Articles in Features
Second Glance: Another City
Mark Wallace’s novels won’t be found at a Barnes & Noble, and that may be a shame beyond words: both Dead Carnival and The Quarry and the Lot reveal haunting truths and wrestle language into terrifying attitudes.
American Aristocracy: Gods of Copley Square – Magic 1
A startling triptych illuminates the crossroads of social, racial, and sexual identity in the Copley Square of a century ago, as “The Gods of Copley Square” continues
It’s a Mystery: “Half of the future is buried in the past”
Two seductive thrillers: one starring a fearless female cop, the other a boatload of washed-up MI5 spies.
American Aristocracy | GODS OF COPLEY SQUARE | Centerpiece 7
“The Gods of Copley Square”s spirited multi-part examination of Boston’s Trinity Church (and its indomitable bishop-saint) comes to its conclusion right where it should: at the heart of worship
It’s a Mystery: “Never share intelligence you don’t need to share”
In a duo of new thrillers – one a debut, the other by a practiced hand – two tough, enterprising female FBI agents add new twists to the template first popularized by Agent Clarice Starling in “The Silence of the Lambs”
Second Glance: A Virgil or Two
He may not have anything new to tell us today, but as Spencer Lenfield demonstrates, Gilbert Highet’s friendly, engaging pedagogy is still rare enough to keep him relevant.
It’s a Mystery: “The most successful criminals don’t look the part”
Ghostman, by Roger Hobbs, is a dazzling debut that deserves a place as a benchmark of the crime-thriller genre
From the Archives: Seer Blest
Frank Kermode consumed all of the tumultuous 20th century’s literary theories without being consumed by them. A look at the work of this wisest of secular clerics.
Absent Friends: “Warm, funny, sad, true … It is Perfect”
“The proper function of a critic is to save a tale from the artist who created it” wrote D. H. Lawrence, but sometimes – most of the time – despite the best efforts of the best critics, both tale and artist disappear. What do we do with the criti-cal darlings of yesteryear, now filling the library bargain sale? And what of the critics, who called them imperishable?
Humor: Wayward Authors Nabbed!
The startling revelations in Anonymous turn out to be only the beginning: literary sleuths have uncovered a slew of other authorial misdemeanors.
American Aristocracy: Gods of Copley Square – Centerpiece 6
Lost to history, here re-discovered, Trinity Chancel –”a daring enterprise in its day, as original an expression and as unique as was the genius of the American people.”
It’s a Mystery: “To the dead we owe only truth”
Watching the Dark, the latest in Peter Robinson’s Inspector Banks series, shows the master crime writer at the top of his form.
Second Glance: Jane Collier’s Burn Book
Long before Hairpin and Jezebel, Jane Collier, under the influence of Jonathan Swift, was savagely satirizing women’s ettiquette guides in her work An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting. Chris R. Morgan revisits the caustic classic.
It’s a Mystery: “Life is what happens to ‘trust no one’”
Dan Fesperman’s The Double Game is a complex literary novel of intrigue that makes spy fiction a central character, “doubling” the reading pleasure.
American Aristocracy: Gods of Copley Square – Centerpiece 5
A rumor of Narnia at Trinity Church prompts two questions. Can a building have a spiritual life? Can a work of art not? Phillips Brooks and the idea of ecstasy
Our Year in Reading 2012
In this special feature, we look back at some highlights of the reading we did in 2012.
Our Year in Reading 2012 Continues
In this special feature, we look back at some highlights of the reading we did in 2012.
The Prince of the Powers of the Air
Anthony Burgess is famous, but not for his best book. John Cotter sees your A Clockwork Orange and raises you the new Europa edition of Earthly Powers.
American Aristocracy: Gods of Copley Square – Centerpiece 4
“Truth is Catholic, but the search for it is Protestant,” quoth W.H. Auden, and this month Phillips Brooks is at Lourdes, of all places, his liking for which can only be explained by his experiences at Benares.
It’s A Mystery: “Three things that come without asking: fear, love and jealousy.”
A city in northern England and a remote Scottish island are appropriately bleak settings to launch two impressive new series.
It’s a Mystery: “The only way a man learns the true spirit of a rock is to stub his toe on it”
William Kent Krueger and Steve Hamilton, authors of two critically acclaimed series, have winning new detective novels. Irma Heldman reviews.
This Light is Enough
Renowned reviewer and cultural critic Daniel Mendelsohn has a scintillating new collection of his recent work; John Cotter and Steve Donoghue compare notes on “Waiting for the Barbarians”
American Aristocracy: Gods of Copley Square – Centerpiece 3
“Perhaps a little drunk might answer” was Phillips Brooks’s idea of how to view Pre-Raphaelite art, several masterpieces of which he commissioned for Trinity Church. “Centerpiece” continues.
American Aristocracy: Gods Of Copley Square – Centerpiece 2
Henry Adams on the road to Chartres, Phillips Brooks on the Madonna of the prairie, and John La Farge on why he worried Trinity Church had “no heart” — The Gods of Copley Square continues
It’s a Mystery: “Nobody escaped the desire for vengeance. Nobody.”
The seventeenth Lee Child is vintage Jack Reacher and the eighth Louise Penny is, as always, compelling and charismatic
From the Archives: Peer Review: Paul Auster Perplexes
Five years ago Sam Sacks surveyed the reviews of Paul Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium, which caused some confused tail-chasing amongst its critics.
American Aristocracy: Gods Of Copley Square – Centerpiece 1
Byzantium rediscovered. An American in Venice and a forgotten Madonna (which breaks the rules) in Copley Square. Behold an American Hagia Sophia
It’s a Mystery: “No one is infallible or invisible”
A rare film is the centerpiece of Syndrome E, a cutting-edge, mesmerizing thriller.
Divorce Corps
History’s most famous divorce shook the world and changed history, but it took much more than a king snapping his fingers to make it happen – obscure men on fast horses risked their livelihoods and their lives to line up the paperwork.
American Aristocracy: The Gods of Copley Square – Fanfare
HH Richardson waxing, Louis Sullivan watching: America’s first school of architecture at MIT. To science and technology add art and religion, and immigrants sculpting the sister of the Statue of Liberty.
