to death by yellow jackets in an apple orchard. The little red book mysteriously disappears, only to be found again and again by the women who need … Read more
[ad_1] This Virtual Night returns us to “The Outworlds,” C.S. Friedman’s quietly intriguing science-fictional universe. The world Friedman painted in 1998’s This Alien Shore, a cyberpunk-flavored space adventure, felt ahead of its time: entire cultures built around physical and mental diversity, with strange and evocative embellishments. In this future, humanity settled distant planets using a … Read more
[ad_1] Marc Kelly Smith, nicknamed “Slam Papi,” founded international slam poetry in the 1980s when he started the monumental Uptown Poetry Slam series at the Green Mill. Each Sunday night, he attracted misfits and poets from across Chicago and its suburbs to exchange words, including the likes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Patricia Smith, who provides … Read more