In a generation of “Pointers,” the relationship between and among songs on an album—its narrative—is all but lost in favor of hit single after single. But in Jennifer Egan’s new book, A Visit from the Goon Squad, an array of stories mix into a cohesive novel, each chapter self-contained yet fluid as the grooves of an LP.
Joan Silber’s elegant sixth book, The Size of the World, probes what one character describes as “the elusive connection between happiness and place.” In prose both beautiful and spare, Silber crafts a novel of thematically linked stories that span continents and generations, and whose predominantly American characters look for adventure and contentment abroad—or in the arms of lovers who will always remain, at the core, unknowable.
“Fiction is my default writing mode. Whenever I witness something odd on the streets or hear intriguing dialogue on the trains, my first impulse is to drop these things into my fiction bank. I don’t have a memoir bank. Fiction, to me, is running through the woods rather than running on a treadmill. It’s freedom to make up characters, setting, situations, etc.—and through this freedom I feel better equipped to express and explore my ideas.”
In an age of books built from blogs, tweets, and text messages, God’s Dogs, Mitch Wieland’s new novel-in-stories, feels as though it were made of wood. It is regional, elemental, and bears the marks of its maker: the careful grooves of his chisel, the smooth surfaces from the author’s finest sandpaper, even rough-hewn gouges by what might have been teeth or fingernails.