It’s a Mystery: “Every man has his price”
Two scalpel-sharp political thrillers that mark the welcome return of the thoroughly winning, charismatic protagonists: Charlie Muffin and Joe DeMarco.
From the Archives: Cato of the Antipodes
Open Letters mourns the loss of Gore Vidal, sine qua non, ne plus ultra
Summer Reading 2012
As the haze and heat of summer kick into full swing, the folk of Open Letters break out their annual Summer Reading recommendations!
On the Scent: An Interview with Alyssa Harad
The author of Coming to My Senses in conversation with our own example of a very special breed of aesthete, the perfume lover.
American Aristocracy: The Gods of Copley Square – Cornerstone
Boston’s iconic Copley Square – with its Trinity Church and its Public Library – is a present-day tourist hotspot, but those visitors hardly suspect the deep and rich history of the area. American Aristocracy continues.
What the Duchess of Argyll’s Maid told Dicky Pigg-Wilcott’s Valet at Ascot in ’08!
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was a cherished and beloved fixture of the British royal family for almost a century (and would certainly have stolen the show at her daughter’s Diamond Jubilee, had she lived to see it) – but a new book claims the Queen Mum was just an ordinary human being – and not always a very nice one
It’s a Mystery: “A good detective assumes nothing”
Cop to Corpse, the 12th in Peter Lovesey’s Detective Supt. Peter
Diamond series, finds the master at the top of his form.
From the Archives: I Talk & Laugh & Listen
She oversaw an shepherded the House of Windsor for a century and did more to shape its present character than anyone. Three years ago William Shawcross wrote an official and none-too-gossipy biography.
From the Archives: Summer Reading 2011
In last year’s special feature, our team of avid readers offered some suggestions for books a little off the beaten path of summer blockbusters.
From the Archives: Summer Reading 2011 Goes On
More of last year’s special feature, where we offered some less predictable ideas for books to tuck into your beach tote or suitcase.
Peer Review: Home
Book reviewers are split on whether Toni Morrison’s new novel is a further triumph or a falling off. Or have these critics only found what they anticipated? We review the reviews, then we review the book.
Keeping Up With the Windsors – The Invisible Woman
She’s occupied the throne of Great Britain and the Commonwealth for 60 years, and in June Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her Diamond Jubilee. Three new biographies try to understand the woman wearing the crown.
Second Glance: Halberstam’s Vietnam and The Anxiety of Power
McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara, RFK, JFK, LBJ–these were the best and the brightest of David Halberstam’s landmark study of American politics during the Vietnam War. The book is now 40 years old and its lessons are as vital as ever.
American Aristocracy – Beethoven In Granite: The Boston Brahmin Aesthetic
Intertwining through Boston history: the rich, implacable music of Beethoven and the flinty austerity of the Boston Granite style of architecture – trace the connections, as American Aristocracy continues.
It’s a Mystery: “Life is an ever-unfolding panoply of marvels”
Carsten Stroud’s Niceville is a wildly edgy thriller with the heart of a dark comedy–our resident mystery maven reviews
From the Archives: Supping with Glaucus: A Tour of Roman Historical Fiction
Steve Donoghue takes the emperor’s box to thumbs-up or thumbs-down an array of Roman historical novels, as “A Year with the Romans” continues.
From the Archives: Second Glance: The Radicalism of Felix Holt
Felix Holt, the Radical may be one of George Eliot’s least-read novels, but its questions about a democracy that puts power in the hands of “ignorant numbers” still have both moral and political resonance.
Keeping Up With the Tudors: Lizard on a Rock
He survived years of dangerous exile, won his crown on the battlefield, and founded one of the most famous dynasties in human history – and yet we still haven’t embraced Henry VII. A spirited new biography seeks to change that.
American Aristocracy – Civil War: Pride and Shame on the Via Sacra
The clash between Brahmin liberalism and the legacy of slave-trading focuses on a monument to the men who redeemed a city and ransomed a nation. “American Aristocracy” continues.
Second Glance: Seth Morgan and the Kamikaze Novel
With its headspinning wordplay and lunatic cast of characters, Seth Morgan’s 1990 novel Homeboy blazed like a comet into the literary pantheon. Steve Danziger revisits this grime crime classic.
On the Scent: Adventures in Perfume Layering
You choose a perfume, you apply it, and you let it live and breathe on your skin – but you never, never mix and match. Or so goes the conventional wisdom. Our resident maitresse de parfums begs to differ – and shares some interesting discoveries
American Aristocracy – Harvard Pulpit: Boston Brahmin Liberalism
To the quintessential virtues the Puritans lent to a fledgling republic – globality, philantropy, and autonomy – the ‘speaking aristocracy’ of the Boston Brahmins added one more: the love of learning
It’s a Mystery: “The world is a great honeycombed thing”
In Nick Harkaway’s altogether remarkable novel Angelmaker, blistering gangster noir meets Rabelaisian comedy
Abandonment, Richness, Surprise
Impressionistic, idiosyncratic, unsubstantiated: Virginia Woolf’s literary essays challenge us to rethink, not just our experience of reading, but our expectations of criticism itself.
Shore to Shore
For two generations, the great American critic and man of letters Edmund Wilson has been instructing and delighting his readers – and inspiring some of them to become critics themselves.
Queen Elizabeth the First
Elizabeth Hardwick joined the literary world of mid-20th century Manhattan with every intention of making her mark upon it – which she did, in review after inimitable review, taking American book-discourse to levels and places it had never reached before
The Tigers of Wrath
Where would Lionel Trilling, godfather of the liberal imagination, fit into our contemporary culture of ideas? And how much of that culture is of his making?
Aid in the Labyrinth
Randall Jarrell was suspicious of attempts to turn criticism into a science: he wrote as a reader, for other readers, with the work itself foremost in his mind.
The Knower and the Sayer
Most criticism is reactive, but in his essay “The Poet,” Ralph Waldo Emerson proved prophetic. He set a challenge and Walt Whitman took him up on it.
Acts of Rendition
Richard Poirier was one of the great bridge-builders–his sorely neglected classic A World Elsewhere drew upon the writing of Emerson but presciently anticipated the postmodernist ideas that would soon enter the mainstream.
How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lane
The best of Anthony Lane’s many New Yorker reviews and essays were collected in Nobody’s Perfect, a big volume that amply displays this writer’s wit and subtlety.
