These days the news is full of reports about the graying of America, yet it's rare that old people appear in contemporary fiction except as stock characters: the indulgent grandmother, the wicked witch. In her first novel in a dozen years, the...
In literary America, to utter the name “Gordon Lish” in a conversation is like adding hot sauce to a meal. You either enjoy the zesty experience, one that pushes your limits — or you prefer to stay away. It’s Lish who, first as fiction...
In this remarkable book, Hugo Hamilton tells the story of individuals caught up in the turbulent last days of World War II. Stationed in Czechoslovakia, lovers Bertha Sommer and Officer Franz Kern long to escape from the war and its consequences,...
I was just a boy when I come to Jamaica. Kingston, 1938. Fourteen-year-old Yang Pao steps off the ship from China with his mother and brother, after his father has died fighting for the revolution. They are to live with Zhang, the 'godfather' of...
Set on two fictitious islands in northern Maine during the 1970s, this first novel by the author of a sparkling story collection, Pilgrims, begins slowly but warms up with smart, sassy humor. Isolated from the mainland by 20 miles of sea, but...
This Monday, on April 12, the winners of the Pulitzer Prize were announced, and since then, little-known debut author Paul Harding has quickly risen to fame after his novel "Tinkers" won the Pulitzer for fiction.The novel, about a dying...
From preface: In naming this second part of The Forsyte Chronicles "A Modern Comedy" the word Comedy is stretched, perhaps as far as the word Saga was stretched to cover the first part. And yet, what but a comedic view can be taken, what but...