Recent

'Lake Success': It's All About Your State of Mind

If you wade into Lake Success, or even just repose on its banks, are you primed for a life of achievement and glory, similar to the way taking a dip in the River Styx renders you invulnerable?

Books

Jeffrey Eugenides' 'The Virgin Suicides' Is a Masterpiece of Mood, Atmosphere, and the Palpable Ghosts of Lingering Regret

Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides is a brutally beautiful masterpiece of decay, loss, longing, and regret that can still break your heart.

Books

'Lake Success' Is a Picaresque Journey to Nowhere

Gary Shteyngart's state of the nation satire about a billionaire on the run doesn't tell us much about anything.

Books

'The Oracle Year' Explores a Different Kind of Superhero

The Oracle Year is less concerned with exploring the ethics of having power and more with using it as a catalyst for an entertaining story.

Books

'Grist Mill Road' Questions the Role of the Spectator to Violence

Just as it's hard not to look at a road accident, it's hard to put Christopher J. Yates' uncomfortable book down.

Books

'A Sister in My House' Successfully Creates an Ambiance of Discomfort

Linda Olsson's novel explores the path towards rekindling relationships in the wake of trauma.

Books

'Pachinko' Is a Meticulous Tapestry that Compels Our Empathy

Lee balances this richly textured tale of an immigrant family with scenes of poverty, disrespect, and inhumane conditions endured by Koreans in Japan during WWII.

Books

'The Incendiaries' Twists Memories, Perception, and Truth

Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl joins cult. Boy loses girl.

Books

The End of Endings; or, Why Won't Anyone Stay Dead?

What does it mean, ontologically and narratively, when the seeming finality of death disappears from our stories? What does it mean when our stories and our characters, unlike our lives, refuse to come to an end?

Comics

Finding Elvis Religion in Mike Burrell's 'The Land of Grace'

The Land of Grace is at once a critique of religious faith, a comic romp through the weirdness of Elvis culture, and a horror story in which death and resurrection aren't so much an Easter miracle as a recurring nightmare.

Books

Difficult Wonders in Joyce Carol Oates' 'Beautiful Days'

Of these short story jewels, Oates displays her greatest strengths in "Fractal", and the effects are profoundly strange and moving in ways that only she can seem to execute.

Books

'America Is Not the Heart' Offers Hope Within Its Defiance

Elaine Castillo's debut is a rich and disturbing banquet of the Filipino immigrant experience in America.

Books

A. M. Homes' 'Days of Awe' and the Art of Writing Dialogue

Each story here could well be a masterclass in the art of writing dialogue as Homes employs it throughout to do much more than simply reveal character or move the story along.

Books

In 'Night Beast', Joffre Pens Nefarious Worlds That Embrace the Lurid and Fantastical

Ruth Joffre has a talent for making the macabre playful but ultimately Night Beast is disenchanting.

Books

Short Stories: Women in Translation

To celebrate Women in Translation month, we bring short stories (and a novel that's like a collection of short stories) by women in translation: Olga Tokarczuk; Sayaka Murata; Mahasweta Devi; Malika Moustadraf; Dorthe Nors.

Books

On Epistemological Anxieties and Irony in 'Who's Who When Everyone Is Someone Else'

C.D. Rose's novel is as striking for its achievements as it is for its failures, but ultimately the whole exercise feels rather inessential.

Books

Pop Ten

Say It Loud! 100 Great Protest Songs: Part 1 - Beethoven to Janis Ian

Shaved Jews and Philosemitic Fantasy: On 'Jud Süss' and 'Das alte Desetz'

The 100 Greatest Alternative Singles of the '80s: Part 1: 100 - 81

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