A Talent for Deception
Agatha Christie has received praise from wide and varied corners, and mystery columnist Irma Heldman adds to the chorus with this retrospective on the life and work of the Queen of Crime.
It’s a Mystery: “He’s the gray cardinal of the Kremlin”
The Silent Oligarch is a smashing debut thriller that has Chris Morgan Jones assuming the le Carré mantle in his own very original way
Last Month’s Issue
The forgotten Brontë, a new Iago, coterminous terrorists, Prince Albert in 5 volumes, how to listen to music online, DeLillo, Bostonia, brand new editor, Tagore Redux and plenty more …
The Quiet One
Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is usually overshadowed by her sisters’ masterpieces, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, but this gripping novel, a startling exposé of Victorian patriarchy, deserves a turn in the spotlight.
On Reading a Five-Volume Biography of Prince Albert
Maligned as nothing but handsome breeding stock, this German import did more to redefine the role of the monarchy than any subsequent royal, consort or king.
American Aristocracy – Brahmin Dreams: In Search of the Capital of The World
Boston without Brahmins, like Vienna without Jews, frames shifting capitoline visions, visions much more in the spirit than most realize of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., who actually wrote: ‘It dwarfs the mind to feed it on any localism.’
It’s a Mystery: “Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery”
P.D. James takes on Jane Austen: a match made in elite whodunit heaven.
Our Year in Reading
In this special feature, we look back at some highlights of the reading we did in 2011
On the Scent: A Dip in the Mainstream
Our resident nose slows down in front of a perfume counter and stops to smell what’s selling
It’s a Mystery: “Small clues save you. Small errors kill.”
Carte Blanche is bestselling author Jeffrey Deaver’s new take on James Bond—bringing Agent 007 into the post-9/11 age.
The Prince of Now and Then
He lost his famous mother when he was a boy, became a teen idol, had a storybook wedding, and he’s second in line to be King of England. The monarchy Prince William inherits will be like nothing his predecessors have experienced – if it exists at all. “A Year with the Windsors” concludes.
It’s a Mystery: “A Father’s No Shield for His Child”
A gripping thriller, the debut collaborative work from a duo of Danish writers, is the first in a trilogy you won’t soon forget.
The Steward
He’s been waiting for the throne longer than any Prince of Wales before him, and he’s changed the nature of the monarchy while he’s been waiting. But will we ever see King Charles III? ‘A Year with the Windsors’ takes a look at the heir.
American Aristocracy – Letter from Boston: Toward a New History
Boston, so often reproved for living in its memories, may well be poised to lead the future, not in spite of its history but because of it.
On the Scent: A Certain Vintage
Our resident nose racks up facts on the tinctures of yesteryear, many of which still prove possible to capture and some of which are well worth sniffing out
One Encounter: El Jaleo
What good are reproductions and what do we lose in keeping them? Our writer returns to a famous painting after a dozen years and finds more than he’d imagined
Chairman of the Board
Lodestar or mirror? Passé or ne plus ultra? Elizabeth II has presided with consistency over an inconsistent age. And what have we learned of her?
It’s A Mystery: “He had never tried to hide from himself his taste for the hazard of sin.”
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A Death in Summer is the fourth and best addition to the literate, elegant mystery series by Benjamin Black, the pen name of an award-winning author.
Kindly Words and Spectacles: The Art of Barbara Pym
Her merciless social scrutiny and crystal-perfect prose put Barbara Pym in the same league as Jane Austen — and yet she languishes on the edge of obscurity. We offer a re-appraisal — and a celebration.
It’s A Mystery: “This was either an accident, murder or an act of nature.”
A promising new series is launched with a thoroughly captivating, quirky mystery set well off the beaten path, in a tiny village in Southern Thailand.
Oblivion
One of the most significant voices of the Harlem Renaissance was Jessie Redmon Fauset — novelist, essayist, translator, and editor. She’s become obscured behind many of the male writers she published, but Joanna Scutts returns her poignant work to the main stage
‘What a Brain must Mine be!’: The Strange Historical Romances of William Harrison Ainsworth
Once considered a credible rival to Dickens and Thackeray, W. H. Ainsworth is nearly forgotten today. It’s our loss: his historical novels – full of sensuous detail – run the gamut of romance and horror, tragedy and comedy.
A Very Ordinary Person
When his brother the king abdicated, shy Prince Bertie suddenly became king – and he was just settling in when the World War II threw his kingdom into chaos. ‘A Year with the Windsors’ continues.
It’s A Mystery: “God was not an intelligence officer.”
David Ignatius writes superb novels of espionage from the perspective of the consummate insider. The latest is Bloodmoney.
Sophistication and Recklessness: Patrick Leigh Fermor
With Patrick Leigh Fermor’s death, the world lost a gracious host, a tireless traveller, and one of the best prose stylists of the 20th century. We pause to appreciate him.
Edward the Last
When he was Prince of Wales, he was the nation’s darling, but when Edward VIII came to the throne, he became the greatest threat the monarchy had ever faced.
It’s A Mystery: “He’s Satan in the skin of Everyman.”
In the crowded field of new thrillers, John Verdon’s Shut Your Eyes Tight is right up there with the very best and not to be missed.
On the Scent: Materialism
Where does perfume come from? Why, from isolated islands, Indian grasses, and sticky beards of goats and sheep. Our resident perfume critic digs into labdanum, vetiver, and galbanum and lets us know where grows the nose.
It’s A Mystery: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
The seventh in Craig Johnson’s award-winning Sheriff Walt Longmire series, Hell Is Empty proves that when it comes to putting a contemporary spin on the lore of the old West, few writers do it better.
That Indescribable Something
She was married to two kings, reigned during the advent of trench warfare and the suppression of suffragettes, and stayed all her life a delightful dinner guest; A Year With the Windsors continues with the fascinating and fastidious Queen Mary.
Grandpapa England
In The King’s Speech, King George V is depicted as a fanatical tyrant; but his legacy is one of dignified flexibility in the face of revolutionary changes, and his temperament may have helped save the monarchy
On the Scent: The Odorants in Deodorants
Our resident nose sniffs those most populist of perfumes: the ones we rub under our arms. Join her on a guided tour through the pharmacy aisle.
