“Stanley’s obsession with the confounding space at the center of himself presents itself as a proper noir MacGuffin.” Michael A. Ferro reviews Joseph Scapellato’s The Made-Up Man, out this month from FSG.
“For me, the setting of a novel is the novel in many ways, and it seems right to devote time and space to establishing the geography and history of the place. This forms a frame inside which the rest of the story takes place.” Andrew Michael Hurley talks with Steven Wingate about rural England, the “ghost story” spirit, and developing writerly patience.
“Jenoff provides vivid and convincing detail, and the depth of her research is impressive”: Ellen Prentiss Campbell reviews Pam Jenoff’s historical novel centering on a group of female spies sent behind enemy lines during WWII.
“The best and maybe only way to describe my path is that I’m a ‘primitive,’ coming to writing in a very organic fashion through reading. If I’d studied it in college (or even stayed in college) I’d surely have had the storyteller intimidated out of me.” Peter Geye talks with Sarah Stonich about Northern Minnesota, unconventional career paths, and being a literary chameleon.
“With intelligent probing, sinuous prose, and considerable charm, this Bildungsroman charts his journey, an interior trip to the core of being a compassionate human in the twenty-first century”: Julian Anderson on Johannes Lichtman’s debut novel.
Steve Wingate makes his first trip to the American Booksellers Association’s Winter Institute to learn how books make their way into the hands of booksellers, and thereby into the hands of readers.
The form of motherhood is beautifully banal: Melissa Scholes Young on the interplay between form and meaning in Lydia Kiesling’s debut novel.
“I think this is what Ghostographs wants from its readers: remembrance. While much of the book is about the wild dreamscape of childhood, in the end the story is about the end of a time and place.”
“In a sense, the 21st century of Demolition Night is an outdated future, since its political satire was conceived before late 2016. These days, everything before that year’s November feels like ancient history. In the Trump era, satire has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible.”
“Here, in the end, we realize the extent of the narrator’s dark obsession.” In part II of her essay on strange objects in fiction, Elizabeth Mayer offers a close reading of Yoko Ogawa’s “Sewing for the Heart.”
Stories We Love: “White Angel,” by Michael Cunningham
Stories We Love: Donald Barthelme’s “The School,” In Which is Revealed the Meaning of Life
Stories We Love: "A Small, Good Thing" by Raymond Carver
Stories We Love: "The Fall River Axe Murders," by Angela Carter
Stories We Love: "Incarnations of Burned Children"