It’s a Mystery: “No person is without a shadow”
Kurt Wallander’s touching swan song shows why his creator Henning Mankell is an acknowledged master of the police procedural.
Second Glance: Astonish Us
Pauline Kael is out of print today and perhaps known best for the enemies she made. But any immersion into her passionate, intelligent writing shows her to have been one of the best movie critics–or critic of any kind–of the past century.
On the Scent: The Naturals
It seems a given that natural scents would be preferable to synthetics, but might it be that our our perfume biases are too simplistic?
Prince Eddy and the Blackguards
When the heir presumptive, Prince Eddy, died suddenly, the nation and empire was convulsed with mourning – and a century of speculation began! Had the lost prince been a simpleton, a saint, a catamite – even Jack the Ripper?
It’s a Mystery: “A spy causes far more trouble when he’s caught”
The premise of this elegantly wrought thriller puts a chilling new spin on the notorious British spy ring, “The Cambridge Five.”
Wife Number Five
Teenage Catherine Howard weds the older and ailing Henry VIII to serve her family’s ambition, and uses her status to take lovers of her own – risking everything. Novelist Suzannah Dunn spins a fine tale out of the girl’s brief rise and fall.
“My Job Is to Be King”
When the long reign of Victoria ended, her son took the throne with a bonhomie the country hadn’t seen in a century. The new king ate and entertained prodigiously – and mediated prodigiously as “the uncle of Europe.” A Year with the Windsors looks at Edward VII.
It’s a Mystery: “Time ages a person’s soul”
Irma Heldman reviews Taylor Stevens’ “The Informationist” and concludes that not since “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” has there been a debut novel like it
May the Devil Be His Companion
There was talk that Elizabeth I might make her favorite, Robert Dudley, king – if he weren’t already married. When he wife suddenly died, court and country cried foul, and an immortal mystery was born: what really happened to Amy Robsart?
Learning to Read Perfume: A Talk with Chandler Burr
Our poet of perfume and the curator of the brand new Center of Olfactory Art discuss why perfumes demand to be smelled and why “perfume is the only art form in which Americans are more illiterate than poetry.”
History Without the Moon
Her reign was epic in length and social impact, but it very nearly didn’t happen at all. She ruled through two generations of her people, and she left the British monarchy very different from how she found it. She is Queen Victoria, and our Year with the Windsors starts as it must: with her.
It’s a Mystery: “As My Whimsy Takes Me”
“The Attenbury Emeralds” is the third novel by Jill Paton Walsh to bring Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane, Mervyn Bunter, and their companions back to vividly realized life.
Year with Short Novels: The Nihilism of Nathanael West
His short novels are the ‘ugly stepchildren’ of 20th century fiction, and yet his admirers are legion; A Year with Short Novels takes a look at Nathanael West and his two best-known works.
Of Form, E-Readers, and Thwarted Genius: End of a Year with Short Novels
In our Internet-fueled new century, can the in-between genre of the short novel survive? Or have novellas – with their speed and feral intensity – finally come into their own? Our Year with Short Novels concludes.
It’s a Mystery: “As we say in the trade, we’re going in barefoot”
John le Carré’s new work is an elegant espionage novel, part Hitchcock, post-Jack Bauer — the kind they almost don’t make any more.
On the Scent: Auteur Theory
The great lie of the perfume industry is that the scents you wear are created by the designers that brand them. In fact perfumers with signature styles are behind those scents, and Elisa Gabbert gives them some overdue recognition.
Year with Short Novels: True Grit & Greatness
Charles Portis’s “True Grit” features a young girl who’s all business and a grizzled gunslinger who’s all heart — but there’s far more complexity and humor to the story than the Hollywood pairing implies. Ingrid Norton looks at a great American novella.
A Year with Short Novels: Of Dogs & Men
J. R. Ackerley’s complex and marvelous novella “We Think the World of You”–in which two lonely, repressed people contend for the affections of a glorious dog–is the next work featured in “A Year with Short Novels.”
It’s a Mystery: “There’s nothing, nothing on earth as dumb as a teenage boy”
Dennis Tafoya’s second crime novel, “The Wolves of Fairmount Park,” confirms that he is a brilliant new voice with a finely tuned modern noir sensibility.
Keeping Up with the Romans: The Phenomenon of Her
She’s one of the most famous names in history, and the only figure in antiquity to rival Julius Caesar’s renown–but what do we really know about Cleopatra? Stacy Schiff’s new biography takes us behind the legend.
Against the Wind
It’s one of the iconic bestsellers of the 20th century, an epic of love and war — but how well does “Gone With The Wind” hold up, as a book? A personal journey through a problematic classic.
Second Glance: The Daringly Sensible Marjorie Hillis
In books such as “Live Alone and Like It” Marjorie Hillis preached independence and practical style to “live-aloner” working women of the 1930s and beyond
The Scents of Memory Theater
Music and photographs can stir memories, but in the world of scent, only a single molecule — a single note — is needed to take us deep. In this installment of her regular column, our author waxes on how the Eighties and Nineties smelled.
It’s a Mystery: “Every kidnapper who ever did a snatch says no cops!”
In S.J. Rozan’s “On the Line” the irresistible P.I. partners in crime, Bill Smith and Lydia Chin, unwittingly enter into a high stakes game of cat and mouse with a psychopath.
Keeping Up with the Romans: The Senator Investigates
He toadied to a succession of emperors and trembled at the mere thought of being mugged — on the surface, it looks odd to cast Pliny the Younger as a detective. A new mystery novel takes that chance.
Year with Short Novels: Elizabeth Smart, Queen of Sheba
A wild fever-dream of a book, “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept” careers between thrilling emotion and absurd histrionics–that spiky course is charted in this installment of The Year with Short Novels
Year with Short Novels: Love, the Limits of Narrative, & The Pilgrim Hawk
The twisty boundaries of narrative reliability are at the heart of Ingrid Norton’s discussion the neglected classic “The Pilgrim Hawk” as “A Year with Short Novels” continues.
On the Scent: Difficult Pleasures
Our regular scentstress extols the difficult: sharp notes, throwbacks, and sweaty musks over easy patchoulis and fruity bores.
It’s a Mystery: “After all is said and done, we’re just dust”
James Lee Burke’s 18th novel featuring his slightly crazy, completely charismatic Cajun cop, Dave Robicheaux, may just be his best.
It’s A Mystery: “Truth is the daughter of time”
The first two novels of Nicola Upson’s highly promising, thoroughly engaging series stars the great mystery writer Josephine Tey as a sleuth she herself might have invented
On the Scent: The Smell of Money
What are you paying for when you buy an expensive perfume–better materials? A longer-lasting scent? Placebo effect? Our regular perfume columnist sniffs it out.
Year with Short Novels: Diving into Atwood’s Surfacing
This new installment of the Year with Short Novels immerses itself in Margaret Atwood’s haunting second novel, Surfacing
On the Scent: A Dozen+ Roses
Roses: they might have smelled sweet to Shakespeare, but what did he know about the perfume industry? Our regular olfactory column takes on the biggest scent cliche of them all.
The Morality of Vanity Fair: It’s All About You
Thackeray’s seminal big baggy monster of a novel is a satiric romp across all levels of English society – and every bit as enjoyable now as it was when it was the talk of London in 1847
Year with Short Novels: Breakfast at Sally Bowles’
Readers have adored Truman Capote’s iconic Holly Golightly; they might be amazed, then, by how much Capote borrowed from Christopher Isherwood’s Sally Bowles
Keeping Up With The Tudors: Bernard’s Theorem
At her trial, Anne Boleyn was accused of adultery, witchcraft, and incest – charges long mocked by historians. But a new book asks: is it possible Anne was actually guilty?
Peer Review: Martin Amis, Funny Man
For good or ill, when Martin Amis writes a new book, critics swarm to it with strong opinions pro and con – a perfect setting for a clarifying Open Letters Peer Review!
It’s A Mystery: “His job was to save her life”
The final book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, leaves no doubt that Lisbeth Salander, his punk hacker protagonist, has no equal in the annals of crime fiction
On the Scent: The Forbidden Fruit Note
In this installment of our new feature, Elisa Gabbert sniffs out the now-unfashionable subject of ‘fruity’ scents — wherefore their disgrace? and are the critics in error?
Year with Short Novels: The Rooms of the Past
Ingrid Norton’s Year with Short Novels continues in this installment about William Maxwell’s problematically nostalgic novella So Long, See You Tomorrow
It’s A Mystery: “Death, it seems, is taking her own sweet time”
Norman Green’s Sick Like That features Alessandra “Al” Martillo, a sassy, sexy, edgy, endearing female P.I. whose turf is the mean streets of Brooklyn.
On the Scent: Five from Sonoma Scent Studio
From ancient Egypt and Rome to the present, humans have always been fascinated by perfume; a new feature looks at the craft and aesthetics of making scents.
It’s a Mystery: “Motive is the mercury of any case”
31 Bond Street, Ellen Horan’s debut novel, is a compelling reconstruction of mid-nineteenth century New York and one of its most sensational murders.
A Year with Short Novels: Awash with Conrad
It was only a matter of time before our Year with Short Novels got around to the most famous one of them all and traveled deep into The Heart of Darkness.
It’s a Mystery: “Three things come unbidden: fear, love, and jealousy”
In her latest novel, False Mermaid, Erin Hart once again connects an ancient Celtic crime to a thoroughly modern mystery.
A Year with Short Novels: On Lifting Veils
The Lifted Veil, George Eliot’s dalliance with Gothic horror, turns out to be nearly as dense and cerebral as her masterpieces; though of course, in keeping with the theme of this monthly feature, it’s far far shorter.
A Year with Short Novels: “There is a bridge….”
The jewel-like perfection of Thornton Wilder’s “The Bridge of San Luis Rey” is the subject of Ingrid Norton’s scrutiny in this latest installment of “The Year of Short Novels”
It’s a Mystery: “A violin is always female”
There is not a false note in Paganini’s Ghost, Paul Adam’s superbly calibrated mystery that unfolds around the intrigue generated by a priceless instrument and its keepers.
Peer Review: DeLillo and the Three Ps
The nation’s book critics naturally congregated when Don DeLillo’s slim new book appeared. In the latest Open Letters Peer Review, John Rodwan supplies a scorecard for the players.
The Lost Library: Donald Windham’s Two People
Donald Windham may not have intended his 1965 novel Two People to be trailblazing, but its unsentimental frankness set it apart just the same. Philip Gambone reads it again.
Bad Books, Good Hooks
They don’t work as books, but they do work their way on us – insistently, insidiously. We throw them across the room, but we keep picking them up again.
The Sweetness of Short Novels
Doorstop literary tomes might still be the preferred signature grab for literary respectability, but short novels have always been every bit as compelling–and tougher to do well. Ingrid Norton introduces her Year with Short Novels.
A Year with Short Novels: J.L. Carr’s Chance for Renewal
In A Month in the Country, J.L. Carr explores that most challenging emotion to capture in fiction: happiness
It’s A Mystery: “Sometimes the fake relics are more valuable than the real.”
Lou Berney in his fast and funny debut novel, Gutshot Straight, owes more than a little to Elmore Leonard, in the best of all possible ways. As for Elmore Leonard’s latest, Road Dogs, the master is in top form.
Second Glance: “Today belongs to few and tomorrow to no one”
As Ingrid Norton reports, the eerie and heartbroken poems of W.S. Merwin’s The Lice continue to resonate thirty years on: whispering, creeping, shaking.
It’s A Mystery: “The deity who kills for pleasure will also heal”
Louise Penny’s newest novel, The Brutal Telling, plunges Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the star of the famed homicide department of the Sûreté du Quebec, into the darkest, most disturbing case of his career. Irma Heldman goes north of the border.
It’s a Mystery: “Sooner or later, everybody pays”
Irma Heldman reviews The Ghosts of Belfast, Stuart Neville’s grand Irish thriller debut in which the anti-hero, Gerry Fegan, a former IRA hitman, is “touched” as in crazy, and long ago would have been given the death sentence if they’d had anyone with the moxie to kill him.
The Better Part of Me
When he was banished for life from Rome, Ovid was trying to alter his artistic forms with his Metamorphoses. Trace the transformations in Steve Donoghue’s final “Year with the Romans”
The Fixer
Hilary Mantel’s Tudor novel Wolf Hall recently won the Man-Booker Prize. Each part of that sentence was guaranteed to attract Steve Donoghue’s attention.
It’s A Mystery: Mum’s Always The Word
Red to Black, reports Irma Heldman, is a superb debut novel of espionage set in post-glasnost Russia. Its author Alex Dryden is a pseudonymous British journalist with many years experience on the Russian scene—a fact that only serves to heighten the chilling reality behind the riveting read.
Horace in the Afternoon
He was everybody’s friend, and his poetry breathes with life even today. He was Horace, and “A Year with the Romans” makes his acquaintance.
Second Glance: A Weight that Won’t Go Away
Readers are familiar with the uncompromising dissections of Apartheid South Africa in J.M. Coetzee’s Booker winners Disgrace and Life and Times of Michael K, but Greg Gerke wants us to be equally aware of the haunting vision of Coetzee’s 1990 novel Age of Iron
#1
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
#2
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
#3
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
#4
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
#5
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
#6
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
#7
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
#8
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
#9
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
#10
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
2009 Bestseller Feature
In our second annual Fiction Bestseller List feature, our writers temporarily put aside their dogeared copies of Hume and Mann, roll up their sleeves, and dig into the ten bestselling novels in the land as of September 6, 2009 – in the tranquil days before a certain Dan Brown novel began tromping all over that list like Godzilla in downtown Tokyo. Before you spend your hard-earned money at the bookstore, join us in a tour of the way we read now.
Second Glance: Reading Anthony Trollope
He wrote over 40 novels, many of which a classics, and that sheer quantity can be daunting. Rohan Maitzen tells us how best to approach the literary dynamo that was Anthony Trollope.
It’s A Mystery: “Men engaged in warfare are all ghosts in the making”
From Charles Todd, author of the critically acclaimed Ian Rutledge series, comes A Duty to the Dead, introducing Bess Crawford, a World War I nurse, who is feisty, fearless, and fascinating. Irma Heldman joins Crawford on her inaugural adventure.
Verissimus
Statesmen, philosophers, and serial killers turn to the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, but what was the emperor himself like? Frank McLynn’s Marcus Aurelius tells, and in this month’s “A Year with the Romans,” Steve Donoghue assesses.
It’s a Mystery: History Plays for Keeps
In Dan Fesperman’s meticulously crafted World War II thriller, The Arms Maker of Berlin, he opens up old war chests and lets the genies of the past wreak havoc upon the present. Irma Heldman is on the case.
Alexander the Grating
The only surviving full-length biography of Alexander the Great was written by a Roman. Steve Donoghue looks at Quintus Curtius Rufus as “A Year with the Romans” continues.
It’s a Mystery: With Caviar Comes Money
Meet Artie Cohen, a Russian Jewish cop with a conscience. In Reggie Nadelson’s Londongrad, he’s got the weight of the world on one shoulder and New York crime on the other. Irma Heldman follows his travels in the latest “It’s a Mystery.”
‘To the Great Infamy of the King’s Highness’
Church and State collided in Henry VIII’s England, and Durham Cathedral was caught in the middle. Steve Donoghue returns to his Tudor beat to review Geoffrey Moorhouse’s The Last Divine Office.
It’s a Mystery: “She has a bag full of gold just like Pippi Longstocking”
They’re back! Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played with Fire marks the return of Mikael Blomkvist, the intrepid investigative journalist, and his sidekick Lisbeth Salander, the world-class punk hacker. Irma Heldman is on their trail.
Miss Hamilton Disposes
Bryn Mawr’s deaconess Edith Hamilton and Catullus, the bard of Rome’s underbelly, would seem to have little in common. Steve Donoghue brokers a meeting in the latest “Year with the Romans.”
Second Glance: Wave and Say Hello to Frances
She was a bestseller in her day, now virtually unknown. Fanny Burney, and her great novel Evelina, gets some long-deserved attention from Tracey Kelly.
Second Glance: He Hears Them Speaking
You may have passed over Frederick Busch’s many novels on bookstore shelves; Brad Jones convinces you to stop and read the words.
“You can change your name…your job description… But really, nothing changes.”
With The Tourist, Olen Steinhauer takes his place in the panoply of classic spy fiction—at the very top with Deighton, Greene, and Le Carré. Irma Heldman is on the inside and tells all.
It’s A Mystery: “Ah, what the stage lost when I opted for the police”
Donna Leon’s eighteenth Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery About Face has Irma Heldman once again seduced by the witty, erudite Venetian cop with a passion for ancient philosophers, modern women, elegant food, and the constant need to make sense out of the often senseless law.
Uncle Livy
Steve Donoghue’s “Year with the Romans” turns its eye upon Titus Livius, who either wrote poetical history or historical poetry, depending on who you ask.
It’s a Mystery: “I’ve got a mind like a comic book”
Bernie Gunther is back! In the newest incarnations of Philip Kerr’s crime series, the charismatic, cynical P.I.—more ready with a ribald wisecrack than a gun—has survived the decadent dog days of the Weimar Republic only to get down and dirty on the mean streets of Munich. Irma Heldman tags along after him.
Guide
Virgil’s Aeneid has been attracting translators for centuries, and Sarah Ruden’s rendering is notable in more ways than one. (She calls him Vergil, for one thing, but that’s just the start.) Steve Donoghue regards her efforts in the latest “A Year with the Romans.”
It’s A Mystery: “Don’t be so sure I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be”
Dashiell Hammett’s daughter, Josephine Hammett Marshall, hand picked the very talented, three-time Edgar winner Joe Gores to write Spade & Archer, the prequel to The Maltese Falcon. The result, Irma Heldman says, surely has Hammett smiling among the “angels.”
Second Glance: The Wit and Woe of Mavis Gallant
Mavis Gallant wrote some of the best – though too often neglected – short stories of the 20th century. In this regular feature, Karen Vanuska unearths the treasures.
A Year with the Romans: Ten Tips on Terence
He was a slave who wrote his way to freedom – unless he wasn’t, and unless he didn’t. Steve Donoghue’s “A Year with the Romans” looks at the great comic playwright Terence.
It’s a Mystery: The Trouble with Harry
Norwegian Jo Nesbø, a musician, songwriter and economist, is also one of Europe’s most acclaimed crime writers who, to date, has given us two thrillers that are beautifully spun and deeply evocative. Veteran mystery maven Irma Heldman explores the latest hit from Scandinavia.
A Year with the Romans: Sweet Bright Lady
In the 6th Century, Boethius wrote a little tract that has been a guide and touchstone to writers, poets, politicians, and pundits ever since. David Slavitt has produced a new translation of The Consolation of Philosophy; Steve Donoghue explores the world of Boethius in this latest installment of “A Year with the Romans.”
On Finding a Copy of Ovid’s Fasti at the Local Goodwill
Among the Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb, Steve Donoghue unearths a rare secondhand treasure in Ovid’s difficult, underrated Fasti. And he celebrates.
It’s a Mystery: Imaginative Eyes
It was a year full of fine additions to the genre, but according to regular “It’s a Mystery” columnist Irma Heldman, two among them were decidedly the cream of the crop. One is a first and one a twenty-first!
“For I am a Brid of Paradise”
The kings and counts of Tudor England wouldn’t have known the name of minor Cheshire landowner Humphrey Newton, but in reviewing Deborah Youngs’ book on the man, Steve Donoghue illustrates just how much Newton can teach us about the era. “A Year with the Tudors” concludes here.
It’s a Mystery: All Hail the Queen
With this cheery account of the reigning royalty of murder mysteries, P.D. James, Irma Heldman inaugurates her monthly mystery column in these webpages. Irma once delighted fans of her “On the Docket” column under the pen-name O.L. Bailey, and Open Letters proudly welcomes her back to the beat she made her own!
They Were Almost Tudors
In the penultimate installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue pauses to consider some of the young men and women who didn’t quite make it onto the roster of Tudor monarchs.
The Master Touch: One Encounter with Shakespeare’s Henry VIII
William Shakespeare lived under the Tudors for most of his life, but he only wrote about them once, in his play The History of the Life of King Henry VIII – or did he? In our latest One Encounter, and also the new installment in his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue takes a look at that play and the fractious theories attendant.
#1
It’s been over 30 years since Gore Vidal wrote his penetrating and acerbic essay on the bestseller list, and we thought it was time to give that infamous mainstay of the literary world another look. Open Letters has cracked into the bestseller list and invites you to join us in discovering what’s really there…
2008 Bestseller Feature (complete)
It’s been over 30 years since Gore Vidal wrote his penetrating and acerbic essay on the bestseller list, and we thought it was time to give that infamous mainstay of the literary world another look. Open Letters has cracked into the bestseller list and invites you to join us in discovering what’s really there…
A Difficult Woman
Mary Tudor’s fierce Catholic faith and merciless persecution of Protestants gave her the immortal nickname of “Bloody Mary.” In our ongoing feature A Year with the Tudors, Steve Donoghue reviews Linda Porter’s The First Queen of England: The Myth of “Bloody Mary.”
Q & A with Linda Porter
An in-depth addition to our Year with the Tudors: Open Letters chats with a writer equally hip-deep in the subject, Linda Porter, author of The First Queen of England: The Myth of “Bloody Mary.” Our first Q & A!
My Eyes Are Up Here, Milord
There’s something going on in the latest trend of Tudor book-covers, and we’re not sure what it is, although a pair (shall we say?) of aspects is quite obvious. What are these publishers thinking? Take a look for yourself! and a second look! and a third!
Second Glance: A Voice Displaced
Exiled Russian writer Nina Berberova (who fled to America when the Nazis invaded her adopted homeland of France) spent her entire career examining the experience of displacement. In this regular feature, Karen Vanuska revisits Berberova’s life and literary achievements and finds them startlingly relevant to our own fractured times.
One Encounter: Eight Hours from Home
Out of cash, out of work, bounced from his home, and lost in the world, Steve Brachmann turned to an old friend for help—W. Somerset Maugham. In this installment of our regular feature, we see how a single good book—for Steve, it was Of Human Bondage—can help right a life.
Worthy of a Tale or Two
Without him, there would be no “Year with the Tudors,” and in the latest chapter of his year-long feature, Steve Donoghue examines Henry Tudor, who took the crown from Richard III at Bosworth Field and became Henry VII – the first Tudor monarch.
Peer Review: Is Martin Amis Serious?
The vituperation that greeted Martin Amis’ collection of essays The Second Plane reached singularly quotable proportions, even for this much-vituperated British author. In our regular feature, John G. Rodwan Jr. casts a cold eye on Amis’ dour detractors.
Extravagant Things
There is so much Tudor fiction in our world today that no one but the Tudors themselves could justify the extent of it. Even Steve Donoghue can’t read it all, but he has read more of it than is healthy, and he reports back in this installment of his “Year With the Tudors.”
Behind the Scenes of Tudor Fiction: an Excerpt and Dissection
An excerpt and dissection of Steve Donoghue’s Tudor novel Boy King
Absent Friends: The Harper in the Hall
Though the American Civil War produced more and better books and writers than any single event in our country’s history, Bruce Catton is the greatest of its 20th century tellers. In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue tours the breathtaking work of an unfairly set-aside annalist.
Peer Review: Rumble in the Alley
Near the punchbowl, within reach of the finger sandwiches, the early critics of James Frey’s Bright Shiny Morning had an oh-so-polite set of things to say about it. Out back in the alley, other critics were ready to pounce. In this regular feature, Sam Sacks officiates between the Sharks and the Jets.
Lady in Waiting
Alison Weir’s new novel The Lady Elizabeth evokes the snakepit of internecine maneuverings, dynastic labyrinths, and the lunges of religious zealotry that characterized the age named for the lady in question. Steve Donoghue’s “Year With the Tudors” continues here.
Anything that Moves: The Tudors on Film
More than any other dynasty in history, the Tudors are ready for their close-up. In this installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue leads us on a royal progress through film archives to access the heart and stomach of these undying superstars.
One Encounter: George & Me
What do you do when the courageous trailblazing author who formed your youth is accused of an unspeakable crime? John G. Rodwan, Jr. does what Orwell would have done, weighed the evidence and let the chips fall where they may.
Absent Friends: Gentle Poet
At a poetry reading on the Palatine 2,000 years ago, you’d have spent a week’s pay to hear him read. Today he’s unknown, except to our Steve Donoghue (and a few of our readers, no doubt). Here, after a long time gone, is the Roman poet Tibullus.
Second Glance: A Compilation Too Far?
In his lifetime, E.B. White oversaw nearly a dozen collections of his essays; Karen Vanuska appraises a posthumous ingathering edited by Rebecca M. Dale and lets us know whether it adds to White’s legacy or merely overlaps it
Irredeemable
Jane Boleyn took the witness stand and falsely testified that her brother committed incest with her sister-in-law, Anne Boleyn. In this installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue tries to fathom the motives of such slander.
Absent Friends: With a Little Help from Saint Martin
Steve Donoghue exhumes the sprawling, illuminating writing of Gregory of Tours, the wrongly forgotten 12th-century saint, historian, and natural-born raconteur
Second Glance: Playing Lotto with Wittgenstein
Since its publication in 2000, The Last Samurai has been defined, but not explained, as a “cult classic.” In this regular feature, Garth Risk Hallberg looks with fresh eyes at Helen DeWitt’s brilliant and jolting novel.
One Encounter: Thank You and Goodbye
In February, the great pianist Alfred Brendel gave his final performance in New York City. Greg Waldmann was in Carnegie Hall to see it and in this regular feature he shares the experience.
Peer Review: The Opinions on “Strong Opinions”
A.I. White has burrowed into twenty-three reviews of J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year and in this regular feature alerts us to which critics succeeded in their charge, which failed, and why
Proud Boy
Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey: commander, courtier, poet. In this installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue tells the story of how such an extraordinary young man fell foul of Henry VIII.
Absent Friends: In Primordial Seas, They Glide
In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue dives deep into the work of James Russell Lowell, whose splendid writing lurks in the basins of bookstore bargain carts, too often passed over for the smaller fry.
One Encounter: Learning to Shudder
In this regular feature, John Cotter examines two brutal, disturbing pieces of 20th-Century German art—and they come disturbingly close to examining him in return.
‘What Wickedness is Here, Hooper?’
Steve Donoghue continues his “Year with the Tudors” with this look at Chris Skidmore’s biography of Edward VI, the ill-starred son of Henry VIII who might have been the most formidable Tudor monarch of all.
Absent Friends: Oh True Apothecary!
In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue celebrates the books of the 17th-Century physician Nicholas Culpeper, whose medicine may be archaic but whose wisdom and literary merit are by no means obsolete.
When You See Me, You Know Me
As Steve Donoghue writes, the epitome of what a monarch can be was embodied in the massive form of Henry VIII, and not a year passes without another biographer struggling to tackle the man and his legacy. 2007 was no different….
Absent Friends: Between the River and the Mountains
In our regular feature, Steve Donoghue revisits Giovanni Guareschi’s Little World of Don Camillo, an eternally comforting fictional oasis set in the heart of the Cold War.
Second Glance: Marilynne Robinson’s Psalms and Prophecy
This month our regular feature is devoted to a study of the small but potent canon of Marilynne Robinson. Sam Sacks dives back into her famous fiction and formidable essays.
Peer Review: Enter Sophist
James Wood, Christopher Hitchens, Michiko Kakutani, and many others have competed to put forth the definitive word on Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost. Sam Sacks is off to the races with them in this regular feature.
One Encounter: On Packing Two Bags for Mexico
In our regular feature, Scott Esposito expands on the sublime agony of filling a suitcase with an entire year’s worth of books.
Peer Review: Kernels of Truth
In our regular feature, Hugh Merwin tucks in to the reviews of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which alternately acclaim and castigate the bellwether bestseller.
Second Glance: Do You Know Squarepusher?
In this regular feature, Adam Golaski revisits Intelligent Dance (or “laptop”) Music, discovering unity and poise in a Squarepusher album which critics have short-sightedly misfiled.
Absent Friends: Our Jolly Round Whirling Earth
Gun-and-net-toting naturalists seldom produce a better writer than William Beebe. In this regular feature, Steve Donoghue revisits the science writing of a more invasive age.
Peer Review: Onion Skins and Grass Cuttings
In our regular feature, Joanna Scutts is judge and jury over the reviewers of Günter Grass’s Peeling the Onion, who rather too frequently forgot they were supposed to be considering a book.
One Encounter: On Reading Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, translated from the French
Reading a book rendered from Polish to French to English is like playing a game of Telephone. In our regular feature, Andrew Crocker expounds on the pleasures of translations.
Second Glance: Dorothy Sayers and the Last Golden Age
Joanna Scutts inaugurates this regular feature by revisiting the groundbreaking mysteries of Dorothy Sayers, who’s ability to wryly delight remains undimmed.
Peer Review: Sex on the Beach
In our monthly feature, Sam Sacks clambers over the mountain of
reviews of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, spotting perspicacity,
purple prose, and possible pickpocketing along the way.
Absent Friends: Himself
The only trouble with Sean O’Casey’s brilliant plays is that they overshadow
his magnificent memoirs. In our monthly feature, Steve Donoghue
tries to even the scales.
Absent Friends: H.H. Kirst and the Problem of Evil
What do we do with great novels by a writer who was also a Nazi? In our monthly feature, Steve Donoghue investigates the terrible conundrum of H.H. Kirst.
Peer Review: Running Toward the Truck
Newspaper book pages are under threat. In our monthly feature, John Cotter assesses the reviews of Jonathan Lethem’s novel You Don’t Love Me Yet to learn what (if anything) in our print reviews is worth saving.
Absent Friends: That is Not Sad; This is Not Funny
In this monthly feature, Adam Golaski resurrects the poetry of Paul Hannigan in all its acerbic and ominous brilliance
Peer Review: Arms and the Pan
In this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue spots a troubling pattern of left-handed praise in the reviews of Robert Fagles new translation of the Aeneid
Absent Friends: It Wasn’t What He Wanted
In this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue revisits the great life and writing of Gerald of Wales, a continuously frustrated candidate for the Archbishopric of Wales.
Peer Review: Martin Amis’s Nasty Glitter
In this monthly feature, John Cotter reviews the reviewers of Martin Amis’s House of Meetings, from the gossip-slingers to the fellow fiction writers.
Absent Friends: Nicholas Monsarrat
In this monthly feature, Steve Donoghue touts the overlooked sea novels of Nicholas Monsarrat.
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